Chapter Text
This night, like most nights, he awakens with the taste of ash burning in his mouth, the smell of dust and flame choking his lungs. He gasps as he sits up, a fine sheen of perspiration broken out across his brow despite the chill. But the night air is sweet, clouds lazily tumbling across the moon.
It takes a long moment for him to regain his sense of self, to remember where he was. To remember he was alone.
His fingers curl in the grass beneath him, his balled up cape his only buffer against the ground as he slept. Slowly, a breath out, his tired eyes sweeping the trees and their distant glow of the statue just ahead. The feminine figure, outstretched hands and peaceful smile was a small comfort the first night he slept here. Now, it was the third night and it’s smile could do little to alleviate the very real ache of his shoulders after nights of rough sleeping.
Silently, the young man roused himself and walked to the edge of the small lake, looking down into it’s glassy surface, looking but not seeing. Idle fingers smoothed across his midriff then tugged at his shirt, up and off. Pants too, boots, until he was wading into the clear water nude and free from confines. Briefly, he lifted his gaze to the statues figure above before he dove into the water, the faint sounds of a slumbering countryside disappearing.
Beneath, the only sound was his own heart beat, sounding a little off beat, a little too quiet. He stayed there until the burning strain of his lungs, the ache and pull of it, started to compete with the chill of the water. And even then, he resisted. It ached, his chest contracting, his shoulders burning, fingers tingling. His heartbeat grew louder, louder, everything was pounding, the last vestiges in his air gulping, bouncing in his throat, but here he was, he was HERE, he was, he was-
For a moment, even though he’d broken the surface of the water, he couldn’t breathe. Water sucked in with his gasping heaving, choked in his desperate throat. He was here, he was alive, still, still, still. A cough that ached the small form of his shoulders, and he could breathe again.
Body still burning, he let himself paddle to shallower water and kneeled there, head bowed and eyes closed as if in prayer. But there was no one for him to pray to and no prayers left he hadn’t already whispered in his dreams, so he stood and shook droplets of water, shot pearly and glowing by the moonlight, from his hair. Breathing slow, he gazed past the statue, to the city in the distant. Moonlight jealously chased the rivulets of water dripping down the pale expanse of his chest, the shallow dip of his hip, the honeyed tangle of hair between his thighs, then the soft swell of his thighs themselves before returning back to whence they came.
He was just putting off the inevitable, he knew this. Rations had run out a week prior, and he was getting tired of roasted apple and chewing on the fresh sprigs of mint that were ever present along the rolling hills. His body ached in a way that he knew would make it a bit more difficult to fend off any wandering monsters who happened upon him. A bit was all it took sometimes, a fine thread between victory and becoming mushroom fodder.
He sniffed, the night air claiming her cold hands across his skin, caressing the secret curves and angles of him. He rang his hair out and turned away, the warm lights of the barely distant city burning at his back.