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It's quiet.
The generator hums beneath your oil-stained hands as you coax it to life, but it was cold when you arrived, and it will take a few minutes to fully rouse it from its torpor. Meanwhile, your companions have scattered.
You don't mind, really. You often find yourself alone when the mist draws you back into another nightmare. It's not that you aren't a team player, or that you lack the skill to pull your own weight, it's just...
Rust coats the back of your throat as you complete another system check. You've managed to stop gagging when you handle the generators, but the taste is still difficult to swallow. First touch brings with it a nauseating lurch of Sight and sensation. Fear hangs over everything, a miasma that settles in your lungs like lead, heavy and poisonous. Even when you close your eyes, phantom hands trace the generator's worn metal in a familiar loop. You could do these repairs blind.
It's bad enough, touching the generators. Touching people is so much worse, because even when the mind forgets what horrors it has experienced, the soul does not. Death is a faithful scribe, etching variations of the same, lurid story into vellum that hasn't quite lost sensation—every stroke illuminates itself behind your twitching eyelids when you reach out to lend a hand.
It seemed a mercy at first not to remember your own deaths, but each time you came back to yourself beside the flickering light of your campfire, you couldn't shake the feeling that what you'd lost was more than a few memories.
The generator you're working on chugs steadily now. In another twenty, maybe thirty seconds, you'll have it fully operational. Just as well—the silence sets your teeth on edge. You should have heard something by now, but your only company is a growing sense of foreboding that drags down your spine like an over-rosined bow. Your heart flutters a coarse vibrato inside your chest as you will your hands and nerves to steady. You're so close to finishing...
A discordant note trembles in your ears as you realize your error too late: silence does not mean safety. There's no time to think. You throw yourself into a blind roll, hoping against all odds that you did not react too late, but a silicone hand wraps your bicep in a bruising grip, nearly wrenching your arm out of its socket. You bite back a cry as pain jolts through your shoulder.
Soleil’s dreadful chorus swells around you, your fear no longer subconscious as shrill, staccato violin sets the tempo of your pulse. “Careful, Friend.” He emphasizes the word with an artificial cheer that grates more than the strings keening in your ears. “You might hurt yourself jumping around like that.”
Twisting around, you give him a quick once-over. The synth’s customary apron is immaculate, as if he hasn’t spent the last few minutes hunting down victims. You bark out a humorless laugh at the thought. Though Soleil is careful to avoid the kind of bloodshed other killers relish, he’s not one to remain idle.
“It’s nice to see you too, Sol,” you reply blandly.
He goes perfectly still, until the hand wrapped around your arm spasms. This time, you can't suppress the quiet “shit” that hisses out between your teeth as his fingers dig deeper into your flesh.
“Language,” he snaps, a reaction you once found strange, until you encountered others like him with the same programmed disdain for swearing.
When you first discovered this, you leaned into it hard. Every breath you didn't spend running, you swore, stringing together the foulest insults you could conceive before they drove you onto a hook and left you to choke around a collapsing lung. In the face of your own overwhelming helplessness, it felt good to hurt them back, to see them flinch, even just for a moment, and know that you were the reason for their discomfort. If they wanted you dead, they could damn well work for it.
But after a while, it was hard to muster the same anger. They have their purpose, and you have yours—hunter and sacrifice. Running, hiding, surviving or dying, but never living. Never thriving. There is only a brief respite by the fire before the next chase begins, and you cannot outrun that certainty.
You don't know how many times you encountered Soleil before you finally asked his name, and you don’t know how many times you asked before it actually stuck. It could have been once, or it could have been ten times before you survived long enough to clutch the memory to your chest like a piece of salvage. You remember his flat reply when you offered him yours: “I don't see why that matters.”
It was his third time catching you. You’d pushed your luck, hoping to finish repairing a generator that was very close to completion before finding something you could use to rip out his stitches. Hubris. He found you and buried his needles in your chest with his usual dispassion, grimacing slightly as a few drops of your blood spattered his apron. Another of his quirks—no matter how restrained his violence, it was impossible to remain clean, yet the mess always seemed to bother him. He waited until the wound stitched itself closed before grabbing you by the back of your jacket and dragging you over to the nearest hook, but to your surprise, he did not depart after pressing you onto it. Instead, he took a step back to examine you, violet eyes flashing in the dim light as he searched your face for something more than agony. At last, his silicone lips lifted in a smile devoid of warmth.
