Golden Tears And Golden Wings (Karlnapity)

Chapter 4 - soteriophobia

Being addicted to something was always a curse for Quackity. The smell of alcohol turned his stomach and the smoke from cigarettes that wafted around the tip of his nose would steal the air from his lungs. The worst thing, however, that would make you go blind from all the love and make you look for hope in a pile of dirt, would probably be the dependence on a human being. Exactly that had now become his doom.

Every morning for the past week, the only reason he got up had been Karl and Sapnap. They had encouraged him to stay in a routine, adapting and developing each other's routines. By now, it was a fact that Sapnap daily visited at lunchtime with a snack for them all.

It didn't matter that they only liked him and were nice to him out of pity. He wouldn't function without them and as long as they didn't do to him what Schlatt did, he was gladly taken advantage of and pitied. But he couldn't hide that it still hurt, that maybe they didn't like him.

The cold on the bridge hit him in the face, while the wind whipped past his ears. He had taken some time off after Karl left to go to a merchant and Sapnap took care of the cows. For some reason, he maintained an unusual relationship with this place. Even before he had first met Wilbur here, this place gave him a certain comfort. It was tucked away from the village and below them looked a long expanse of tracks that stretched deep into the forest. Surrounded by two hills, these tracks were quite isolated.

A visit usually served to think in peace, because even if he preferred his room for this, the fresh air always took some weight off his heart. Perhaps today had been a bad opportunity for a visit because today it was particularly cold. Although he had been hiding his hands deep in his jacket pockets since the beginning of being outside, they still felt frozen.

Quackity knew that he still needed this time out to a certain extent because with Sapnap and Karl he had fewer and fewer moments to himself in which he could think in peace.

He appreciated the two of them and would never want to be separated from them for any length of time, but sometimes he needed distance to catch his breath. It had become a habit to be alone.

During the time the three had spent together, it became more and more difficult to deny that he saw them only as friends

This resulted in a problem: it intensified the golden tears. For days he had been staying in his room at night, distracting himself with paperwork or extra work from people in the village. Even if he could distract himself from the nasty thoughts that caught up with him as soon as he tried to fall asleep, he could not always prevent the stars.

The tears gathered behind his eyes, like a barrel that was filling with water, and at some point, it would threaten to overflow. Sometimes water already sloshed over, that was when he could not prevent some tears, but still, not everything ran out. Should the barrel overflow completely, however, it would cause damage.

At this moment, as he stood at the bridge, he could not prevent a few scattered stars from rolling down his cheek. Through the bright rays of the sun, from which, unfortunately, no heat fell, the small stars fell to the tracks with light sparkles. Quackity watched as the strange tears sailed onto the tracks with a barely audible tinkle. Around him it was completely silent, only occasionally the happy chirping of birds could be heard.

As the stars slowly faded again and were only barely visible from high above, he felt the cold gust of wind around his nose and the shaking of his shoulders. Even though it wasn't as warm for this time of year as it had been in winter, Quackity was getting cold fast. Wilbur had always not cared. He had loved the cold more than the heat and sought comfort in it. His songs were full of cold that tingled his skin and could be felt deep in his bones.

That night Wilbur had been standing right where Quackity was leaning over the railing. The brown-haired man had turned with a smile to the Avian, who was struggling through the snow that lay on the forest path and had climbed onto the railing. Screaming he had sped up, the snow had shot across the air as he had run toward Wilbur. He had screamed his friend's name in the process more times than he had ever uttered it before. The screams went nowhere, for Wilbur jumped just before Quackity could catch him.

The loud rumbling of the train drowned out the cracking of the bones of the body that had thrown itself onto the tracks only moments before. The stifled scream for Wilbur ended for Quackity in a loud cry. Completely sobbing he lay in the snow. At that, he was too numb with pain to notice how the snow beneath him soaked his clothes and wings. Lying on the ground, his freezing hands clawed into the snow, he gave up. Thousands of tears, glowing strongly in the darkness, made their way to the ground, made a soft gentle ringing sound when they touched the asphalt, and then disappeared among the fractures. It felt good as they tinkled and fell to the ground, the soft sounds resembling small bells. They mourned Wilbur and the silly Quackity who had fallen in love with a dead man.