Shadows Watching

by SaltyJustice

Chapter 15

Rainclouds sat above the horizon as I looked out my first floor window onto the hamlet below. No matter how many times I sew them, they still made me depressed. Of course we needed water to grow the crops, everypony knew that, and yet, I couldn't help it. Rain depressed me. I heard the door behind me open as 'Tia walked in, quietly as not to disturb me despite us both knowing she was about as quiet as a choking buzzard.

"Yes, what is it?" I asked, without taking my gaze from the window. Perhaps I enjoyed being depressed, since I preferred to look at the clouds than to look at Celestia.

"Luna still has yet to return," Tia said simply.

I thought a moment. I didn't instinctively count things like Tia did, she did it obsessively. Always had a head for details, always was quietly analyzing and counting the little things we did every day. "How long does that make it?"

"Just short of a month. Almost a full cycle and no word," she said.

Ever since the end of the war, life had taken on a different meaning to us. There was no unbeatable foe to vanquish, no omnipresent fear of annihilation. No challenge, no excitement. The world was scarred, the old one never to return. Over a century of warfare against an enemy that obliterated whatever it touched had left the population devastated. Now the truly difficult task of rebuilding had begun.

Tia had leaped right into the job. In truth, she was more of a leader than I was, despite my being technically slightly older. Something about her poise made ponies want to follow her. Hell, I'd follow her even if I knew she was wrong, she's that charismatic. She's also wise enough to know not to let me follow her, which makes it even worse.

Luna, however, had not been so interested in civilian life. Yes, she still loved us dearly, and we loved her. Our shared struggle and shared mission had left an indelible impact, one I knew would transcend time and place itself, and yet, she did not extend this love to those who had chosen to follow us. She became distant and reserved. Some nights, when the air was particularly still, I could hear her sharpening her spear still, or sometimes practicing in the courtyards. There were no enemies left to fight. Perhaps she felt useless.

I admit I felt something similar. There is a certain exhilaration that comes with risking your life, no matter how awful the surroundings. I'd never go back, I'd never do it again, not unless I had to, and yet, I still longed for it. Adventure, I was an adventurer at heart, and the world had no need of us.

And so, one day, Luna had simply left. She left no note, she sent no letter, she spoke to nopony. One day, she had left, and that was all there was. Tia could sense where she was when she raised the moon, or at least give us a vague idea of the direction and distance, it was a part of their shared responsibility. I couldn't quite feel it myself, mine was an altogether different mission that did not involve astral objects and the endless calculations that accompanied them. I could certainly feel something, perhaps more than most, but that's all it was, an echo.

Tia had told me each day how far she thought Luna was from us. Each day, it was farther. She'd be halfway across the continent by now, if Tia's predictions were correct, and they always were.

I should not have been worried about Luna, I knew she could handle herself in any situation. Accidents do happen, but killing a being such as her is no easy task, I was not even sure if it was possible. I dreaded having to find out. In truth, I was far more worried about Celestia. She made a big show of being distant, cold, calculating and logical, but I knew it was just a show. She remained distant because she feared that if she felt something, anything, then it would compromise her objectivity, and then she'd make the wrong decision. Bad decisions hurt innocent ponies.

Celestia also feared making difficult decisions, though she had never told me this outright. I had inferred it, instead. It was not that she could not calculate the difference between two bad decisions and pick the least harmful, no, it was that she would anticipate one some time in advance, and scheme and plot to make it not come to pass. She played the desperate puppet master, trying to manipulate her way to utopia.

As I ruminated on this, an idea formed in my head. I wondered if I would get it past Celestia unmolested.

"I'm going after her," I said.

Celestia paused, clearly I had taken her by surprise.

"Amoria, no, please. I can't lose another sister," she said. She was keeping her voice monotone, yet I could tell her heart was breaking.

"I'm not going away forever," I said, finally turning around to look at her. She had taken off all her 'royal' garb that the village blacksmith had made us in gratitude. Gone was her golden crown and chest guard with all those gems, gone were the fancy shoes. She was naked, vulnerable, plain old Tia.

"I promise I will come back when I find her. And if I don't, I'll come back in, I don't know, a year? I'll write to you as I go. You'll not lose me," my attempts to assuage her fears would never work, for I knew she was busy running the percentages. The look on her face told me she did not like the odds.

