Lily trudged along behind Beryl with heavy limbs, a heavier heart, and absolutely no desire to ask where he was leading her. She didn't know why he had come back to her, she didn't know whether she deserved it, and she didn't know what was going to happen next. All she knew was that he had something in mind, and she didn't, so following him couldn't hurt. Or if it did hurt, she deserved it anyway.
Such was her attitude when Beryl finally led her to a hole in the wall, a little hollow shielded from the flowing water; dry, but otherwise unremarkable. It was barely big enough for both of them, with just enough extra space that they would not be rubbing against each other every time one of them moved.
It smelled of him, and she suspected he had been there before. Not that she particularly cared; it was dry, but her muddy body was quickly changing that. It was just somewhere to be that wasn't out there.
Her thoughts wandered, bleak and worthless. She would have tried to go to sleep, just to get away from everything, but it wouldn't work, which was depressing in its own right.
Beryl busied himself wiping his paws off one one of the stalagmites nearest his little hole in the wall, out in the rain. The water running over him glinted in the dull light of the few crystals around. His scales all but glowed under the water and reflected light, making him look even more purely black than he actually was, simply by contrast, the suggestion that only the water and the colored light lent any color to his body…
He finished cleaning himself off and looked to her. To her muddy, miserable self slumped in his formerly clean cave.
There was no comment on her state, or attempt to urge her to clean herself. There was also no sigh of disgust, or frustration, or any of the other negative feelings she suspected he harbored for her now. Instead, he joined her in the cave, his side to the opposite wall to avoid touching her, and sat down.
He stared at her; she refused to meet his gaze. He had come back for her at the lowest point in her farce of a journey, for reasons that weren't clear to her at all. In a perfect world, that he had come back at all should have been a ray of hope lighting her otherwise miserable existence, but that wasn't at all how she actually felt. He was here, he wasn't giving up on her… but that wasn't exactly relevant to why she felt so horrible.
Suffice to say, or not say as the case was, she didn't much feel like talking. He seemed to understand that; it was just another thing he was tolerating for his own reasons.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she was aware that her mood was coloring her every impression of him, but that didn't mean she was wrong to be pessimistic.
"I know I have not been asking recently," Beryl murmured, "but do you want to sleep right now?"
The offer wasn't unexpected, and she knew what her answer was. She nodded miserably. Maybe there were things that needed to be said, maybe she was postponing more disappointment and heartbreak, but she just couldn't handle anything more right now. Sleep would be a relief.
He leaned over, a paw out, and gently scraped some mud off the side of her neck. She tilted her head to make it easier for him, and his paw found the pressure point, which twinged sorely as he pressed it.
O-O-O-O-O
Lily woke feeling no less miserable, but at least more energetic about it, as contradictory as that would have seemed were she to try and explain it. Beryl was still there in the cave with her, she was still covered in mud, dry and flaking now…
She was still out in the middle of nowhere, unable to fend for herself, with no hope of ever getting back to her pack, to her rightful place. To the only people and place she had ever known. No, she was no less miserable than she had been before sleeping.
Beryl had been staring out at the rainy cavern, his eyes open but glazed over in the way of someone who had been looking at something for far too long without moving, but he noticed her shifting and blinked heavily, turning to look at her.
"I still don't know what to do now," she said quietly, echoing her half-coherent response to him showing up out of nowhere after her breakdown.
"That makes two of us," he replied. "I followed you all this way because you needed help."
She had suspected as much; he certainly hadn't followed her because he wanted an adventure.
"I didn't like how they were talking about you back in the valley," he continued after he realized she didn't have anything else to say. "Some of it was justified, but the understandable reactions were mixed with all of this fear and talk of the last alpha and Cara's ranting and the worry for Holly…" He exhaled loudly. "It wasn't right, but it wasn't something anyone did on purpose. Just… an understandable overreaction. Exiling you when you obviously needed help, not just punishment."
She didn't know if it was all as aimless and blameless as he made it sound, but in the end, it didn't matter. He was talking about his motivations, not about her former pack.
"Honey took me aside and told me about you asking to be put to sleep," he continued in a low voice. "She said she'd told Cara and Aven, but it didn't seem to her that they were doing anything with the knowledge, and that I was your friend…"
He seemed to pause there, as if deciding whether he should finish what he had said.
"And because I would not be so afraid of you, having never seen Claw at his worst," he concluded bitterly. "Because I would not hold it against you. It's why she didn't go to Crystal. Hearing it said like that, more than anything, made me sure something needed to be done."
Lily thought that maybe she deserved to be compared to Claw, and that Honey was very insightful for thinking about that in choosing who she told something said in confidence, but she said nothing about any of it.
