Disclaimer: Any recognizable characters from the Kiesha'ra series belongs to Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. All others are mine.
Prologue: Wandering
His leg muscles cramped as he collapsed at last against the trunk of a warped, ancient tree. His lungs heaved. His eyes wanted nothing but to close and cut off the world before them, surrender to oblivion, and never, ever wake again.
If only it were that easy.
Images haunted him in the darkness that should have brought him peace. It was a little funny, actually. When the period of his life that he now referred to as the "wandering" had begun, he had cried so much when peace of mind had been denied to him in sleep, in pure banishment of thought. In the time before the wandering he had never cried. Not once. Such a display of emotion would have brought such shame…
His legs collapsed beneath him. He fell onto the ground on his back, not flinching as sharp rocks and sticks dug into his flesh through what remained of his shirt. Not even the scars that marred his shoulder blades, with their pain so far beyond anything physical, could reach through this time.
He was exhausted, body and mind. His soul, he felt, had fled the moment he had lost the skies.
He looked up at them now, pondering random things. He knew somewhere in his thoughts that he was starving, probably dying. That might have worried him before, but not anymore. He didn't care if this was the end; he knew perfectly well that no one else would, either.
He felt no self-pity. He could not conjure up anger, or resentment, or despair. There was no regret. He was just too damn tired.
He had heard somewhere that when the end was near, your life would play out in front of your eyes. Quickly, flashing scenes, your entire life, from start to…end.
There was none of that, and this made him frown slightly. Was he so far gone that not even dying would work properly?
The sounds of the forest around him were oddly calming, an almost pleasant change of atmosphere than at the beginning of this aimless journey to nowhere. Had he really come so far without his wings? It was so hard to comprehend…
If his life wasn't going to flash in front of his eyes on its own, he'd just have to do his best on his own.
Where did life really start? He wondered. In the womb, he supposed, or at conception, perhaps, but he couldn't remember that. He supposed lack of remembrance had little to do with the importance of an event, but there was nothing he could do about it. Besides, he really didn't want to think of his parents.
He closed his eyes briefly, and the images rushed back.
--Sad, golden eyes, not looking at him, not wanting to see him, turning away as he begged her to understand—
--Wide garnet eyes expressing shock as he launched his attack, nothing but rage pounding his heart, the rush of blood—
His eyes snapped back open, and he felt his heart had missed a beat. He sagged against the forest floor, feeling even more drained.
What had he been doing? Life. Flashing. Of course.
He supposed life began—in the remembering sort of way—when he was about three years old. That was the first time he had seen her, a mere infant of one year old, with a full head of golden hair and wide, curious golden eyes. This child, the one he was to protect for the rest of his life.
He wondered, briefly, if she had ever even really loved him. He often wondered if he ever even really loved her. He supposed he did, in his own way. Not the way Salem had loved—still loved, he corrected, because everyone was alright after all--Rosalind, that was for sure. At first he had merely assumed this was because the cobra was, well, a snake. He, Prentice, was a well-raised Avian gentlemen, and avian love was so different from serpiente love. Now he had to wonder…
His eyelids threatened to shut again, and he was too tired to resist. His temples were throbbing. His limbs felt so heavy, so weighted.
He just wanted to sleep. He didn't care if he never woke back up.