"Do you really promise? What if something goes wrong? What if you get hurt?" she asked. This was the side of her she feared others to see. This was the real Celestia, hidden by all her table manners and her fine speaking voice. In the end, she really was a scared filly who loved too much and could not stand to lose her family, strange as it was.

"I'll be fine. You'll be fine. You're a great leader, the ponies will follow you and you're smart enough to lead them," I said. It was not I she was worried about now, it was her. I was her fallback. If she was afraid, she would come to me, and I would often simply arbitrarily choose which way to go forward, which decision was the best one. Uncertainty was her bane.

That evening, I had packed lightly. Some bread, light and nutritious to make best use of my carrying space, and some fruits and vegetables in a mash that I kept in a jar for snacking. I kept my sword in its sheath across my back. I had hoped I would not need it, of course. I was reminded of something an earth pony once said to me. "Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it," and who said we had nothing to learn from them? No finer piece of wisdom had I ever heard.

Celestia did the lowering of the sun one last time, on the podium behind the dilapidated stone fort which we called home. It was the oldest standing structure in the world at this point, the final holdout in the last, dark days of the war. Most of our followers had left to go live in new buildings and houses, leaving us in the structure along with a small group of planners and organizers.

As she finished and the moon made its way up into the sky, Celestia closed her eyes and pointed a hoof off into the distance to the west.

"How far?" I asked.

"Far," she said. "I'd estimate one-sixteenth of the planet's circumference."

"Do you think she's reached the western mountains then?" I asked again, quickly estimating the distances and comparing them to my knowledge of the continent's geography.

"Perhaps, or she has passed them. Good luck," she said to me, keeping her face stony and resolute. At this point, it was herself she was convincing, not me. I gave her a shake of the hoof and departed, flaring my wings and taking off in the direction she had pointed, just a few degrees from the moon's arc. I would need to find more evidence of her trail as I got closer, meaning I would need to quiz the residents as I passed. Luna would have made quite an impression.

I flew for the rest of the night and some of the day, stopping to rest in a village of only about six houses. The ponies there kindly let me sleep in one of their unused rooms and gave me some jugs of water for my trip. I had insisted on repaying them, they had insisted I had done quite enough. I ended up digging them a well anyway, it was experience I had craved. I wanted to see the world through the eyes of its inhabitants, not be stuffed up in a rotting fort on a hill somewhere. Even the simple task of digging a hole was rewarding. My mission called me, of course, and I had to depart, traveling to the next village and the next.

I found stray pets. I argued with bears to leave the ponies be. Playful spirits would sometimes make a mess of an innocent villager's home, and I would drive them off. Everypony had problems and I delighted in solving them, just for the fun of it. At the same time, I always made sure to tell the villagers how I had done it, in the hopes that they would not need me to next time.

Planned obsolescence, is what Celestia had called it once. I hoped someday to retire and let ponies handle their own affairs, when they were ready. Already they were experimenting with art, science, magic, and government. Their minds were hungry and the world waiting for them to care for it.

And yet, there were other tasks which the ponies, nor any of the other races, would never be ready for. I had hypothesized that some new breed of creature would be necessary, one like myself and my sisters and yet, not. The war had left scars on the land, but those would heal. The war had left scars on the bodies of our people, but those would heal. No, the ponies were scarcely aware of the scars it had left on their hearts and their minds.

I saw it every now and then, as I traveled. My special gift was another sight, one like normal sight except able to see the world as it truly is. Celestia had hypothesized that what I was able to see was magic itself, raw and unfocused by the mind of a magician. She could see it too, for only a brief moment once a year, during the solstice and the height of her power. Luna as well, during the opposite solstice, though she never spoke of it. I alone bore the burden of seeking out the corruption that plagued the beings of this world.

Sometimes it latched itself on to a foal at birth. It warped their mind, made it slow, incapable, violent. This happened on its own as well, something to do with biology I didn't understand too well. I had not had time to learn what secrets the many scientists of this world had learned before me, as the war had consumed nearly everything, including those brilliant minds. We had to start over from what we could remember.

In some cases, it would take itself on those who were most vulnerable, the sick, the injured, the scared and lonely. Worst of all, it would take itself on those who were in love. It sought to ruin everything good and kind about a pony's heart until they were a bitter shell of resentment. Even sleeping beneath its seal a thousand miles beneath the planet's surface, that source of hate was a real thing, every day it sought to destroy lives.

