Chapter 34: Dark Side of the Moon
WINTER TERM - January 23rd
Gods forbid we ever see you in the throes of a break up.
Blackclaw has said it. I don't even know for sure that we were ever really together, let alone broken up, but this sucks.
Whisper wasn't in my room and I didn't really feel the need to go looking for him. I refilled his bowl of dog kibble. Jury's still out as to whether he needed it. The quiet was unbearable. His silence was worse.
I increasingly didn't want to be in my room, not when Aries was just down the hall, moping in bed behind his sigil-locked door. What was worse was that I was the one to ask for this.
I shadow stepped a dozen places around the Court and eventually wound up in the statuary that Aries had taken me to that late autumn day last term. It was off-campus, but lonely, abandoned, the statues now all cloaked in snow. There was a chance no one had been back here since Aries and I were here. It was cold and already dark, darker now that the winter sun set so early. I was alone and would be alone.
I wandered aimlessly first, but at the sight of the naked minotaur statue, it all came rushing in. This thing I couldn't name, the building pressure from all of it collecting in the spot behind my eyes. Until I couldn't hold it back any longer. The mark of Orendell lit up my arm until I cast the thing my hands chose before I had.
The naked stone minotaur cracked and crumbled, once standing, now rubble. Unrecognizable. Beyond a ruin.
The force of the spell left me panting, a little lightheaded. I might have been miserable, but I didn't want to pass out in the cold. My wolf didn't want me passing out either and I could already feel him inching forward, desperate to shift. I didn't have the bandwidth to force him back down, so I did what I could to strip off my layers and toss them around the base of a statue so I might have some chance of finding them later. The wolf ripped through me, claws, fur, fire, until I was down on all fours, panting hot plumes into the winter cold air.
It hurt because it always hurt, but this time maybe I needed to hurt. It was the only way any of this made sense.
I didn't really sleep that night.