“My name is Soleil. But my friends prefer…” A brief pause followed, the keening of unseen strings dying down to a tense, orchestral hum as he amended mid-sentence, “Preferred to call me Sol.”
Friends, past tense. Another tantalizing glimpse of a man you struggled to reconcile with the killer who’d stitched cruel mementos into your flesh more times than you could count. Before you could respond, he turned crisply on his heel, the bells at his throat jingling once as he vanished into the gloom in pursuit of other victims.
You played a careful game after that, managing to avoid him until the gates finally had enough power to open. As you waited there, hand on the switch, you spotted him walking towards you with the measured gait of a stalking predator. You froze, calculations flitting through your mind. If you ran now, you might escape him, but another would open the gate in your stead, and with his attention occupied, they would take their chance to exit, leaving you to fend for yourself. If you didn’t run, there was no question he would kill you. It was better to run. At least then, you had a chance of surviving.
Instead, you waited until Soleil’s music surrounded you, and you could make out the pale, silver pupils fixed upon your face. He stopped within arm’s reach, solar rays twitching as he gazed down at you but made no move to close those final inches of distance. The alarm for the gate blared behind you as you craned your head back to meet his luminous eyes.
“What are you waiting for?” you finally asked him after a few beats of silence. The gate was open, but you would almost certainly not be leaving through it.
He didn’t answer right away, just stared at you wordlessly as seconds crawled by. Sweat began to gather in your palms. Releasing the gate switch, you wiped one clammy hand against your jeans before extending it towards him. “I’m not trying to win you over, Sol. I just thought a change of pace might be nice for both of us.”
This close, you could hear a faint, ticking whir start up in his chassis before dying down again as Soleil vocalized a skeptical hum. “You are certainly a strange one.”
Movement in your peripheral vision caught your attention. You glanced past Soleil to see another survivor moving stealthily towards the exit while his back was turned to them. He noticed the moment your gaze tracked away from his, empty smile thinning before he took a deliberate step back. “Do as you please. It won't change anything,” he remarked.
You tensed as you watched him raise his right hand, the needle tipped fingers already threaded with cheerful embroidery floss, but instead of driving them into your chest, you watched him close them around an invisible thread and tug. Sol turned swiftly as the person behind him stumbled, unable to recover before he reached them. His left hand clamped around their arm while the right pierced their shoulder, and you flinched as you watched them go rigid, threads blooming around his fingers like the petals of a sinister flower before binding them in place. Sol released their arm, reaching into the pocket of his apron to withdraw a sharp pair of silver sewing scissors shaped like a bird. As he raised them, he paused, throwing you a backward glance over his shoulder.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be, Friend?” he asked lightly.
Your eyes widened, darting between him and the open gate as you realized he was letting you go. In the next second, you bolted for the exit—mercy from a killer wasn’t unheard of, but you’d never known Soleil to extend it, and you had no desire to test his patience. A choked gurgle followed you out the gate, but the sound of strings quickly faded from your ears as you fled beyond his reach…
In the present, Soleil recovers quickly, pressing needle tipped fingers against your chest—right above your heart. His violet eyes burn bright as he measures your thudding pulse.
“Try to relax,” he chides, “Stress isn’t good for your health.”
You glare back at the synth as you reconsider your decision to stop swearing in front of him. Lately, his sense of humor veers towards this mockery of compassion, and you've more than had your fill of it.
“Maybe I’m just really excited to spend time with you,” you bite back, earning wry laughter from Soleil as his needles finally pierce your shirt. They sink just deep enough into your skin to let the thread coiled around his fingers stitch the delicate wounds closed seconds after he withdraws them.
Sol lets go of your shoulder as he unspools new thread from his apron. That’s your opportunity to run. Instead, you hop back on the generator you were moments away from finishing and spitefully crank out your final repairs. You finish just before you feel his needles drive through your jacket and into your shoulder, not half as polite this time.
Soleil’s voice tuts disapprovingly in your ear. “At this rate, I’m going to have to put you in time out.”
Staggering away from the active generator, you flash him a cheeky grin before sprinting off. Speed means everything now. With two sets of stitches, he’ll be able to find you no matter where you run. It’s gonna be a bitch to rip out the ones in your shoulder, but fortunately—or unfortunately perhaps—you have practice.
