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❝BAH.❞
*ృ༅*. Soleanna is too cold for Shadow's taste. There is nothing more annoying than stopping whatever he is trying to do every five seconds just to wipe his nose. Annoying, but he will not complain. He is safe here—Maria is safe here. Who cares about anything else, when he and his love are, at last, free! For her, he will brave the coming winter that is slowly clawing its way through the country and the folds of his coat.
It is a frosty autumn in the diverse city and he is bundled up to the brim (he has a fretful human to thank for that) as he walks down the streets, his destination the bakery. More humans walk this route than anyone else, so they accidentally bump him here and there, and only some have the decency to apologise for having not seen him, the small hedgehog that is regretfully is. Which is also annoying. Soleanna's other downside is that he is surrounded by humans, and Shadow does not like feeling smaller than he already is. Thinking about it has him shrinking deeper into his coat and scarf, quickening his pace toward the cinnamon doughnuts awaiting him at the shop.
After crossing the street, he passes by a newsstand before he turns the corner. He is not one to read gossip or politics or bias reviews on the latest moving picture, so he normally glances at the front page and then ignores it—but this headline in bold, black capitals grabs him by the neck.
THE QUEEN IS DEAD!?
If he had a paper cup of coffee like most of the humans around him, he would have dropped it. It would have crashed to his boots, staining the white sidewalk in a bitter shade of brown. But Shadow's hands are empty, trembling fists in his pockets, and his breath puffs out over the rim of his scarf in frightful little clouds.
He wishes he could say that he cannot fathom it. He wants to say he does not understand why a thirteen-year-old girl is dead the day before her birthday.
But Shadow can, unfortunately, fathom it.
Shadow does understand why.
Tears blind him and he forgets about the doughnuts he has been thinking about all morning. Tears steal his sight away and he turns back the way he came, walking, jogging, running.
He is crying the entire run back home.
♚♛♜♝♞
❝MARIA!❞
*ృ༅*. There is a rattle in chest and frost in his lungs when he shuts the back door behind him. Slams it, rather, but by accident, having fallen back against it. A cough takes him prisoner, then a battalion of them he cannot stop. A minor cough, nothing to do with sickness—just the frigid air mixed with nerves, the lack of air—but even so, Shadow cannot catch his breath, cannot breathe, so he slides to the floor to curl into a ball, his only defence against his anxiety.