"I tried to get them to not exile you, like I said when we spoke after their visit, but it didn't happen the way I wanted," he continued, filling the near-silence with his sonorous voice. "So I decided I would go with you for a while, to help you sleep and make sure the exile wasn't a cruel death sentence given out of fear. I had to promise Ember I was coming back, and that I would not follow you if you turned out to be completely insane with no hope of recovering, but he thought that you not sleeping made it more of an illness than anything, so he was sympathetic."
"Especially," he added in a quieter tone, "since he needed the same sort of intervention at one point in his own life. I probably never told you this, or maybe I did but I'm forgetting, but he has had… issues. Times when he would have died, or gotten himself killed, if someone hadn't been there to help him hold together. They are gone and over with now, but back then…"
She didn't remember hearing anything of the sort, but maybe he had told her. Maybe Pearl had. It would have gone into her assessment of Ember as a threat and not been thought about except within that context. She had a bad habit of doing that with information she didn't consider important, hearing, thinking about it, and then mostly forgetting. More often, as of late, but even back when she had no sleeping problems to hamstring her thought processes.
"So I said I thought you needed someone to help you recover, to help you move on, and he approved of me trying," Beryl continued. "After making sure I had the right motivations, that is. I might have had to tell him about… us… so he understood why I thought I was the best one to do it."
Lily couldn't muster more than a faint annoyance at having their secret divulged to Beryl's Sire; maybe a bit of embarrassment, if it wasn't over and done with anyway.
"But after that long and at times thoroughly uncomfortable talk, he said he supported my decision to come out and help you, so long as I knew when to leave, and didn't spend too long down here." Beryl shrugged his wing shoulders. "After what happened, my family is looking at going back to the surface soon. There are some complications to work out…"
Storm and Root came to mind, as well as Silva, Lightning, Thunder, and Crystal. Lily wondered how the dark wings were going to resolve those issues… And how long it would take, if that was the time limit Beryl was working with.
"They're not too worried about leaving me behind, though," Beryl continued. "If they do, Spark or someone will stick around until I come back, and we all know where home is from here… even if it's a long way away. So I am not going to just randomly disappear one day because I have been out here too long." It seemed he had either noticed or guessed at her discomfort with the idea of him having some hidden deadline.
She made a small noise of relief, to indicate she had indeed been worried about that, without actually speaking and opening herself to more than this one-sided conversation. Listening to Beryl talk was soothing, and he hadn't finished his recounting of events yet… Hearing about his side of things made her feel like everything might be okay in the end. He had plans and intentions and wasn't mired in personal regrets.
"So I said my goodbyes, temporarily at least, and came in to give you the verdict before Cara or Aven could think to send someone else to tell you," he said. "The idea was to help you sleep, put some distance between us and the pack, and just… help you. What form that took would be up to you, and whether sleeping brought you back to a stable state of mind, and how everything played out. It was more of a goal than a plan."
Lily whined sadly, recalling how she had reacted to that. Maybe if he had put it this way back then, she would have listened… but probably not. His plan, at its core, centered around her giving up. She hadn't been capable of that back then.
"Yeah, you weren't happy with it," he rumbled. "After you stalked off on your own… I didn't want to get into more arguments and make you any angrier, so I just followed along and put you to sleep as regularly as I could manage. It was a challenge, keeping ahead of you without losing you, staying behind whenever I couldn't be sure where you would go next, sneaking around…"
She made an inquiring sound, a little churr that would have been accompanied by a tilt of the head if she didn't dislike the feeling of dried mud flaking off whenever she moved.
"You're observant, even when you're mad, and there weren't many places to hide," he elaborated. "When you were in tunnels, I was either far ahead or far behind. There was a lot of waiting and listening to be sure I wouldn't catch up to you or be caught up to. Then there was the actual sneaking up on you… It's a good thing I've spent so much time play-hunting light wing fledglings at home, and here. I don't know how else I would have followed while at least trying to leave you alone, like you wanted."
Like she wanted. Except she hadn't wanted to be left alone, she had wanted him with her in body and mind, working toward her goals… Helping reassure her that her plans were valid, that she would figure it out somehow. She didn't know whether him humoring her plans to retake the valley would have been helpful or damning, in the end; it hadn't taken her long to break down without his assistance, but she might have kept the delusion alive a lot longer. Until something or someone popped her bubble and let her come crashing down to reality.
She shuddered, growling at the unpleasant feeling of mud cracking and moving all over her body. "Not now," she said, her voice raspy.
"Now?" He was still staring at her, and their eyes met as she looked up. "What now, Lily?" he asked.
"I…" She looked at her mud-caked paws as she thought about that deceptively simple question. "I don't know. Just… not this." Not sitting here, feeling miserable, worrying about whether her only remaining friend was going to decide she was a lost cause and disappear.
"Not this," he agreed. "I was thinking we would go exploring. Just wander around, see where these tunnels take us. Find somewhere nicer than this."