For the young and the sick, there was little hope. I would see the wounds, see the black sickness that coated them, and offer my grim services to their loved ones. Some would reject, some would accept, all understood the finality of it. Those who were strong would not escape the encounter unharmed, I hoped the effects would not be permanent even if they were painful, as I cut the parts off that I could not save and bandaged the rest. Those who survived reported a wave of emotions, pain and grief being the most prominent. So many patients, only one doctor.

As the weeks stretched into months, I traveled farther west than ever before. I began to see settlements less and less as the land became scrub forest and open plains. The Buffalo had claimed this area as their own a long time ago, and returned here after the war. They would recognize me and assist me to the best of their ability, but their nomadic ways made finding them fairly difficult. Only rarely would they set a fire that I could see from a distance, so I spent much of my time on my own, sometimes reduced to munching on foul-tasting prairie grasses in lieu of proper food.

The bodies of myself and my sisters were altogether different from any other. We had no need of food, water, or sleep, but we felt the desire for them. I loathed hunger, Luna had told me once that she didn't mind it. Both of us delighted in the taste of good food. New food. Different food.

And so it was one day, as I had not seen another soul for almost a week, that I foraged in the shadows of the great mountains rising to the west. I suspected Luna was still somewhere on the other side, but no other had seen her in some time. The trail was cold. She did not want to be found.

There were some berries growing in a bush surrounded by a thicket. I decided to gather them to get something tastier than dried grass in my stomach, stepping into the thicket delicately. I sampled one berry, sweet, definitely not poisonous. I was going to pick them with my hooves, but started instinctively to use magic as my legs had started itching all of the sudden.

It did not take me long before I couldn't continue harvesting, the itching became too powerful. I looked down to see my legs beginning to swell and turn dark red through my coat, as it struck me. The plant I was standing in was some sort of poisonous vine, giving me a reaction. Already my legs were on fire and the itching was moving up onto my chest.

I abandoned the berries in a panic and took off straight up. I wanted to scratch myself raw but thought better of it, I looked around for some sign of someone who could help me. There was no one for as far as I could see, I would need to take care of this myself, somehow.

I saw a stream nearby and dove towards it at full speed. The itching had spread up over my body, it threatened to get to my throat soon. I hit the stream and tried to wash myself off, yet the itching continued, the water clearly having no effect. Panic set in, I had no idea what to do now.

I heard a gasp from behind me and turned to see someone standing there. My vision had begun to blur, I couldn't speak as my throat burned and swelled. My legs had begun to sting outright.

I blacked out.

I don't know how much time passed. It was warm, wherever I was. I was covered in something. Sometimes I would open my eyes then shut them again as the swelling made it painful to look around. I drifted in and out of sleep, someone would periodically force something hot down my throat. It made the pain go away for a while, then it would come back and I would go back to sleep to avoid it.

The pain became a little weaker each time I awoke, until I could finally open my eyes and keep them open. I checked my throat, but it was too clenched to really speak in anything but a hoarse grunt. I looked around to see just where I was.

The floors and walls were earthen, I was inside some sort of dugout. The ceiling was sticks and waterproofed with mud, a fireplace nearby kept the building warm for me. A crude reed blanket had been wrapped around me, and a cooking pot full of some thick white soup sat near the fire. I recognized the soup by its smell, trying some and enjoying it, both for its taste and the clearing effect it had on my throat. I was still hoarse but now able to at least form a sentence.

Whoever had been taking care of me wasn't here right now, maybe having left to get something. There were a number of peculiar looking masks on the wall, possibly Zebra in origin, though I was not capable of telling which nation.

I made myself more comfortable in my blanket and returned to sleep for a while. I was awakened later by the sound of the reeds that acted as a doorway being pushed aside as someone entered.

"Oh, you're awake," a lady's voice said, deep in the curious way Zebras were. "I was worried about you, be a real shame to lose you to a poison crawler."

"Poison crawler?" I asked, my voice still a croak.

"Here, have some more soup," she said, ladelling some into a wooden bowl and carrying it to me. I gulped it down hungrily, the effect on my throat most welcome.

"Thank you," I said, much more clearly this time.

"Just repaying a favor," she said to me, undoing her bags and opening them.

I watched her as she rifled through them, pulling out seeds and leaves. She set a few aside, then ground them up and dumped the powder into the soup.

