⇷—————————☾—————————⇸ Notes: So... this was supposed to be out like a day after Déracinée. Except I forgot to post it, but I have it written so I'm gonna drop it here anyways. ⇷—————————☾—————————⇸ It had been two days. Vérité had watched the sun rise overhead, only to sink once more beneath the horizon and surrender the sky to the moon. She had listened to the wind weave through the trees and brush against her fur, following paths only it understood. Vérité followed too. She always had. The cycles she had once trusted for comfort continued on unhindered, untouched by the destruction left behind in their wake. The river still flowed. The stars still watched from above with their cold silver light. The wind still whispered its secrets in a voice too quiet for even Vérité to listen to. It was as if nothing had changed at all. And yet, everything had changed. Vérité had spent her entire life in one place. Underneath the cycles of the world Vérité too had found her own. Now, her family’s den… the only thing Pére had truly given them was gone. Destroyed under the weight of a fallen tree. The hollow she had returned to night after night had vanished so completely that sometimes Vérité caught herself wondering if she had imagined it to begin with. Her garden sat abandoned behind her now, the new buds of life under the olive tree, left to bend beneath the cold without her careful paws to tend them. Even the stream no longer felt like a sanctuary. The water still carried the same grounding chill she had always loved, but now it only reminded her that currents moved forward no matter how desperately she wished to remain rooted. She had lost everything. And so Vérité had walked away. She had always known that the world had no place for her. That the only way Vérité could protect anything was with absence. That if she allowed herself to open up… to hope… it would only hurt her, and those she wanted to care about too. Staring down at the remains of what she had once called home… she had known that it was nothing but another reminder of that truth. And somehow, despite everything, her paws had led her here. To a place she had known of but had never chosen to be near. Pawsteps away from the clearing Altesse had called his home. Altesse’s Castle. Part of Vérité had known that she would end up here, burdening the cat she had hurt so many times before with her presence once again. Just as she’d known she shouldn’t have. Even now, she remembered the curling emotions in her chest as the red monster bore down on her. And she remembered those emotions tightening into something much more jagged as Altesse had leapt forward to save her. She shouldn’t have come. Vérité knew that. And yet, she couldn’t find it within herself to walk away. In front of her, the trees thinned. And Vérité froze. The Castle was gone. Blackened beams jutted from the earth like the shattered ribs of some ancient beast. Burnt stone and charred branches had collapsed inward, swallowed beneath layers of soot and ash. The trees surrounding it stood scorched dark, their limbs stripped bare beneath the stars. Vérité stared. The wind brushed past her fur, slipping into the clearing unbothered by the sights before it. But the mottled loner found her paws frozen to the ground. The world became still again. Something inside her cracked. The ice she had chosen to cover her heart splintered open, as if a heavy paw landed on it with all its weight. Her paws carried her forward before she understood she was moving. Ash pressed into the fur between her toes. Burnt earth stained her claws black. She stopped near the ruins and lowered her head slightly. Her eyes didn't leave the place that Altesse’... her brother’s... home had once stood. Another home was gone. The breath left her lungs in something jagged and uneven. Her tail trembled, brushing against the ground. She barely noticed.
Vérité sank towards the ground like a stone dropped in a river. She pressed herself small against the ash-covered earth as tears finally spilled down her face, hot against the freezing air. They dripped silently into soot below her paws, disappearing almost instantly. Quiet curled in around her. She had always accepted the quiet. But here… now… it felt like it had sprouted flames of its own. Vérité had only cried once before. She’d promised herself it would be the only time she would. And so, she hadn’t cried when Charme had left. She hadn’t cried when Tristesse’s had stopped. She hadn’t cried when Valeur’s expeditions from the den had grown longer and longer, until her brother was gone too. Had not cried when she drove Altesse away with words sharp enough to wound them both. She had told herself that the losses were inevitable. She had expected them to leave, after all. Everything left eventually. It hurt less when she expected it. But the world kept taking things anyway. And this time, it had found things she had not expected to lose. The wind moved through the burned remains with a low hollow sound, curling around her even as it carried ash into the night sky. And Vérité cried out into the night until she could no longer tell whether the dampness on her fur came from tears or the morning dew ⇷—————————☾—————————⇸ Yeah uhh... more angst for the sad french cat, hope yall enjoy.