"That's not doing anything," she moaned, her voice cracking with muddled frustration and despair, neither of which was directed at him. She wanted… she still wanted to go back to the pack, if she was honest with herself. Even now that she knew it wouldn't turn out well no matter what she did. Barring that, she didn't know what she wanted to do. Where to go.
"It's keeping you occupied until you can think of something else," he said gently. "Putting some distance between you and the past. Travelling together was enjoyable before, wasn't it?"
Memories flew through her mind, walking with him, sleeping with him, mating with him.
"This can be… tolerable." He winced. "Even though it won't be exactly like before..."
"I know," she sighed, guessing that their thoughts had gone to the same place. "I messed up." They weren't together, not now. There hadn't been a specific point in time she could point to and identify as the moment they weren't lovers, or secret mates, or whatever she would have called it. It just… stopped being a thing sometime during her spiral into madness, and recovering some semblance of sanity hadn't automatically fixed it.
Especially as he probably wasn't sure whether she was entirely sane now. She wasn't sure. That didn't mean she liked losing her relationship with him, too.
"For now, let's just… take a step back." He used the claws on one paw to scratch a patch of dirt off the top of his other paw. "We are going exploring. As equals, as friends…"
"As caretaker and cripple," she said bitterly.
"That too," he sighed. "If you must put it like that."
At least he hadn't tried to reassure her with empty words that such wasn't the case. "Okay," she huffed, pushing her anger away. It was easy; compared to the yawning void of despair and purposelessness that came to mind every time she thought about the future, being annoyed that she wasn't self-sufficient was nothing.
"Okay what?" he asked.
"Okay, everything." The alternative was sitting around here, starving to death because while there was plenty of water, she had yet to see anything edible. "We'll go exploring." And she would try her best to not think about the horrible waste her life had become, or the way everyone she loved was either afraid of her or here, waiting to see if she could be salvaged-
"Then you should probably go clean yourself off," he advised. "I'll go scout out a likely tunnel for us to explore."
She recognized that he was trying to make her feel better by distracting her… and knowing what he was doing didn't make it any less effective. Having something to look forward to, even if it was just the promise of the immediate future being more like their time in the forest instead of the last few days, made her feel slightly better.
She stood, ignoring the annoying ache in her back and more annoying itch all over her body, and ventured out into the endless rain. She didn't know where she was going long-term, but for the moment she had a goal. A small, achievable goal that didn't immediately remind her of anything.
It was a small improvement, but an improvement nonetheless.
O-O-O-O-O
After laboriously cleaning herself, Lily drank as much as she could manage and returned to Beryl's little cave to wait for the dark wing himself to return. He had disappeared among the stalagmite-mushroom-trees, and she was fairly certain he had walked just out of sight before flying away to more efficiently check for alternative paths. Going out to find him would be a foolish mistake.
She didn't like being alone, not even with the promise of his return. Sitting around with nothing to do but think gave her time, too much of it. Thankfully, he wasn't gone long; she didn't have time to properly sink into another funk of depressing thoughts.
"I found three ways we could go," he began as he led her out along the wall of the cavern, winding around the more obtrusive stalagmites and stepping over piles of fallen mushroom while avoiding the deeper mud pits. "They all look the same, so do you like high, low, or narrow and tall?"
"Narrow and tall," she chose at random. Low ceilings made her antsy, though there was no real reason for it, as she couldn't fly anyway. Low ceilings were probably safer for her, strictly speaking, as they deprived her enemies of an advantage she couldn't have. Though that didn't apply with Beryl around.
"Sounds good, and it's the closest one," Beryl remarked. His tail swayed energetically as he leaned to the side to avoid a veritable stream of water pouring off a conveniently-shaped mushroom. "Try not to drink that, who knows what these mushrooms produce only to have it washed off."
"Mushrooms can have a wide variety of effects," Lily said in a low voice. She remembered Pyre lecturing her on mushrooms, early on in his demonstrations of edible plants. "Some are good food, others are poisonous. Some are lethal, some drive light wings mad, temporarily or permanently, and others still do nothing at all. Never eat, drink, lick, flame, or breathe near a mushroom you don't already know."
"Smart," Beryl remarked.
Lily hadn't really meant for him to hear her. "Pyre taught me," she said sadly. Pyre… He would be so deeply disappointed in her, if he could see her now. For once, it wasn't old guilt that made his memory so painful, it was new guilt.
She was stupid to think following Beryl around would make her feel better. She was still doing the exact same thing, just with him leading her instead of shadowing her from afar. Still going nowhere, walking toward nothing of any value, away from the only thing that she had ever even tried to change for the better.
Beryl's tail met her face as he stopped and she didn't, walking right into the pointed tip and getting a face of tailfin in the proces. She backed away on instinct, snorting to avoid a startled sneeze.
