Chapter 29
What is needed and what is wanted in life are generally two different things.
Something needed is a necessity for survival, something wanted is merely something that helps make surviving more comfortable.
When stripped down to the core, things needed for survival are surprisingly slim. The requirements are shockingly small.
In turn, it wouldn't be much of a life, if all we had were the absolute bare essentials, with absolutely nothing and no one else that is considered unnecessary added to the mix.
But the two opposites must meet in the middle somewhere, and its the finest of lines that separate them. More often than not the line is so blurred its impossible to find, as needs and wants overlap and run through each other endlessly.
Humans can remain in the dark and live relatively healthy for a long time. Years, even. True, you may eventually go blind, but when you are in pitch darkness, your eyes are not counted as a need, therefore your body eliminates them to focus on more important areas.
Thus was Avalina attempting to convince herself that sunlight was a want and not necessarily a need at the moment.
'I don't actually *need* the sun,' she had told herself weakly.
'I just really, really want it. I'll survive.'
She hadn't realized just how much her life revolved around the sun until it had been taken from her.
Being a brush farmer at home, she would rise with the sun to work endlessly on her family's land, helping keep them all afloat, rejoicing in its light and warmth.
The sun was her friend and her ally in the daytime, the moon was its watchful eye at night.
Down here, in the depths of the castle, neither could be seen at all, raising her despair tenfold.
In fact, she could see hardly anything.
Her cell walls, and the stone walls, floor and ceiling stretching beyond that were the only things she had seen for a long time, save for the torch that was left constantly burning by the door, providing her with barely enough light to see by.
The servants brought her a little food and water everyday, barely any at all, but it was something.
The first several days. . .at least, she assumed it had been that long, but time had about as much meaning here as an upside down letter, so there was no real way of knowing. . .had been horrible because her stomach had cramped constantly, wanting more food than it was being given, and she had been in constant pain.
Now all it had was a dull, constant ache at her core, pulsing through her body with every beat of her heart.
The scratchy texture of her throat and the dry feeling in her mouth had not left in some time.
It was rather damp and cool down here, being so far underground, and Avalina was constantly cold. There was no warmth to be found.
The servants had brought her some straw to lay on at one point, but it had collected more moisture than any other area in her cell after the first night, rendering it useless.
She shook constantly as the lack of food and water took its toll, weakening her severely, coupled with the chill down here.
A little while back Avalina had pressed her ear to the wall and had been nearly certain she could hear the water of the moat lapping at the walls outside.
And it had terrified her.
If something was to ever give down here, she would drown before anyone could come to her rescue.
Not that anyone would.
She had seen no one. Her captor seemed to have lost interest in her, and for the first few days she had been relieved when he did not come for her, and the servants, although she knew they came and went, could never be seen no matter how hard she strained her eyes.
But now she was almost. . .almost. . .wishing he would come and simply finish it.
Compared to this type of pitiful existence, she had asked herself innumerable times, could death really be that terrible?
Things she would never have even dreamed of thinking about previous to this now crossed her mind nearly constantly, nearly always relating to death or dying in some way.
Would it hurt? Was there really such a thing as the afterlife? Did souls go to different places? Did the Fates decide where, or did it depend on how mortals lived their lives previously?
She had no answers to any of that, but the thought of death didn't scare her. Not really. She knew she had family and friends waiting for her on the other side (If there was one), but it was the act of dying itself that frightened her.
She had pondered a great deal on what it might be like to simply slip into a deep, deep sleep and never wake up again.
Avalina had never been a pessimist or one prone to excessive negative thinking, but as the time dragged on, she slowly began to give up that she would ever get out of the place alive.
As the lack of nutrition took its toll she began seeing things that weren't really there, which, at first, had scared her almost as badly as the thought of the Horned King.
She had trouble telling what was real and what wasn't, and to her surprise after a while, she found she didn't really care anymore.
She wondered if she might be slowly going mad down here in the dark, as each breath became a battle her lungs were growing increasingly more reluctant to wage.
She thought of her family a lot.
No doubt they thought she had died in the storm, as the rain had washed away any tracks Mitternacht might have made, and it had been a long time.
It felt like an eternity. And then another. Infinity at its finest. It had no end at all.
But it would have to end sometime.
For her, at least.
She hoped her family would be alright. Maybe Mitternacht had managed to break out of the stable somehow and go home.
But he would never leave her, she knew.
Not unless he had no choice.
The last time the servants had brought her something to eat, the smell of it and the mere idea of eating no longer appealed to her.
Water did for a little longer, but even that was starting to taste flat and bland in her mouth, and there eventually came a time when, exhausted, she had nudged it away from her as well when the servant had pushed it through the bars.
She had never felt this exhausted in her whole life.
Which was saying something, considering she normally worked all day long, either in the fields or in the house, well into the night, wherever she was needed most.
Thinking she might try to sleep, she closed her eyes (Which she realized felt like lead weights) and felt another wave of exhaustion sweep over her.
Her last thought before she lost consciousness was a mingled jumble of her friends' and family's faces, both living and dead, Mitternacht, and right at the very edge of it all, at the very corner of her mind. . .
Was the red-eyed silhouette of the Horned King.
The news of the broken window had been handled rather well, considering all the bad circumstances, the Invisible thought privately as it headed down the stairs to the dungeon.
The Horned King had choked Creeper for longer than usual, actually nearly causing the goblin to pass out before he dropped him.
Creeper had called the Invisible everything under the sun because of it, to the point where it had gotten tired of it and slammed a teapot over his head.
It had forgotten the thing had tea in it.
It had also forgotten it was the last one they had, after Creeper had disposed of the other one in the trolley fiasco, without them having to conjure up another, which simply didn't happen overnight.
All the other Invisibles had berated the other harshly for its actions, while its partner in crime had rubbed its little hands together and asked what they were going to smash next, and that it was a crying shame they hadn't seen the goblin-and-pony show with the smashing finale.
'I have a future as a therapist yet,' the Invisible thought somewhat cheerfully, the first halfway cheerful thought it could remember having for a while.
The Invisibles dreaded their daily trips to the dungeon. They never knew what they would find, and it had gotten to the point they were drawing straws now to see which one got it for the day.
Then they would feel ashamed of themselves for being cowards when Avalina needed them, and one of them would go.
It was the same with who was assigned for the day to follow the Horned King around to be at his beck and call.
Normally the two prankster Invisibles would have leapt at the job, all too eager for some fun, but the other two had banned them from it for now, since they still didn't trust them not to throw the Horned King out the window and into the moat when nobody was around.
'I still don't care if its not allowed,' the Invisible thought grimly.
'He deserves to be punished for every evil thing he's ever done. We don't really know Avalina that well, but she's far too young and kindhearted to be subjected to this kind of treatment.'
Granted, the Horned King had not done anything else to her since throwing her in the dungeon, but his orders made no sense.
What he was doing was the last thing outside of interrogating he should have done. He didn't have that much time left, and it was imperative he took advantage of every single moment.
Personally, all the Invisibles had known he was fighting with himself, with his pride or his soul as the prize. Whichever he favored more.
And currently he was losing at both.
The Invisible might actually have felt sorry for him if he wasn't such a heartless being.
The Invisible opened the door to the dungeon level, balancing its load carefully.
The girl had refused food yesterday, something that had them all extremely worried, and then this morning she had refused both food and water.
If it possible for the two mischievous Invisibles to feel fear, they had definitely felt it then.
Stifling a sigh, the Invisible approached Avalina's cell.
A sharp gasp, the shattering of china as the Invisible dropped the tray and the rush of wind as it raced back up the stairs as fast as it could go were the only noises in the silence.