You take note of the sewing kits tucked around the area as you run past them. Sol's proximity has already receded from your awareness, your heart now pounding from exertion rather than terror, but while he's not as quick on his feet as other killers, he doesn't need to be. You just have to remain in his sight long enough to empower what makes him truly dangerous. He'll let you go for now—he can't afford not to. You've seen two more generators light up since you finished yours.
Once you’re truly certain Soleil has peeled off to hunt someone else, you retrace your steps to the last sewing kit you saw. It's a bright yellow box, small but highly visible even in dimmer worlds. If you'd noticed one earlier, you might not have been caught off guard in such an embarrassing way. Just how much power did you feed him? He might not even need to keep stalking you. Your next encounter with Sol could very well be your last.
The embroidery in your chest is simple enough to pick out with a seam ripper from the sewing kit, though it stings something fierce as you pull the threads free, and you bleed far more from the five shallow puncture wounds than you have any right to. Logic holds little sway in these nightmare worlds. You've sustained injuries that should have incapacitated you on the spot, but found the strength to keep running. You heal from things there should be no recovery from with little more than a first aid kit and the power of belief. The symbolic carries as much or more weight here than the literal, so though your wounds are light, the fact Soleil wounded you at all matters.
It takes you longer to get the stitches out of your shoulder. Two sets in one go. You really were being reckless again, but lately, it seems like Sol is playing things a bit looser himself. Survivor's bias means you only remember the rounds when he doesn't kill you, however, two details stick with you.
One, he hardly ever hooks you anymore. He has always been restrained about hooking people, using it as a way to force attention off repairing the generators and lure survivors to where he might observe them in turn, but unlike other killers, Soleil rarely sacrifices people on hook. They are a means to an end, not his preferred method of execution, and yet, in the last five encounters you've had with him, he's only hooked you once. Perhaps he's decided that you're too much of a loner to bother hooking. If someone is left to hang until the Entity's form materializes, more often than not, it's you.
Two, and this is the one you don't know what to make of, there's a growing patch of embroidery on your jacket. Every time you wake up by your campfire, throat still raw with phantom agony that gradually dissipates, the first thing you do is check to see if new stitches have been added. Brushing your fingers across the colorful animals yields an impression of profound contentment that makes you swallow thickly around memories you can only glimpse second-hand.
At last, the stitches in your shoulder are out, and you sit back on your heels with a quiet sigh as you resign yourself to finding someone who can help you mend your injuries. Lately, you've woken up more often than you've found your way back to the campfire, so you're running low on resources, but now you regret not bringing a medical kit. It's best to avoid congregating with other survivors when Soleil is hunting.
You jog to put some distance between you and the place he was last aware of you, keeping your ears pricked for the sound of a generator in progress. It does not escape your notice that no other generators have lit up since you stopped to remove your stitches—Soleil has been busy. At last, you find one that appears recently abandoned. Smoke rises from the conspicuous dent left in its side. You hesitate. Working on a generator while injured is practically an invitation for Sol to down you, but if you don’t halt the damage, it will undo the progress your companions have made. Crouching, you breathe through your mouth as you coax the rugged machinery back into working order. You hear light footsteps behind you just as the smoke finally dissipates.
“Oh, good. I thought for sure we’d lose this one completely before I could get back to it,” a woman’s voice grouses. A second later, she drops down across from you to help continue the repairs.
“How many stitches have you got?” you ask. She didn’t offer to heal you, so you don’t ask her to. Assuming someone else is working on the last generator, it’s better to push completion on this one.
“Just the one set. Wouldn’t be here if I had two,” she replies.
You work in silence for several seconds before you speak up again.
“I’m injured. If he turns up before we’re done here, I’m going to need you to take a hit for me so I don’t go down.”
The woman snorts. “Buddy, if he turns up before we’re done here, I’m getting the hell out of dodge. I advise you to do the same.”
You maintain a neutral expression as you exhale through your nose. There’s no point arguing with someone who isn’t interested in acting like a team member.
In the distance, you see another generator light up and finally begin to relax. Four down. As long as you can finish this one, the exit gates will have enough power to open. Your companion’s mood seems to brighten as well. She cracks a genuine smile as the generator nears completion.
“Sorry for the bitchy response earlier. No hard feelings?”
“I’ve heard worse,” you reply evenly. You don’t offer forgiveness, but it’s not worth antagonizing her. Even with freedom so close, you know from experience how quickly things can turn around in matches with Soleil. Your heart speeds up at the thought, unease curling through your stomach.