"What's a poison crawler?" I asked again.

"It's a plant that makes very sure that insects don't touch it. They like to spread themselves long and low across the ground, like a caterpillar, so I call them poison crawlers," she said.

"I take it you decided to stand in some?" she asked me as she kept her eyes on the soup. She uncorked a water jug and poured some in, looking at me as she tilted her head to let the water out.

"I didn't know, I just wanted some berries to eat," I said.

"Ah, no way to know except experience. I found out about them from the Buffalo, steered clear myself," she said.

"I'm sorry, do I know you from somewhere? You said something about a favor," I asked. I tried to be polite. I had met many thousands in my time, and seen so many more, I had lost track of faces and names.

"Yes, or perhaps, I know you. I am Zephyra of the Nohota nation," she said as she stirred the soup.

"I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with them," I said, eying the soup she was mixing. It tasted great, I'd have gobbled it up even if it had no medicinal purposes.

"I'm the last of them, sad to say. I'm sure that's the case for a lot of Zebras," she said. There was no regret in her voice, it was purely matter-of-fact.

"You don't sound too upset about that," I said.

"What comes, comes. What goes, goes. No sense in dwelling on it, we all have to go sometime," she said. She put up a tough front. I could hear her voice crack slightly as she spoke. I decided to change the subject.

"So, what are you doing so far out here?" I asked.

"Oh, you didn't know? Your sister sent me out here to research medicines," she said, pointing at the bag she had been carrying. "Good thing too. I don't know how you Princesses work, but for anyone else that would have been fatal."

I wasn't really sure if I could die, and had no intention of finding out either, especially not from choking to death on my own swollen tongue.

"Celestia sent you?" I asked.

"I volunteered, more like. Had to get away somewhere. Not a lot going on out here, very quiet. Except when the Buffalo throw a party, they always insist that I come," she chuckled as she said the last part. I knew a double-entendre when I heard one - glad to see some things about the Buffalo never changed.

"Hm." I merely agreed.

"I was about to pack up and head back when who should fall into my lap but Princess Amoria herself. Perhaps this is a sign?" she mused.

"A sign? Sign of what?" I asked.

"That my timing was right. If ever a Princess drops out of the sky and practically lands on you, move!" she laughed, a deep, powerful laugh from her belly. I couldn't see the humor in almost dying. Maybe the grim experiences before this had given her a morbid sense of comedy, one needs to laugh if the alternative is to cry.

I was tired again, my recovery was still not complete. I laid down and went back to sleep again, waking up when it was dark out and feeling much better. The stars were out on a cloudless night, I peered outside through the reeds covering the door. I wondered how long I had been here, I had no sense of the time. I would need to ask Zephyra later.

She slept fairly close to the fire, her back to it to keep warm. She slept on the floor, having let me sleep on the makeshift haybed, made of dried prairie grass. I really needed to ask her for the recipe of that soup.

Now that my strength had returned, I could detect something peculiar in the air. Zephyra slept softly as I crept around the room, trying to find some hint as to what it was. I examined the masks on the walls, two of them at an angle to one another, hanging off the same extended twig. I thought it meant something in Zebra culture but couldn't remember what.

Her herbs table was quite well organized, and she had been keeping a notebook of their properties. Evidently she had consulted with the Buffalo quite often, the notes referred to patient interviews and could well have been written by a doctor, they were so detailed and thorough.

As I checked the room, I kept coming back to the masks. Two masks, both made of wood and in roughly the same shape, except one was painted blue and the other green. The masks would not fit over a head, they weren't meant to be worn.

I finally remembered what they meant. The masks represented a Zebra in a family, and hanging from the same twig meant the two were siblings. The colors represented gender, so I guessed Zephyra must have had a brother. Have had. She was the last of her nation.

I sighed as this realization hit me. She had been one of the many who had lost everything in the war. I had a vague idea of how she had known me, no doubt one of the many I had commanded. She said she owed me a favor, perhaps referring to something on the battlefield. There were so many faces I could not keep them straight. I would forget her brother, even though there was no doubt now that he had fought and died for me.

I was angry at myself, I considered it a failure. Someone gives their life for you and you can't even remember it, the ultimate sacrifice going unthanked. I alternately wanted to bellow in rage and curl up and cry, doing neither as it would wake my sleeping hostess. I could not turn to another for guidance, nopony would console me. Tears streamed from my eyes as I closed them.