Beryl looked back at her with narrowed eyes. "I'm making this up as I go, mostly," he said, "but I'm pretty sure I don't want you moping while we walk. That's dangerous." He gestured with his mud-coated front paw at something in front of them, then stomped down–
Lily eyed the innocent-looking stretch of mud that Beryl had just sunk his paw in without any resistance at all.
"If I wasn't in front, you would have walked right into this," he said, carefully testing the ground to either side of the place that had almost been an unexpected mud bath… or, perhaps, an unexpected grave.
She mirrored his movements, keeping well behind him and patting each potential pitfall before putting any weight there. The many mud patches that littered the rainy cavern now seemed much more suspicious, even though she knew from experience that the vast majority weren't deep enough to be dangerous.
"I need to keep in mind that you're walking everywhere," she heard him muttering to himself as they cleared the treacherous span of mud. He was sticking much closer to the bases of the stalagmites now, likely working under the logic that the stone had to be coming up from somewhere, and thus indicated safer places to walk. "Totally missed this by flying over… Then there were those spider-crabs…" He shuddered.
Lily shuddered too, as she thought of what he likely meant by spider-crabs. She had no desire to repeat that experience, but it might happen. Neither of them knew what they would find.
The narrow and tall passage, to use Beryl's description for what was in reality just a jagged hole in the wall, was not far from the mud pit. Lily stopped and took the time to wipe her paws off once they were on solid ground, thankful that wherever they were going, it probably wouldn't have as much mud or never-ending rain. Or so she hoped.
"Now, onward to the unknown and hopefully food," Beryl announced as they ventured into the passage, single-file. "Lily, what do you think we'll find?"
She recognized another attempt at distraction, but decided it was worth biting on, just in case it worked. Talking was better than silence, so long as she was trying to avoid thinking too deeply about anything in particular. "A cave made entirely of crystals," she guessed. "Since that is something we have not seen yet, but seems possible." There had been an entire wall composed of crystals back in the cavern…
"Maybe we'll see something like that," Beryl agreed. "Anything is possible." He said it firmly, leaving no room for doubt, and Lily heard the hidden message. Or maybe she thought she did, but he hadn't meant anything other than the obvious.
Anything was possible. If only it was true. It certainly wasn't true for her.
O-O-O-O-O
It was easy to forget, in her journeys that had been punctuated fairly regularly by new and unexpected sights, just how large the underground world could be.
The tunnel, at first narrow and tall but later evening out to something only just large enough for two light wings if one was riding on the other, went on without end, flat and featureless, studded by the occasional crystal but otherwise shrouded in complete darkness. They walked until they were tired, stopped, rested, and continued walking several times over, each set of three rest breaks punctuated by Beryl putting her to sleep, and then later waking her to watch over his own rest.
All without food or water, because there was none. There was a lot of simple talk in the beginning, the first day, but once thirst and hunger really began setting in, that died off.
Lily found herself spending days on end with no company except her thoughts and the familiar sight of Beryl's hindquarters. Any and all attempts to distract herself eventually wound around to the many, many things she was trying not to think about. Even staring at Beryl's behind made her think about them being together, and then inevitably about how they weren't anymore, and how it was her fault.
She did not get better during those long, depressing days of walking. She didn't get worse, either, which she mostly attributed to getting sleep regularly, regardless of her mental state. Mostly, she existed, unhappy but somewhat content to follow Beryl.
There was no talk of turning around, not yet. Lily didn't bring it up, and neither did Beryl, either because he had faith they would find something, or because he just didn't want to turn back. She thought the former was likely enough; if something or someone had made this tunnel, which would make sense as it was straight and regular past the jagged entrance, the maker needed some way to live through the process of making. That had to put a hard limit on how far out into the endless rock the tunnel could go without leading to some source of sustenance.
Another night – she had decided she was going to call the times she slept nights, regardless of whether they were or not – was spent in the tunnel, the third in total; Lily slept well in the way that being put to sleep always seemed to induce, but when she woke she knew she was dehydrated. Her mouth felt dry and ashy, and her own breath aggravated her throat.
"Nothing for it but to keep going," Beryl coughed, and they were on their way. Already, travel with him was quickly falling into routine. Walk until they needed to stop, rest at every change in the scenery, and then keep going until they both decided it was time to sleep. There really wasn't much else to do, apart from occasionally talking when the boredom outweighed the awkwardness.
By what Lily might have guessed was midday, they reached a change, an interruption in the endless trek. There was a branch in the path. The tunnel abruptly split in two directions, one heading almost straight up, and the other going into what looked like a downward spiral.
Beryl took a few exploratory steps into the downward-spiraling tunnel, but Lily stopped at the intersection, momentarily at a loss. The upward tunnel looked climbable, though it was too wide to brace herself with her wings like the last one. It wasn't as steep, which might make up the difference. The downward tunnel gave her a bad feeling, though there was no logical reason for it.
"Neither of these paths look appealing," Beryl said with a dry rasp, turning back and going a short distance into the other to look around.
