Strawberries and Darkness

You'd be here now.

Classes were over Dusky walked through the dimmed hallways, voices of other students muffled and all around as he navigated through. On the western side of Jade Mountain was the location of his sleeping cave which he shared with Peacemaker.

Walking past a few students that Dusky could tell gave a sympathetic but odd glance at him before continuing their way, Dusky eventually reached the entrance. There was now a door that allowed entry made of a certain type of wood that Dusky forgot the name of.

It didn't matter to him anyway though he wondered if Peacemaker knew. 

Dusky didn't open the closed door but instead looked at it for a long moment that felt eternal. He proceeded to sit down against the wood as he raised his head a little to look at the bright colorful lantern hanging above aided with torches attached to the walls.

"Hey, Peacemaker," Dusky called. Dusky would hear a greeting from Peacemaker. "Remember our game we tended to play, how you told me that we sit on either side of this door and just...talk. You said it allows the dragon to truly take in the words because it's all they can go off of. Like imagining an image from words on a scroll."

Dusky was quiet again before feeling himself smiling just slightly,

"You liked asking me questions from basic to complex. I sometimes felt I was evaluated but I guess you tend to like understanding others better in a way, for you, it was simply an opportunity to see how dragons acted and behaved because it would help you know how to pretend better. To try and fit in with others. At least...that's what you told me before. Something you'd tell me now." Dusky's smile dropped,

"I remember asking why you liked wearing a mask and your answers tended to differ each time. Once you told me it was because you tried fitting in with other Nightwings hoping they'd like you better. Another time it was because it's hard to be truly hurt if they can't reach the real you. You said other things too but I guess you would've been bored if I listed them all out. Truth is...I think it's just all complicated, a jumble of reasons and past experiences all compiled into the dragon we referred to as Peacemaker. Or better yet his nickname, Peace. Nice name though, just funny with someone that name, something like this had to happen to you. I remember you saying my name, Dusky, was nice too, and how it brought us closer. But you don't tell me that anymore, you never will."

Dusky felt a tear slowly sliding down the side of his face. He continued,

"The school is probably going to close, no surprise there, it was inevitable anyway with what happened with Peregrine and Thrush." Dusky stood up and hardly hit his head on the door as it slid slowly on the ground, he grabbed its talons and raked it. He felt his teeth grind. 

"I'm sorry Peacemaker on that day when you yelled at us to duck from an incoming knife, no one was able to see what you saw, and then now...you won't be able to see again as the next thing I knew, you were no more. Boy...you should've seen the hatred that sparked from that one armored Icewing, I think his name was Shard. The horror on the Graduatings' faces might as well have been priceless to you."

Dusky stood straight up.

"I think you'd say something comforting by now..." Dusky trailed off.

But you won't, he reminded himself. Cause after all of this, you'd be here now. Dusky opened the door finally and looked as if the darkness seemed endless inside it. 

You should've been here now. Those eyes that tended to glow are now completely blank and hollow. Those rainbow scales which I have to say were completely something else are no longer brighten with color anymore but instead a dead gray. Do you know what the worst part of it all is? When I saw you, your look of shock transformed into exhaustion.

You might as well have been too tired to truly grasp how your eyes became truly...nothing. Or at least...the eye that didn't get hit by the knife.

Now there was Dusky, his eyes finally getting used to the lack of light. The light from the overhung lantern poured in triangularly into the room. There were Peacemaker's belongings, dusty but still yet organized, still by the side of the wall, the opposite side of where Dusky's was. A mess.

However, when he first looked the plant was the first he saw being directly opposite from the door and it lay on the floor. Awesomeness was its name. A weird one but Peacemaker kept swearing it was mostly Kinkajou's idea.

It was made up of strawberries, Peacemaker's favorite obsession and food.

Dusky wondered if Peacemaker was in a better place or not, something he had been told by Cliff. But Peacemaker would disagree, he once said that for him, death might as well be truly nothing like a plant. There would be no thoughts, no emotions, but instead, it was alive and thriving and now it was just...dead. Sooner or later, something is bound to take its place like another of that same fruit but where did the others go?

Who knows? Dusky had no idea. 

Dusky fell on the floor in the center, he then proceeded to cry out,

"First...dad left...and now you! Why! Why. Why...did you leave me too?"

There was no response.

Like Peacemaker, the plant stood there, dead. Its strawberries that it grew were now decayed and rotten and the leaves slumped over with a gray tone of color. It was like how a flower dies and it slumps over slowly but eventually, it's just gone.

Maybe Peacemaker could've had a better comparison or maybe that's exactly how he would compare it.

It didn't matter, Dusky reminded himself. He would have already told me...if he was here right now. 

Well, that was depressing.