- Burning Out -
The two of them had returned home in a daze, part of them not even sure that the meeting had just occurred, but the splotches of blood on Nella's face served as an all too constant reminder otherwise. All others had been avoided upon arrival, the two of them heading straight to the bath. Danylrein went into the water while Nella went into the flames that heated it, both of them sinking down and soaking in their element, wishing that what had happened could just be washed or burned away. No such luck was to be had however, and eventually the two of them emerged drained and depressed, only staying up long enough to eat the evening meal before staggering off, exhausted, to bed.
Waking up the next morning the light just seemed... wrong. Too bright. Even as he started the day the feeling continued. Nothing felt
right. The food tasted strange. Servants walked differently. His parents’ words held odd shapes. Nella was the only thing to remain recognizable, but even she remained as quiet as him, the two of them floating through the day with barely a word.
Dan told himself that it would be alright. Things would slowly return to normal as they had last spring, and it would get better.
It didn’t.
The feeling of wrongness persisted. Nightmares returned, the ones he’d had after learning Faina’s fate paling in comparison. Any mention of the Emperor or Helios caused him to leave abruptly, and if asked why he would refuse to answer. One day he found Nella crying in the dark. He held her close, not even noticing the tracks tracing down his own cheeks. Tasks went uncompleted, books were left by the way side, disagreements were started and ended half heartedly. Nella tried to meet with the different stunteds around the castle, but always ended up leaving before things were finished. Both she and Dan found themselves victim to a gap between them and others, and they had no idea how to fix it. As the gap grew larger so did time, feelings they had hoped would only last a few days now turning into months.
While Dan loathed the suffocating feeling, not wanting to address it, part of him knew the source. The meeting. Sure, there were the deaths that occurred there, and they were reoccurring fixture in his nightmares, but that wasn’t all of it. Most of all in the meeting he had felt small. Clueless. Insignificant. He had realized just how little he knew when it came to Panymium and its politics, how sheltered he was. Helpless to make a change, to have any sort of impact. He was in a much bigger pond than he had ever known, and he was an absolutely tiny fish.
Initially he had thought back to the previous spring, but the comparison didn’t really work. Everything then had been resolved, with no real lasting consequences or changes to his life. He’d been able to slip back into “normal” life without much issue. But this time... normal didn’t exist anymore.
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