Rory
Something indeed: a piece torn from something rumored to be grander, a memory locked away behind this barrier they could not cross. A heat-haze mirage beyond certain death. Most of the time, Rory tried not to think about it—which was precisely the reason he so often took a pony to scout the outskirts for something out of the ordinary—and sometimes, he even chose to not believe it.
If he had no proof, but secondhand memories passed down from mouth to mouth, of something else being out there; why should he believe in it?
In the dark, when the walls of the world pressed in close and his heart fluttered against the bars of its cage, then he believed: not out of conviction, but out of necessity. Where others ran on blood, Rory ran on dreams.
"No," he responded after half a heartbeat, as if it pained him to crush whatever faint hope she might've clung to that she was not, after all, quite as lost as she was. His fingers did something in Bakshi's mane, twisting and untwisting, tangling and untangling. "I met Remi and some El-something," he explained, using his free hand to point in the direction he'd come from. "If you know who they are?"
It wasn't strange that she used the Spire as a means of navigation—you saw it from almost everywhere, after all—but the casual way in which she mentioned it sent a shiver down his spine. Few ventured there of their own free will, and of those who did, well, you mostly just found pieces of them after that, and not enough to put them back together. "You should stay away from the Spire," he said, suddenly feeling old and worn and tired. "And I live on the border between the fields and these woods. With my sister." As if that was somehow an important detail. As if it was somehow vital to establish that Rory was not the lone wolf haunting the woods at night.
His fingers kept working themselves into Bakshi's black mane.
If he had no proof, but secondhand memories passed down from mouth to mouth, of something else being out there; why should he believe in it?
In the dark, when the walls of the world pressed in close and his heart fluttered against the bars of its cage, then he believed: not out of conviction, but out of necessity. Where others ran on blood, Rory ran on dreams.
"No," he responded after half a heartbeat, as if it pained him to crush whatever faint hope she might've clung to that she was not, after all, quite as lost as she was. His fingers did something in Bakshi's mane, twisting and untwisting, tangling and untangling. "I met Remi and some El-something," he explained, using his free hand to point in the direction he'd come from. "If you know who they are?"
It wasn't strange that she used the Spire as a means of navigation—you saw it from almost everywhere, after all—but the casual way in which she mentioned it sent a shiver down his spine. Few ventured there of their own free will, and of those who did, well, you mostly just found pieces of them after that, and not enough to put them back together. "You should stay away from the Spire," he said, suddenly feeling old and worn and tired. "And I live on the border between the fields and these woods. With my sister." As if that was somehow an important detail. As if it was somehow vital to establish that Rory was not the lone wolf haunting the woods at night.
His fingers kept working themselves into Bakshi's black mane.
