Archive of Our Own

Silent Salt Salt of Solidarity loved Shadow Milk Fount of Knowledge.

He was like the stars in his hair, beautiful, always twinkling out of reach. He was the light that never went out.

Until it did, like a candle knowing its death before it burnt out, and Silent Salt Salt of Solidarity was left to pick up the pieces of his fellow comrade.

---

        It had been a year since Shadow Milk Cookie Fount of Knowledge had fallen, but to Silent Salt Salt of Solidarity, it felt like an eon.

He visited the garden every day. He knew that the milkcrowns were flowers that sprouted where tears fell, but were all of them created by Fount? 

He missed him, missed the way Fount would talk to him, missed him telling him about his day, missed the things that he would never do with him again. He wished that he had more time to tell him that he loved him, to be more than “just friends.”  

But that would never happen. He won’t love you, a voice hissed in the back of his head. Even if he would, he wouldn’t have time for you. He would likely choose his duty over you, every time.

And with that, a new milkcrown would sprout next to all the others.

He silently cursed the Fount for never asking for help. Always saying he was fine, that he needed to uphold his duty to the cookies. He always wanted to please, trying to give everyone the most truthful yet encouraging answer. Yet sometimes, that answer didn’t exist.

Why couldn’t you have stayed? He tried asking, waiting for an answer that never came. He knew it wasn’t Fount’s fault, it was the cookies.

But he knew that his dear friend could never stay still. He truly was like a star, always disappearing, yet always coming back.

This time, he would never be able to go back, like a day that lasts forever.

The knight knew that his friend was suffering. Yet he never lifted a finger. And that, he considered a sin. He knew he was to be no less than the other “beasts”. 

All of them were slowly becoming corrupted, no matter what the witches tried to say. And so was the knight, in his shining armor. 

What was a beast? Fount would’ve asked. Is it an ugly thing, is it a monster? And he would have no answer, for the answer would lie in an opinion itself.

Salt knew he had failed his people, failed himself, failed his friends. He never knew how suffocated his Fount felt until he was in the spotlight himself.

Perhaps he knew the measures he would take to avenge him in that moment right then, but for now there was only grief and mourning in the air.