Permafrost





He didn't feel when the ice began to form.

It was a slow, quiet beginning of detachment when he bade himself to go beyond that place, that little place with nothing on it and everything in it. Renne had begun to Analyse again and he kept coming to the same conclusion.

The ice was a clever thing that way.

When Renne woke on the sand, he first crafted a sphere to send up north. He knew it'd get there, to the place way beyond the map's edge. The ice's cold breath inside did not yet numb away the feeling that he was slowly tearing apart. Renne knew his vows and took his loyalty incredibly seriously. Undeserved or not, loyalty was loyalty.

As he turned to face the west, he wondered if Rhy'Din or his own loyalty, which one might down him first.

Permafrost
Fire and Ice







He had reached beyond the city limits by now. Beyond things that could reach him, beyond things and memories and people that could sting with the very thought of them. The ice had slowly been forming around his heart, proverbial as that heart was, for a while.

The ice cracked once but felt like twice as a courier caught him up.

He received the message from the courier and seemed frozen upon his pony's back, frozen and paling a shade in the dimming sun. The message caught him off-guard and after a brief instruction of where to go from the courier, Renne paid a tip and went.
When the oddity found this place, the sun's final rays died in the night and he didn't let himself hear the echoes of a memory thunder a gunshot in his mind.

Numbly, as if he couldn't believe it, Renne explored. Gingerly, as if he was afraid to touch anything too harshly, as if all of this might shatter at any given breath, he explored. It was completely a thing unto itself, something he'd not let himself fathom for a while now.

He could not think of a proper response.

At least, not tonight.

Upon emerging out of this structure, night fell and the warning in his own mind that he'd put aside for this came back on him.


He heard them again. He knew them by now and while rationality scolded him -- nine years, it has been nine years! -- the sounds were as real as ever they were. Time folded in on itself. Logically, he knew where and when he was.
This was not Silver's hand thrusting into his chest.
This was not the thunder and fear and alone.

Renne heard and felt and smelled the past and present wash over his slowly freezing heart. He was, partly, a little amazed that he hadn't been frozen so well against the thunder. He breathed quietly, frozen in a curled position on the ground.

Better to let the night have his shadows.

Better to let the sun warm this place and perhaps, keep this one part of himself from becoming a distant shield of ice.