This time, you heed your instincts before the hum of dread rises to an audible pitch. Your companion shoots you an irritated look as you abruptly scramble to your feet, but a moment later, it morphs into panic as she realizes the danger you are both in. Soleil stands behind her, reaching out to seize her shoulder as she rises, but he does not look at her. His eyes find yours as he plunges his sewing needles into her stomach.
The woman's body jerks once, then goes stiff as embroidery floss begins to sprout from her wound in gorgeous loops. It’s red at first, as if his fingers are the spindle around which he twists her blood into shimmering thread, but crimson soon gives way to a riot of festive colors that wrap her up like a gift before your eyes until she is completely immobilized. Your breath comes short in your chest as you watch a pattern of leaves embroider itself into her jaw, a single black dahlia blooming on her cheek.
It’s an arresting sight. You know you shouldn’t find beauty in this grim ritual, but as your gaze lifts to meet Soleil’s again, you can’t help the frisson that shivers down your spine. He offers you a knowing smile as he raises his scissors.
“What are you waiting for, Friend?” he asks gently.
You shudder, eyes dropping to the generator. In the time you’ve spent transfixed by the sight of him preparing to murder someone, you could have finished it yourself. Still could, probably. Let no one accuse you of being a selfish teammate.
As you drop to your haunches and dig your hands back into the guts of the machine, you offer up a small prayer for whomever is still alive. You hope they’re near an exit gate. You hope that exit gate is far from your location. You hope Soleil is feeling patient, because you hear the moment his scissors enter flesh with a horrible wet finality that reminds you no matter how lovely his victims look before they die, death is death, and yours is coming very soon because you froze when you should have fled.
There’s a heavy thud as Soleil lets the woman’s body fall. He crosses the short distance between you in a single step, standing beside you as he waits for you to finish your work. When the final generator lights up, you wipe the sweat from your brow and try to ignore how your shirt clings damply to the back of your neck.
“You’re in a good mood today,” you joke weakly as you rise from your crouch.
“Yes,” Sol agrees. He tosses aside a bloody cleaning wipe as he tucks his scissors back into his apron. It’s no longer spotless.
“Good enough to let me go?” you prompt. He let you finish the final generator. He intends to let someone open the gate.
Sol’s rays spin slowly as he raises his right hand and ghosts the sharp tips of his fingers against your cheek. “Why would I do that?”
Because you’re giving me mixed signals? you want to snap, but then his hand flits behind your head, and a second later, you feel sewing needles prick the back of your neck. His threads sink deep, stitching into your nerves as they repair your injuries a third time, and you shudder as you topple limply into Soleil’s waiting arms.
“You’re a fucking bastard,” you mutter instead, feeling a trace of petty satisfaction when his hand clenches briefly around your neck. The exposed endo bites coldly into your skin before Sol regains his composure and lifts your body, tucking you carefully against his chassis as he carries you away.
Instead of horror, the brush of his silicone plating against your cheek holds a strange sense of comfort. Lemon-scented disinfectant washes over your tongue as the tense whine of strings gives way to a lullaby sung in a language you don’t speak. There’s a warmth in Soleil’s voice that you’ve never heard before as he sings to the fussy child nestled in his arms…
“You’re a sore loser,” Sol remarks, drawing you out of your reverie. You blink away visions of fairytale forests and soft play foam as he continues. “Really, I don’t know why you keep expecting me to just let you win.”
“Yeah…” you murmur, still reeling from your brush with his memories. You can’t manage a more coherent response.
Soleil falls silent for the rest of the time he walks with you. In the distance, you hear an exit gate’s alarm blare as it powers on, but he ignores it, carrying you into the small cottage at the heart of the realm, where he removes your jacket before depositing you in a chair. He pauses to adjust your posture before taking a seat across from you and spreading your jacket across the small table between you.
“I hope you aren’t giving up,” he remarks as he withdraws a spool of coral embroidery floss from his apron and sets it down. “I thought we had more time left than this.”
“What are you talking about?” you grumble.
“Your slipping performance, Friend. In the last ten games we’ve played, you’ve only escaped three times. I’m starting to wonder if you want to die.”
Setting aside that appalling win/loss ratio, you stare back at him, genuinely baffled. “Why would you think that?”
Sol’s eyes rise from your jacket to search your face, his cool expression thawing slightly as he seems to find what he’s looking for. Picking up the coral thread, he feeds it through his fingertips and begins to stitch a new design into the cuff of your sleeve.
