Desreal: rage, rage against the dying of the light; --

There were times when the burning became too much.

It was an insidious thing, a treacherous thing, growing inside her like a parasite, ready to burst. At those times, she blamed them for what they had done to her; for the ruination of her perfect, white paradise, the ivory tower where she hid. But above them, she blamed him.

There were nights she wondered where he was. If he was safe. If he was alive.

There were nights she hoped he was happy, wherever or whatever that might be.

But tonight she thought of no such thing. Instead she ran, silent like her namesake, carding her way through the rocks and the shadows with an ease born of practice, as if she knew the way the earth moved and where her feet fell, as if she could almost see into the grass and the moss and the soft, soft dirt that flew under her hoof.

“Fire is overrated,” the voice besides her smiled, if such a thing was possible in pure sound. She smiled, as she always did, touching her lips to his in a salute that was also a kiss. It had always been like this between them, though no one else would know it. Even she didn’t know. “Though it does have its uses.”

The thing slung around her neck pulsed merrily at this, encased in its silver filigree. Fire, searing hot and silver-white, sprung through her body like a sheet of light; she laughed silently at it, touching her lips to her shoulder, watching it dance down her limbs.

I miss the earth, though, she said, a hint of sadness in her voice. Water, as it rarely did, slid down her shoulders, sparking out of nowhere, mingled with blood; it painted red rivulets down her gray-white fur as it pooled at her feet and sank into the ground. Unbidden, it changed, muddied by her feet and where it touched, sloshing up her body and sullying the otherwise pristine darkness of her pelt.

“And I, you,” he smiled sadly. His eyes said otherwise; they glowed through the red of his mane. The fire liked this, looping around them idly, almost purring in delight as their sides met. “We’re dead, you know?” he sighed, but she didn’t; she was more interested in watching him. “Everything of us, everything we meant. Dead.”

Not all, she said, and her voice was gentle; not all.

The thing around her neck was proof enough of that, resting solidly against muscle and fur and hair, unseen but nonetheless protected. It would live on, throughout the times, as it should – for as long as there was this land, the silent watcher would live, and dream.

Even this was only a dream, she knew, and it knew too, a dream of red fire and the light before the darkness.

But for now it was content to twine around them both, and think of things gone and things that couldn’t be.

*
grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.