And I can't escape it

Taikon · relatively thin from illness (Apr 13, 2020)

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Sometimes there was beauty in his dreams. Sometimes there was nothing. Mostly, there was pain.
The waking hours were always the most pleasant. These were times that he could feel @Takiyok, warm and soft beside him. Occasionally she would be pressed right against him, and he could hold her the way he had when she was sick without the terrified desperation. He always tried not to shift if he sensed her breathing changed and found that she had drifted off. Sometimes, he tried to match the long, deep breathing she did as she slept, hoping that it might ease his worries through the night.
A length away and at times right beside Takiyok, @Taktuq slept. They were an odd, beautiful little surrogate family, wrecked from the horrors of life, finding solace in the familiar.
Takiyok seemed almost happy. Though they had many worries, and nothing felt like stable ground, she was safe and recovering well. He ensured always that she at least was fed. Hours a day, every day, he spent hunting and preparing food for her. If she was not hungry, then Taktuq might be. If neither would feed, then all of Ivory Rose had access to the caches he kept up. He allowed himself to lose weight to ensure they could eat - he began to appear closer to what he had looked like before Sagtannet.

I will get us out, he told her, fiercely pushing close to her, her engorged belly warm against his face. Cella shook her head, knowing what lie beyond, knowing there was danger, afraid. Her eyes were large.
When she spoke, he heard no voice. Maggots began to coat her face, and he knew then that it was not real. The lucidity rather than calming him made him panic, and he begged physically to his psyche to allow him relief. He heard his mother giving an order to her soldiers, Dispose of this… inconvenience.
They were words that he had never heard her speak about his loved one, but he had heard it countless times before, heard it when she had decided she’d tired of a particular slave or rebel. He had stood silent while Queen Naya Tse put to death an uncountable number of others, faceless, nameless. Their memories lived on only as torment for the prince of nothing, who kicked violently in his sleep until he awoke.

He could tell Takiyok had stirred and perhaps even Taktuq as well, but he said nothing to disturb them further, tucking his head back onto the ground, sighing slowly, quietly, such that they might find peace again.
These dreams had always happened, but since telling her about Cella, they had increased dramatically. He did not have the heart to tell her.