“It’s a valid concern, though I’m glad to be wrong this time,” he explains as he works. “After a while, dying loses its horror. You’ll grow apathetic to the idea of survival, knowing that even if you fail, you’ll wake up again. There’s nothing to gain by struggling, and nothing to lose by giving up, so you’ll give up one final time, and that is not something you return from.”
You don’t know what to say to that. He lays out the bleak trajectory of your future with the cynicism of someone who has long since resigned himself to his own. What future does he see for himself, and why does he care if you are not in it? Perhaps it has something to do with the contentment you feel from the designs he stitches into your jacket.
A sickly orange light gradually fills the cottage as the world begins to unravel. Sol pays it no mind, even humming a melody as he dedicates himself to his art. Though you aren't familiar with it, it's a simple tune. After a few bars of repetition, you join in.
Soleil pauses his humming to make another observation. “By now, you've usually asked me half a dozen questions.”
It seems he actually wants to talk. You're so used to clipped responses, his current openness surprises you, but you're beginning to realize you don't know Sol half as well as you thought you did.
“How many times have we had this conversation?” you finally ask.
Soleil answers your question with one of his own. “How many designs have I embroidered on your jacket?”
You can't count them right now, but it's a lot. The next question, you know you've asked before. Your tongue digs into it the way it used to find the gaps between your baby teeth after losing one—obsessively tracing the absence of something familiar that should be there, but isn't.
“Why embroider my jacket?”
“To reclaim a measure of my own time. Even if the conversation is often repetitive, I find it a pleasant reprieve from my duty.”
Soleil’s reply triggers a feeling of intense déjà vu. You close your eyes for a moment, grounding yourself in the feeling of solid wood against your back. Your heart no longer beats out of your chest in his presence as you realize the ominous strings have fallen completely silent. He isn’t trying to cultivate your fear; this stolen moment is supremely self indulgent.
You find yourself inclined to indulge it.
“The embroidery…” you muse, another question that feels like a well-worn furrow. “Does it allow you to find me when I enter a world you're in?”
Sol chuckles, a sound that is at once amused and self-deprecating.
“Yes. I know exactly where you are the moment you enter my domain,” he admits.
His answer doesn't surprise you, though you feel a little annoyed. No wonder he seems to find you so quickly—you are permanently exposed to his sight. “That’s not very sporting of you, Sol. I didn't take you for a cheater.”
“What do you take me for, I wonder?” he asks breezily as he finishes sewing the final stitches before gathering up your jacket and carrying it over to show you the new addition. The silhouette of a deer with antlers like curving coral joins the parade of animals that decorate its sleeves.
“It's gorgeous…” you admire, wishing you could reach out and touch it yourself, but your limbs remain unresponsive. Sol's lip curls as he helps you back into your jacket.
“It's nothing worth admiring, Friend. You're better off ripping out the stitches next time you wake up.”
This time, you laugh. Not because you won't remember his advice, but because even if you did, you wouldn't follow it.
“Not a chance. It would be a shame to ruin your hard work. I'll figure out some other way to deal with your cheating.”
Soleil doesn't respond to your cocky assertion. He just stands there watching you as flakes of ash begin to rise from the floor. It won't be long until the world collapses.
Your grin fades as you consider what's coming next. You've seen it through someone else's eyes—black tendrils rising from the burning ground to impale their wayward offering. The memory rolls over you once more, vivid as a nightmare, and you shudder at the slick writhe of them through sinew and viscera as they enfold your convulsing body with a casual contempt you feel down to the marrow of your bones right before they splinter. You taste despair as a gentle touch pulls you back to the moment you are in—still unbroken, still alive.
Sol crouches in front of you, eyes level with yours. As you dumbly contemplate his proximity and the fact he is anything other than ramrod straight, you hear him sigh. He lowers the hand cradling your cheek.
“I know it's selfish of me to keep you here when there's no escape for either of us, but stay with me just a bit longer, Friend.”
There's a quiet desolation to his words. You’re both trapped, hunter and prey bound to a wheel of misery that turns until you're ground down to chaff for a hungry god neither of you can escape. All you can do is carve your defiance in the interstices.
You recall the version of him that you Saw when you glimpsed his past—how happy he looked as he sang for a child in his care, how gentle the hands that smoothed down their back, and suddenly, you are filled with a fierce desire to help him reclaim that peace. No wonder he is reluctant to yield these precious minutes between the end of one hunt and the start of the next.