Almost as if it were instinct, my other sight came to me as I tried to fight back the tears. A momentary lapse in discipline, or a chance encounter, who could say?

Before me lay Zephyra, appearing as a great ball of light, streaming like a sun all its own. Predictably, I could see the connections that she held around her, frayed and broken. It was so typical, they had not healed on their own, could not heal as their other half was dead, literally dead. This was an injustice, someone as good and kind as Zephyra did not deserve to have her heart rended into parts by the inane, random cruelties of existence.

I walked over to the most prominent of the strands and brought it close in to me, examining it closely from inches away. It was a sharp cut that had made this, very few of the strands extended out. Whoever this went to, they were taken suddenly and unexpectedly. As I set myself up to repair the damage, I felt a tug on the strand. It pulled itself away from me, back toward the star it shone from.

Please don't. It's all I have left.

It was Zephyra's voice, it rang through my head. She was asleep, not even aware she had thought it. It stunned me, I stood there without breathing for a moment as I processed it.

Don't you want to be whole again?

No.

Why? Why didn't she want me to help her?

Why not?

Because then I would lose him.

The next day, Zephyra made some tea and we discussed her plans. She had intended to leave a week ago, but my interruption had forced her to stay longer. The Buffalo were planning on throwing her one last party before she left, she had made many friends with them and would not be back for some time, if ever.

I wanted to broach the topic of her brother as gently as possible. I knew it would hurt. I had to know. Surprisingly, she brought it up herself.

"I didn't tell you how we met, did I?" she asked. I shook my head.

"Ahh, my brother and I," she said. She paused a bit before continuing. "We came to you after our fields had been burnt, by your sister, as I recall."

"I assure you, it had to be done," I said. I was not interested in making excuses.

"I am well aware. It gave us nothing to do, except wait. So one day, Ortega, he says to me, 'We cannot sit here and wait for death. Let us go out and meet it'. So we joined up with some of the warriors and fought under you," she said.

She took another sip of her tea.

"I'm sorry I didn't recognize you," I said. My tea was cooling.

We said nothing for a while after that. Zephyra would stare off into the distance and take sips of her tea. I wasn't interested in mine. Finally she spoke.

"Have you ever lost someone dear to you?" she asked me, her gaze still off in the distance.

I shook my head. "No. I have only my sisters."

"Have you never grown close to another?" she asked me.

I shook my head again. "It is unwise."

She turned to face me, and said, "Can you really lead if you have no experience?"

I began to wonder just what she was getting at. There was more to this Zebra than met the eye, that was for sure. She had been kind and generous to me, saving my life, or as close as could have been. All the same, there was something off about her demeanor. It seemed like anger, but was not quite the same, something more complex than that.

"It is best for all if we do not become involved too deeply. We make decisions that affect the whole world, they cannot be made without a clear, logical outlook," I said.

Zephyra looked back into the distance. "Tch, I thought as much," she said.

I helped her pack up her belongings. We would leave many of them here, for anyone to use if they happened upon it. We took only what was really needed, mostly her research log and the herb samples. I noticed she had no intention of taking the masks with her, the next morning I saw they were still hanging from the wall as we prepared to set off.

"Aren't you going to take these along?" I asked, motioning towards the masks.

"Too big to carry. It's either those or the logs, not both." she said.

I looked at the masks, judging their size. A thought occurred to me.

"I could take them, I can just tie them to me instead of my sword, see?" I said. I detached the sword from its strap and improvised a knot to attach the masks. They clacked against one another as I looped them over myself with my magic. A calm look overtook Zephyra. Had I done something out of turn to offend?

"That - you mean that? Really? But what about your sword?" she asked.

"I don't need it that badly. This is much more important," I said. In truth, I had only used my sword to execute those who could not be helped, those who the darkness had overtaken too badly for a chance of recovery. After all, I could always just snap their necks, or-

Zephyra walked up to me, standing very close. She stood there for a long time, looking at me from inches away. I returned her look quizzically. What was she playing at?

"You're not like your sisters," she said.

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"You know very well that the masks don't mean anything. The simplest calculation can tell you that, your sword is much more important," she said to me, keeping her eyes locked.

"I still don't see what you mean," I said again.