"Up is hard to go through, but at least it does lead upward," Lily reasoned. "Down is easy to go through, and looks to not be that hard to return from." The spiral was much less steep than the upward path. "But we were warned against delving too deep…" It was impossible to say how deep was too deep, and they had no way of knowing how far down the tunnel would go before leveling off…
"And both are only somewhat lit," Beryl observed. "I say go down."
"We may as well," she agreed. Then something occurred to her, prompted by the constant tickle at the back of her throat. "At what point do we have to turn back and go for the rainy cavern?" There might be water where they were going, but there might not.
"Can you keep up the pace for another two days without water?" Beryl asked worriedly. "I think we passed that point this morning."
He was not wrong; Lily didn't like her chances of making it all the way back before dehydration took its toll, and once that happened there was no way of knowing how much further they could go. "Then we had better not waste time." She looked to him to be sure he was in agreement about their choice.
"It is silly to fear going deeper, since we are already deep," he declared. "Down it is."
The downward tunnel, to Lily's mind, was most definitely not natural. It was almost a perfect spiral, never changing from the pattern it set. It was just like the last strange, patterned set of tunnels they had found while journeying with the entire pack, so similar the same creatures might have made it. That implied the creators had a purpose in mind...
Though that didn't necessarily mean they were going the right way. For all she knew, the tunnel had been made to go up, not down, and there was nothing of interest the way they were going.
"Hear that?" Beryl remarked some time into their latest descent. "Or am I just hearing what I want to hear?" The faintest whisper of trickling water filled the silence after he spoke, almost inaudible.
Lily tilted her head as she walked, trying to determine where the water was in relation to them. It was possible they were hearing it through the wall, not up ahead. Wherever it was, they were definitely getting closer by moving down the tunnel. "I hear it too," she said.
Down in circles they went, moving faster and faster as the sound grew closer. Then Beryl, who had been in front, abruptly stopped, looking down at his paws. "There it is… but how do we get to it without falling in?"
Lily walked up beside him – she ignored the feeling of his scales on hers, it was a tight tunnel and she needed to get past him to see somehow – and saw that their path ended rather abruptly in an opening to a massive space, one of blunt stalagmites and water far below. The stalagmites were below them, pointing menacingly upward in their general direction, because this particular tunnel terminated in the ceiling of the cavern. The water flowed between each of the huge stalagmites, winding its way among a veritable maze of the tall, spiky stone protrusions.
"So much water, so far away," she sighed, hiding her concern. There was no way for her to get down; depending on her luck, jumping would end with her impaled on a stalagmite, dead from falling, or if the water was deep enough, dead from drowning.
"For you. I can fly down…" Beryl looked over at her. "I will bring water back up." He jumped down into the massive open space and quickly descended, twisting around to land on one of the few normal boulders interspersed among the pointy stalagmites.
Lily watched enviously as he pawed at the water and then drank deeply. She could practically feel the cold water flowing down her throat, but was unable to fly down and make that dream reality.
Then Lily saw him take one final, huge gulp before carefully flying back up to her and the tunnel exit. She hadn't thought about how he would bring her water until that very moment, but it seemed he'd figured it out. She backed up so he would have room to land.
He powered up through the vertical opening, almost smacked his head against the low roof, and landed in front of her, staring expectantly.
After a moment of confusion, she realized that she had to drink from him directly in some fashion; the entire tunnel was a perfect downward slope, so there were no natural depressions for water to pool into. If he spit it all out somewhere, it would just fall back down into the cavern and river below.
This was going to be awkward, but she was too thirsty to care. She considered the practical side of the problem for a moment before simply opening her mouth as wide as it would go.
Beryl got the idea and quickly spit out the large amount of water he had brought up, getting most of it to her. The rest hit her paws and the ground, but it was enough for the moment. She swallowed after wetting her mouth, and purred thankfully. "Good for now. How do we get me down there?"
"I've been thinking about that. I don't think we should go down there." He pointed with his tail to the large open space. "So far, we have always been able to retrace our steps. This is a point of no return for you, because one has to be able to fly to go back up like I just did." His tail traced a path from the water to where they were now, pointing out the complete lack of anything to climb on.
"Not smart," she conceded. If the river led nowhere in both directions, she could end up trapped down there. All of the alternative paths were on this side of the drop.
"I think I'll make as many trips as you need for water and catch some fish if there are any," Beryl offered. "Then we should go back up and try the upward path."
Lily nodded, silently signalling her complete agreement. His plan was the best path for them to take. "I will not need much more water-"
"You'll need far more than what I brought this time," Beryl countered seriously. "We need to drink as much as we can. Really, we should also sleep here and drink our fill again before leaving."
Again, she could not argue. "You are right." She just wished she could fend for herself here. It was too bad she couldn't fly, that would make everything so much simpler. She had given that up long ago, though. A loss, a sacrifice for a pack that no longer needed her. She hadn't chosen to be hurt by Claw, but she had chosen not to try and fix it.
