Serendipity (Karlnapity Fantasy AU)

Chapter 18

The following night a crow landed on a hill to stretch its wings, exhausted by the flight. Before it extended a wide bare field with a lonely and wizened tree in the middle. In the distance, large metallic surfaces were set up to delineate the restricted areas. Quackitea_, whose name the crow had gotten from one of Philza's sons, still had a long way to go.

After some time, it stretched its wings again, fluttering them in the air, but before it took to the skies again, it looked back for a brief moment in the direction from which it had come. The crow, along with a few others, had been ordered to stay with the little owl (Wilbur) to watch over him and his friends. At first, the crows had doubted the big crow's (Philza) decision, but after what they found out, they could no longer watch from the shadows. Somewhere deep in the wastelands far from civilizations, a crow swung itself in the sky again, a determined short caw sounding the sky before disappearing on the horizon.

~~~

Quackity knew this place far too well, for almost every night it was the scene of his nightmares. His old academy had stood on a hill in the mountains, the campus fenced off to keep students from falling off the edges. Jschlatt was unimpressed by the barriers. Too many people and too many observers. So they met outside the academy building in places where there were no watchers and therefore no barriers.

Especially on that day, Schlatt was not really in a good mood, not following his orders would have been a massive mistake. Especially that day Quackity was tired of the bruises and fractures of the last time and he didn't want any more. So when the Ram Hybrid reared up in front of him, its pointy horns towering over him and dangerously threatening to ram his body, Quackity did something he had never dared to do before in his life and would never do again. With all his strength he jerked the hybrid away from him, who staggered back in surprise at his boyfriend's sudden backlash.

What made the situation worse was that Quackity had forgotten how close they were to the edge of the hill. How the valley stretched many feet below them. As if in slow motion, the anger in Schlatt's eyes turned to sheer fear as he tripped over a rock behind him and fell backward down the edge with momentum. The scream that rang through the valley horrified Quackity, but this was not the worst of it. The worst was when the screaming stopped and only a soft cracking sound could be heard, resounding against the walls of the cliff. After that it was silent, only a few stones pelted down the facade, swirled up by the falling of Schlatt.

That day, Quackity had stood there paralyzed, unable to process what had happened, but a movement in the corner of his eye had released him from his trance. Connor, an old friend of Schlatt's, had been standing at a short distance from him and had seen everything happen. But here and now, in this dream, there stood Wilbur instead. His arms were folded in front of his chest, his eyes were slightly narrowed as the sun shone in his direction and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"That was an accident!" shouted Quackity, "I didn't know the abyss started there..."
But Wilbur wasn't listening, just shaking his head with a grin. Quackity waited for the word that had been on Wilbur's tongue for such a long time. Foaming with rage, he ran towards the snowy owl hybrid, but the closer he got, the more Wilbur just moved away.

"It was an accident! It was an accident!", like a mantra he repeated this sentence, shouting it out into the world, desperate that Wilbur would hear it, would understand him. Praying that Wilbur would stop bothering him with the past.

With a scream, Quackity woke up from his dream. He was almost used to waking up with a raw throat and his clothes soaked with tears and sweat from his dreams.
This was new, Quackity thought as he stared at the ceiling, gasping for air. Not every one of the nightmares was the same, though the place was the same and the people, sometimes it was Quackity who fell into the depths. Sometimes they both fell too, Quackity caught in the arms of a destructive lover as he hit the edge of the cliff.