Dawn spread her fingers of light over the broken horizon of the waists, in this place without the softly tintinnabulous birdsong of his nearby youth, softly illuminating the harsh and jagged scraps of the wrecked buildings and the torn earth. The agonized motionless writhing of the baked dirt under the grey-yellow brilliance of the nearest star roused the slumbering male, his eyes cringing back from the harshness of the radiance and retreating for a preciously brief moment behind the shelter of his ocular shields. Tears leapt forth from his orbs of sight, bejewelling his sharp-lined cheeks with streaks of moist rust that caught the light. Day broke, like an heirloom china plate.

It had been an agonizing year since he had lost his idle, his god, his reason for existence. The only thing that had kept him whole through sixteen miserable sets of seasons, the heavenly light in the drab darkness of the days and the coldly unfeeling harshness of the midnights. All he thought of was the missing hero, the cobalt blue as it dwindled away from him. Each day he was plagued by his own echoed screams and wistful weeping, and during the darkest hours of the night the only thing he could dream of was a pair of mesmerizingly deep green eyes, the color of a flawless emerald or a deep and perfect leaf upon a tree in heaven. The twin-tailed boyfox wept bitterly as the star of the day rose, outlining him starkly against the red and rocky ground.
He was still searching for Sonic, desperate to find his friend, his mentor, and his lover all in one. He had tried praying and he had tried asking the people he met - "Have you seen the greatest man alive?" with a hunger in his eyes, like the emotion in the visionary orbs of a man starving to death who has spotted a burger resturaunt. Nothing had helped, so he wandered still - recently, he had taken up life sacrifice, hoping that it might help more than the other less tangible forms of worship had. Admittedly he had only been able to aquire small rodents, but he hoped that it might do some good.

He rose with infinite slowness, like a towering redwood growing from a seed to its full height, and brushed a lone tear from his cheek, watching it sparkle for a milisecond before falling to the ground. Today's grueling pace through this desolate fragment of wasted matter would begin now, as he lifted one delicate foot, placing it down carefully, and repeated the process. One shapely leg and then another, stirring the sienna dust in rising clouds.

And then he tripped, his toes catching and sending him somersaulting backward. Tails yelped as though pricked by the thorn of an otherwise innocent red rose, and looked down. He was horrified by what he saw there and he stood, wavering as he felt the bile rise in his throat:

Sonic was dead. Freshly, it looked like, not more than a day - maybe less then half a day. Flies buzzed in a gruesome cloud 'round his visage, ants left firey red trails 'pon his hero's flesh. Tears of purest crystal sprung forth to the fox-boy's shimmering pools of sapphire, and his stomach clenched, threatening to leave its contents on the wrong side of his esophagus.

"No," He croaked, raking at his cheeks with nails long grown unkempt and ragged. "Nooo! Sonic, why did you have to leave me again?" He sobbed raggedly, flinging himself upon the rotting hedgehog's chest and still rending at his own flesh in grief. Azure tears trekked down his perfect white cheeks, leaping to their doom from the gentle curve of his chin. He laid there weaping onto the ex-hero's prone form for some time, and when he rose, the light had left his eyes, leaving the cold and empty hollownesses of the deepest ebon depths of space. He smiled then, icy and eerie, even as his hand went for the pouch on his belt.

"No. You won't get away from me again, Sonic."

The sun had climbed laboriously to perch in the middle of the sky's dome, harshly casting its rays down upon the baking earth. Sonic's corpse was laying in a circle of white powder that seemed so bright against the red-dark clay that it glared into the vision of anyone who looked at it like a gap in the world. A pair of amethysts gleamed sullenly on his eyelids, and one arm had been laid across his chest, three rings of gold and silver upon the fingers. The other arm had been spread out, almost touching the circle of white and with its fingers spread.

Tails straightened from his crouch like the ascent of man, still smiling his glacial smile. He stepped into the circle, legs planted firmly into the dirt, arms spread to the heavens. The sun beat down cruelly on his small frame.

"H'minaa-ah! Glareal kinetosieississs! Akchmihgckck! a'Liel, muffi, guffi, HUP!" He intoned, bellowing the words in a deep and unnatural base. When he had finished this incantation, he stepped neatly backwards, careful not to scuff the circle. For several minutes, nothing seemed to happen. And then, slowly as a finely-tuned concert piano, Sonic sat up, glaring around at his surroundings with bloodshot eyes.

"Ghnjghnghy braaaaains," He groaned, straightening slowly. Tails gave a shrill and broken cry of delight, rushing forward to embrace him.

"Oh, my darling! I thought you'd left me!" He wept openly into the decaying cobalt shoulder as his tiny body was racked with sobs. "C'mon, let's go to Vegas."

"Ghngeeehj braaaioksweetienssssss."

And they strode (and shambled) off into the glowing tones of the magnificently bright sunset.

Six months later...

Tails emerged from the kitchen, smiling like a 150-watt bulb with no lampshade.

"Darling," He called gently, pressing one palm to his bulging white stomach. "I'm going to have a baby."

"Ghnohshitbraiiiins."

fin