To cut her scar open and spread her wings, come what may… Something nagged at her about that, a half-forgotten thought, but she dismissed it. Flight wasn't an option, it never had been and probably never would be. She had to work with what she had… and what she had was Beryl, at least for now. Nobody else, nothing else. Him, and some hope for the future to be less bleak.
O-O-O-O-O
Lily shuffled her paws around, trying to find a position that would not make her feel like she was on the brink of falling. She couldn't sleep on her own, but her mostly unspoken arrangement with Beryl was that he would only put her to sleep after she had given it a try by settling down and closing her eyes for a while.
"Can't get comfortable?" Beryl asked from further down. He was closer to the hole that led to the river, and thus below her.
"No, not at all," she grumbled. It was definitely the slope bothering her. She could either lie with her tail falling back behind her, or facing the way she knew led to a deadly fall. Sleeping perpendicular to the slope of the tunnel was a terrible idea; the slightest shift in her sleep might send her rolling, a real danger with this particular tunnel. No matter which way she turned, she was either in danger, or uncomfortable… Or both.
It was colder, too, which was an oddity Lily could not explain. She didn't know how temperature worked in these endless caves, except that it was usually tolerably warm. Being cold in this underground realm was a new experience, and not a particularly pleasant one.
It didn't help that she was pretty sure that, if circumstances were different, one of them would suggest they sleep together in some way. They could probably come up with a way to balance on each other if they tried. But things were not different, Beryl would not tolerate that.
Or, he might, but it would be awkward. Lily hated how much of a step back they had taken, but it was her own doing and her own fault. She could hardly blame him for her actions.
"Lily?" Beryl said.
"Yes?" she asked.
"Do you miss the sun?" he asked in reply.
She didn't know where that question had come from, but at least it was one she could answer without any potential awkwardness. "Sometimes," she said. "I'm still not used to not having it, if that is what you mean." Eventually, she would have to grow accustomed to the lack; others lived down here their entire lives, as far as she knew. "Do you?"
"This isn't the first time I've lived in a place where the sun couldn't be seen," he admitted. "I suppose I must be used to not having it. But I do miss it."
"Where was this?" she asked, intrigued.
"That is a long story," he huffed. "And not a happy one, even if its ending is."
"Then forget I asked," she conceded. She didn't want to go digging up bad memories for him, that was-
"No, I think I'll tell you," he rumbled. "The short version. I ran afoul of a nest with a massive, mind-controlling dragon in charge, much like the guardian but different in form and without even a pretense at morals. Weaker, maybe, or just lazy, she settled for just controlling all who entered her domain, making them… us… her servants and keeping us there to go out and take food for her."
She wasn't sure how this connected to living in a place without sun, but she was sure he would get to that sooner or later. "Were you stuck there for long?" she asked, assuming the answer was probably no.
"Season-cycles," he said grimly. "Spark was lost, Flint was dead, Ember was dead but not entirely. Nobody came for me, and I could not break free on my own. We raided islands far and wide, attacking the No-scaled-not-prey to steal the prey they cultivated, to feed her."
"I see…" That sounded like a nightmare, especially to her. The guardian had rubbed her the wrong way, and at least she probably had some semblance of good intentions, and restraint. To be trapped under one with neither of those things, forced to fight for her, forced to die for her...
"It was luck that got me out, in the end," Beryl continued. "I was struck out of the sky by a No-scaled-not-prey trick, one like those Grimmel's ships used. The No-scaled-not-prey we raided didn't have any of those back then, so it was a total surprise. Something about the shock, or being shot down, or being all but dead in enemy territory made her give up on me, so I was free. Grounded, trapped in a sinkhole, in constant danger of discovery, but free."
He slapped his tail against the ground, and Lily found her eyes drawn to the strange lack of scars on one fin. She had never gotten an explanation for that, mostly because she had never asked, but now? Hearing that he had been grounded by force and bad luck, knowing about one specific part of his body that seemed less worn than the rest? One that could, if tampered with, probably hinder or entirely stymie any attempts to fly?
"Your tailfin," she guessed.
He let out a short, surprised bark. "What? Who told you?"
"I figured it out," she retorted. "It grew back, didn't it?" Like how skin and scales would usually come back to cover most wounds, unless they were too severe. Like hers. She didn't think wings regrew, if they did then Pyre wouldn't have been grounded, but something smaller seemed reasonable. Especially as Pearl had maimed Claw in the same way and promised that his tailfin would grow back eventually, that dubious claim adding weight to Lily's theory.
"I should know by now not to be surprised when you do this sort of thing," Beryl said wryly. "Yes, both to me losing it, and to it eventually growing back. Though that took a long while, many moon-cycles."