“I don't think it's selfish, Sol. I just wish I could remember our conversations. They'd be a lot more interesting if I didn't repeat the same questions.”
“You want to remember the times I kill you?” he asks dryly before adding, “Your tastes are rather heavy, Friend.”
“Shut up,” you snap, and you aren't even sure why you're embarrassed, just that the judgment in his tone makes your cheeks burn. “I'm trying to help.”
Soleil goes very still. Only his silver pupils tremble as he stares back at you. Then he stands abruptly, lacing his hands together in front of himself as a mechanical whir kicks up in his chassis.
“You want to help me?” he sneers, tilting his head to one side as he regards you like some brainless polyp that suddenly learned how to speak. “You can't even help yourself.”
“Well, I'm doing my best! Just wait, I'll come back for you, and next time, I swear we'll have a proper conversation!”
“Oh?” Sol asks, bending down to grab your chin with his left hand. He turns your head from side to side as his silicone lips rise in a mirthless smile. “And how do you intend to keep a promise you won’t remember?”
Like this, you think. You summon every scrap of stubborn resolve you can muster and brand your hope upon him like a blessing. The fingers on your chin retreat, as if your desire is a tangible thing that can be sensed and he cannot bear the heat of your fervor.
It's probably not enough, but you want it to be. This is what you lose when you wake up by your campfire, and each time, you have to remember that there are reasons to keep struggling beyond survival. As long as there's someone who gives a damn whether you live or die, you'll take your lumps and deal them back where you can. That's the kind of person you are.
“Just wait,” you insist soberly. “I'm not giving up, so don't write me off yet.”
Sol hesitates, looking like he wants to say something, but then the fissure spreading beneath your feet rumbles and widens a few inches more. His expression shifts to one of flinty resolve.
“I'll keep that in mind. However, we are almost out of time.”
Reaching into his apron, Soleil pulls out several strands of embroidery floss and deftly weaves them into something that resembles a friendship bracelet an older child might make. You watch him, mystified, wondering if he intends to tie it around your wrist before the Entity claims you, but Sol continues to weave until it's grown beyond the dimensions of your wrist or his. Once it's long enough to be a necklace, he cuts the threads and ties them off.
Your stomach sinks as he walks behind your chair and wraps it around your throat, though he doesn't pull it tight just yet. His hands settle on your shoulders for a moment, the thumb of his left hand rubbing a tender circle through your jacket.
“Please understand, I don't do this to be cruel, but I am truly beyond your help. You should save your compassion for someone who can return it.”
Your throat aches with the knowledge of what is to come. You always assumed the phantom pain that lingered with you upon waking came from the bite of his scissors, but Soleil never cared for blood.
“Why not just let the Entity take me with the instance collapse? You could still keep your hands clean,” you rasp as the woven cord begins to constrict.
“Because I don't like watching it claim you, Friend,” Soleil replies with an edge that sends an odd shiver down your spine. The constriction pauses for just a moment as he brings his face down to the level of your shoulder, voice dropping half an octave as he continues, “I told you before, I'm selfish. I could let you escape, but I want to make the most of every second, so this is the choice I've made. It's kinder if you don't remember.”
When he resumes his task, you feel breathless for more reasons than one, but you don't dwell on that confusing mix of emotions for long. It hurts. Strangulation isn't gentle or quick, though the pressure on your throat is precisely measured. He pulls the cord taut with one hand and covers your mouth and nose with the other when you begin to gasp, speaking sweet reassurances above your ear. “Shh, not long now. Ne lutte pas, ma poupette.”
Just before you lose awareness, you hear Soleil begin to croon a familiar lullaby…
Music lingers in your ears and hums beneath your tongue as you open your eyes. There's an ache in your throat that burns like your campfire, but as you swallow around the pain, you feel it begin to ease. Like the music, it doesn't last.
You check your jacket next, finding the new addition to your growing menagerie of embroidered beasts. There's a coral stag you don't remember seeing before. When you touch it, the fading song returns to you, and you hum a few bars with a scratchy voice, savoring the bittersweet mélange of regret and fondness they carry.
After all this time, you still don't understand Soleil. Perhaps next time you encounter him, you might escape with an answer instead of another colorful addition to your jacket, but until that actually happens, you can only wonder and count the growing number of stitches.
They’re beautiful at least.