"Nothing, nevermind," she said. We left my sword in the dugout in a corner, behind the makeshift bed where I had slept. It was out of place among all the earthen furniture, the simple wooden and reed heirlooms. It was the only metal object we were leaving here.

The Buffalo had set their tents up about half a day's walk away, their campfires sending a plume into the sky for us to follow. When we arrived, Zephyra introduced me to the tribe, a leaderless collection of individuals who followed the group around more for enjoyment than any necessity. I later learned that not all Buffalo tribes worked like that, some had elaborate hierarchies and social orders that had to be followed. This anarchistic group was, shall we say, one of the more fun-loving tribes.

That evening, we built a great bonfire and the Buffalo danced around it, as graceful as a ballerina if a lot more bulky. There was much sharing of food and drink, including what Zephyra told me was called 'firewater'. It burned as I drank it, meaning it was quite literally named. They made it from partially rotted berries, foul stuff by any stretch, yet Zephyra loved it. As she drank more of it, as did I, I noticed her leaning on me as she lost her sense of balance. The liquid was having almost no effect on me, perhaps my strong constitution or some magical counter-effect kept me sane as everyone around me began to slur their speech and stumble over one another.

"Princess," Zephyra said, her eyes closed as she leaned into my coat.

"Yes?" I answered, looking down at her. She was like a foal, leaning on its mother as it drifted off to sleep.

"It's cold out here," she said.

I prepared to move her closer to the fire, to help warm her up.

"No," she said as I shifted in place. I settled back down. She rubbed herself closer to me, sharing my body heat. I felt uneasy inside, my stomach suddenly upsetting itself as she practically cuddled with me in front of the Buffalo. Despite all the eyes around us, she did not seem to care.

We lay like that as the evening wore on, her warm body pressing against mine as I stared into the slowly dying fire. Eventually I pulled her into one of the tents the Buffalo had laid out for us, a blue and white construction made out of sticks stuck into the ground and a cloth wrapped around them. I put Zephyra down on some reeds that must have been what the Buffalo slept on, and turned around to exit the tent, the Zebra behind me almost asleep.

As I reached the entrance, I heard a rustling behind me. I turned around to see her looking up at me.

"Wait," she said. It was dark, too dark to see, yet I could tell from her voice there were tears in her eyes. "Please don't go, I'm so lonely."

"Lonely? But you've made friends here, and with me. You have so many to be with," I said.

"You still don't understand," she said. She stood up, and slowly wobbled her way over to me.

"Understand what?" I asked as she approached.

She did not speak, instead putting her hoof to my mouth to quiet me. She leaned in close and pressed her lips against mine, gently and softly, before withdrawing and stepping back.

All at once, I realized what she meant. It is difficult to be vulnerable, so she had taken her chance to run away and be alone. She didn't want to get over her pain, believing it was -

"Stop that, stop thinking!" she said, raising her voice at me. "You're not like that!"

For once, I decided to act instead of think. I kissed her, than brought her back over to the bed and lay down. My magic would seal the tent off to prevent any unwanted interruptions.

Celestia had always told me to stay remote, to stay detached. Ponies, Zebras, Griffons, Buffalo, Mules, whatever, they would all die some day. They, like everything else, were mortal, temporary, and unlike us. Ours was a purpose that spanned millennia, longer if necessary, and to bear the pain on our hearts of losing those we loved would not last a lifetime, but all the lifetimes. She had told me that it was better to be unloved and unloving, to spare myself that pain.

I had listened to her, grudgingly, always trying to convince myself to forget and not to feel. I knew she was right. Luna had tried to console me, telling me it was not important, that I had to have the strength to rise above myself and do what was right. I don't think either of them fully understood, or if they did, they studiously hid it to protect themselves. All three of us wanted so desperately to be unfeeling.

No longer. I made love to Zephyra that night, and she back to me. She needed someone precisely for their impermanence, and she found that in me. I could have healed her wounds but I realized now why she did not want me to. Love gains meaning only through transience. Love is when we have a finite amount of time and we choose to spend it with someone special, knowing that, once lost, it can never be recovered. I would love Zephyra even if it meant bearing that wound for the rest of eternity when fate came to take her from me, because she was willing to make a sacrifice far more profound in order to love me. I could no longer imagine it being otherwise.

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[Luckyfanisaac]

streaming like a sun all on its own.