Lily decided that it wouldn't be helpful to mention that she considered many moon-cycles a quick recovery from grounding. That would make her sound bitter… Which she would be, if she dwelled on it for too long.
"You were grounded, stuck in enemy territory, but free for the moment," she reminded him. "Did they come find you, since they shot you down?"
"Yes, but I'm leaving out a part," he admitted. "I was shot down, tangled up. One scrawny No-scaled-not-prey came and found me, postured a bit, then cut me free. I didn't kill him…" He shook his head. "Why does telling this story feel so… flat? Pointless?"
"It's not pointless, I am on the edge of my perch," Lily said reassuringly. "You never told me any of this." And that was quite the feat, given they had spent moon-cycles alone together, swapping stories and talking aimlessly. He had to have been intentionally avoiding this particular part of his life, for her to never have heard of it.
"Well, maybe just because everyone else I know has heard it," he grumbled. "Where was I?"
"You didn't kill the No-scaled-not-prey who came for you and then decided to let you go," Lily said promptly.
"Yes, I just pounced and roared a bit, then tried to fly away and crashed right into an inescapable sinkhole," Beryl muttered. "Which is embarrassing to admit, now. I could have had the run of the island if I had gone in a different direction."
Lily held in a snort; it wasn't funny, imagining Beryl getting free of a trap just to leap headfirst into another one by accident, but it was ironic. She felt she could laugh at it, given he was here now, and thus had obviously made it out.
"The No-scaled-not-prey came back to my domain, alone, bearing food," Beryl recounted nostalgically. "We made up, he was interesting and I was willing to take a chance. We became fast friends, and he used that No-scaled-not-prey trickery of his to make a false tailfin in place of my real one."
Lily stood, walked over to Beryl, and stared in fascination at his unscarred tailfin. "But it looks so real," she murmured, only holding back from touching it because things between them weren't right, and he might not want her to. Even looking at it now-
"That's not it," Beryl snorted. "I told you, it grew back."
"Oh. Right." She stepped away, her ears burning with embarrassment. She had known that, but given all of the things she had seen No-scaled-not-prey were capable of, she had heard 'made a new tailfin' and immediately assumed that it had played some role in the fin he had now, like new flesh growing over a scab… It was a stupid assumption, and she resolved to never tell him about that particular line of thought.
"The false tailfin wasn't nearly as good, anyway," Beryl continued, taking mercy on her by not dragging out his amusement over her misunderstanding. "But it was enough to get us into the air, and he was a natural at making it work. We spent a few moon-cycles like that, but then things went wrong, and I had to jump into the middle of his nest to save his life from something stupid, and then the other No-scaled-not-prey got the brilliant idea to use me as a guide to find the nest with the mountain-sized dragon, so they could poke her with sticks."
"Is that actually how it happened?" Lily asked.
"Close enough, unless you want to be here all night talking about the specific stupidities of No-scaled-not-prey relying on an enemy to take them into enemy territory to fight enemies they can't beat even on their own territory," Beryl snorted. "They were desperate, but it was still stupid."
"Some other time, but I do want to hear about that," Lily said firmly. Now that they had water, they could afford to talk freely as they walked. Lengthy discussion about No-scaled-not-prey stupidity sounded like a great topic.
"Some other time," Beryl agreed. "Suffice to say, they had me tied up, and used me to find the nest. They knocked on the volcano with a few rocks, she came bursting out because she was so fat she had to break her nest just to leave, and they were utterly doomed. Me too, because I was trapped on a ship with no way off, but they didn't care about that."
"Where was the No-scaled-not-prey you made friends with during all of this?" she asked.
"I was getting to that," Beryl rumbled. "He was left behind, because of course they didn't trust him, so he gathered up a bunch of the others who were left behind, made friends with some of the dragons they kept captive on their island, and flew out to the nest. Once they were there, he came to save me, and the others attacked her to keep her occupied. She was stupid too, so she just fought them instead of doing anything sneaky with her mind, and when my No-scaled-not-prey friend got me back into the air, it was all but over. We tricked her into flying, took her up high, and shot her wings out."
Lily winced. Putting holes in someone's wings sounded eerily close to what was done to Pyre, even if it was infinitely more justified.
"Sorry," Beryl murmured, seeing her reaction. "I hadn't thought about the similarities… It wasn't quite the same thing."
"It's fine," she huffed, waving a paw impatiently. As she spoke, she forced herself to not think about Pyre's injuries. He was right, this wasn't the same. "And then?"
"Then? She crashed and exploded, I crashed because I couldn't get away in time. My friend was hurt, but the other No-scaled-not-prey were grateful, and the No-scaled-not-prey my friend had taught about us made sure there wasn't any more fighting. He recovered, their island is still, as far as I know, a haven for dragons and No-scaled-not-prey to live in harmony… Everything was good. For a while."
"And your friend, the No-scaled-not-prey one?" she asked. "What of him?"
