Eventually, the floodwaters drain. The water level sinks, revealing the broken city again, yet now, the flood has carried most of the broken boards, stone dust, and blood stains with it.
There’s rebuilding to be done, yes. But it feels like a starting point.
The public peers apprehensively out of upper windows, too fearful to leave their hiding places. So, I summon the animals of the city and surrounding forests to enter first, to show them that all is safe now.
A herd of deer gracefully sweeps through the Glassmarket. A pair of hawks fly down to land on Valor Belltower. Cats by the hundreds prowl through the streets, hunting any flopping fish the lake might have left behind.
Slowly, people emerge from their safe spots. Ladders are lowered. Helpers come in to assist those down from broken upper windows. Once they’re back on the ground, people fall to their knees, sobbing out both their devastation for what was lost at the same time as their prayers for my salvation.
Every prayer, every bent knee—it builds strength in my bones.
Though I didn’t call her, Myst races across the Glassmarket—drawn to me, to my need, even without my summons.
Her dainty hooves are still painted sunset colors from yesterday’s Ride of Sun and Moon show, though her pink-and-orange dyed mane is tangled now.
She skids to a halt before me.
She takes me in at once—my trembling hands, my bent back, the absence beside me where Tòrr should be. His body is gone,now. Swept away by the receding lake waters, carried to rest somewhere beyond the city walls, in nature—where he belongs.
But his broken-off horn remains lodged between two fallen bricks.
Slowly, I bend down to pick it up—what’s left of it. I cradle the beautiful, deadly solarium spire in my arm as I approach Myst.
Her ears flatten. A broken whinny tears from her nostrils.
She knows what it means.
A living monoceros would never leave its horn behind.
Myst,I say.My brave girl. My fierce friend. We…we lost him.
She stamps her hooves, snorting loud. Trying to deny it. Willing me to take the words back.
I’m so sorry, I say, reaching for her head.
She jerks upright, breathing hard. Then, acceptance breaks, and she tosses her head up, letting out a sound somewhere between a howl and a cry that rattles through the city with the weight of her grief.
I know.I hold in my own grief as I fold forward and nuzzle her neck.I know. I loved him, too.
We stay like that, girl and horse, while our mourning finds a mirror in one another’s pain.
Then, holding his horn, I swing onto her bare back, legs fitting around her like a well-worn pair of trousers.He wouldn’t want us to cry. He’d want us to fight.
I click my heels. She hesitates, but then strides forward. Solid and sure.
A tribute to him.
As we ride through the broken city, people take a knee, lowering their heads to me. Bakers and soldiers. Children and tavernkeepers. Mothers and prostitutes.
But not only them: The street dogs stop and stretch their front paws in a bow. Chickadees swarm on every lamp post, tipping down their beaks. Every carriage horse lowers its head in honor.
I keep my chin high, bolstered by their devotion, which shines on me like the first rays of dawn, warm and welcoming and so full of love I could burst.
The fence surrounding Hekkelveld Castle is all but gone—either destroyed in one of Tòrr’s solarium blasts or from my raging flood. Myst strides straight into the courtyard, where puddles still hold flopping fish.
No guards stop us.
No gates stand in our way.