He gave her an expectant look. "I don't think that will be very hard for you to figure out, given all you know."
Again, the answer was right there, waiting for her to grasp it. It was a matter of lack of options, more than any particular cleverness on her part; she only knew of one friendly No-scaled-not-prey outside of the story he had just told. "Ember?"
"Right again," he purred. "That was another thing entirely… I think I told you about it?"
"I know the basics," she confirmed. "That was quite the story. But…"
"But what?" he asked, tilting his head.
"But where in that story did you live somewhere without the sun?" she asked. "You never said." That was the reason he had started telling it, but he'd never actually gotten back around to it.
"Oh, right," he snorted. "The nest was a volcano, and volcanoes produce ash when massive fat-bottomed dragons live in them. It was always cloudy, without end, and we weren't allowed to go above the clouds unless we were going out on her orders, which was always at night. Thus, no sun."
"Right…" She looked up at the low tunnel ceiling above their heads. "Pretty much the same thing," she murmured. She was about as capable of going up to the open air as he had been back then. The only difference was that she was physically incapable of flying through solid stone, whereas he had been mentally incapable of disobeying the one in charge.
"Yes," he agreed. There was a brief silence before he continued to speak. "If you would like to tell me a story you don't usually talk about, you could. Before we go to sleep."
She stared at him, trying to piece together why he had offered that. He had told a story he said made him uncomfortable, and now he was asking her to do the same…
"Was this all a ploy to get me to open up about my feelings?" she asked incredulously.
"How do you feel about that?" he responded neutrally.
They engaged in an unspoken staring match, of sorts. He sat serenely, waiting for her to respond, and she glared into his eyes as she struggled to figure out whether she was offended at being so blatantly manipulated, depressed by the mere thought of diving back into all the things she was trying to ignore, or touched that he had opened up to her to try and help her. It was heavy-pawed and awkward, not at all how she would have done it were she in his place…
But maybe how he did it didn't matter, so long as she cooperated, and she had resolved to listen to him and try his way of doing things, of coping. "Not something recent?" she requested.
"Not tonight," he conceded. "But something?"
"Yes… Ivy." She settled on a short, only mildly bothersome story to tell him, so that she could cooperate without digging too deeply into her own issues. Putting a paw in the shallows, so to speak. "Did you know, he wanted to kill me? The night Claw died, I asked to be alone in the forest, like an idiot. I thought since Claw was dead, I was finally safe. Ivy had disappeared during the fight, nobody knew where he was… I was stupid."
"What did he do?" Beryl asked.
"Knocked me around and pushed my back against a tree," she admitted sourly. "He wanted a secret from me, the one about the egg-preventing bush, and he said he was going to kill me as soon as I told him. He was rubbing my back on the tree, making it hurt until I gave in…"
Beryl snarled at nothing and nobody. "Go on," he said afterward.
"I let him think he had won, and tricked him into eating so much of the bush that it killed him," she whispered. It occurred to her that Beryl might ask how she had known that would work, the answer to which led directly to a real secret, one nobody knew. One she wasn't prepared to share; it was too intimate, too personal.
"And he died," Beryl concluded, mercifully not thinking to ask the obvious question. Or just avoiding it, to avoid pushing her too far.
"I killed him, and I watched until the life left him, and then I left and only told the pack that he had tried to kill me and died for it," she concluded. She didn't feel much of anything about that; she had chosen this story because unlike so many of her past experiences, it wasn't all that painful to recall.
"I understand," Beryl rumbled comfortingly. "Thank you for telling me. Does it make you feel better, having spoken about it?"
"Should it?" she asked.
"I am flying blind here," he admitted. "but I think it should. Holding everything inside did not work out so well in the end, did it?"
"That wasn't related to what happened," she objected.
"Maybe not, but it did not make you feel good, and those memories are still hurting now," he reasoned. "I think, as part of coping with all of this, you trying something different is necessary."
"Telling you about my worst moments," she huffed. "That's your big idea."
"One of them… I'm not forcing you to speak." He set his head on his paws and closed his eyes. "Just asking that you consider it."
"I'll consider it." If only because now that he had said it outright, she was sure her thoughts would circle back around to it every time she wasn't actively distracting herself. She lay down on the ground – it was still slanted and annoying, but that was just something she was going to have to ignore – and let her eyes drift shut. In a few moments, he would come over and put her to sleep.
Until then, she would think about the past, his and hers. It was better than thinking about the future. And maybe she would decide on another story to tell him next time he asked. Something small, tangential to the things she most wanted to forget, but still something uncomfortable.
He was right about one thing; what she had been doing wasn't working.
Author's Note: While writing this chapter, I was listening to Vor í Vaglaskógi by KALEO. It's great for ambiance, and probably influenced the tone of these scenes quite a bit. The absolutely miserable weather outside might have played a part too.