Before the Dawn (Draft 1)

Part 4

Sion

It had been three years since the end of the war. Sion stretched in his nest before opening his bright pink eyes to look around. It seemed the sun was out, judging by the glow coming through the roof of leaves on Ignia's house. She wasn't there. Not particularly surprised, he just sat up to quickly groom his fur before standing up, shaking himself out and heading out of the house. Like usual, he didn't really know what to do with himself. Most days he just laid around, but he felt like distracting himself now. He'd had a bad dream the night before, the kind filled with morbid panic that made him thank Amare dearly for his waking, and he wanted to get it off his mind somehow. He was pretty sure he'd been in his old house, with his mother, and something horrible was coming but his mother wouldn't leave with him. Luscin had been there, but he couldn't remember what he'd done.

He grabbed a stick from the forest and carried it to the edge of the cliff near Ignia's house, where the wind buffeted and helped to drown out the less persistent of Sion's thoughts. He laid down and began shredding the stick with his teeth. He'd had a habit of chewing on sticks since he was young, and it had certainly contributed, he realized now, to him not having friends. Every odd thing he did had contributed to him not having friends, but back then he never understood why walking up to another fawn with a stick between his teeth would hinder his likelihood of a successful conversation.

Arietes foxes were stupid. They forgot everything and cared way too much about normality. Even his childhood best friend had fallen victim to it around others besides Sion, but his mother never cared too much about was normal. She had always been the only one, though now that he knew Ignia, she certainly wasn't too self conscious about being different. He had to say he didn't mind being out here away from the rest of the village, lonely though it was. It was better than not being able to step outside without being judged, or ignored.

Once he finished reducing the stick to wood chips, he wandered to the recently unfrozen part of the nearby stream to rinse his mouth of splinters before heading absentmindedly down the path to the village. He didn't want to be alone anymore. Maybe he could find Ignia there, maybe there was something going on that everyone was gossiping about. He wondered vaguely if he'd see Luscin, but wasn't sure if he even wanted to, there wouldn't be anything he could do anyway. He'd pushed him away to make it easier, not to watch him from a distance and miss him just as much. But he still missed him. Of course he did, but he was completely sure it would be worse if he had to be around him, without being close to him like he used to be. And Luscin was way too empathetic to be close with while Sion was this broken. But he missed him...

Stop thinking about it.

Despite the self-prescribed advice, his mind continued to work like a snake eating its own tail. His hooves moved on their own, without him telling them to, making soft noises on impact. The occasional rustle of a dead leaf, or the rolling of a stone he'd kicked on accident, never noticing.

When he got to the village, it took him some time to realize that the name 'Rex' was floating around. That made the somewhat soft tension in his belly that came from being in the village turn to an aggressive, squeezing knot, and he had to listen harder to confirm what he'd heard. He hadn't been mistaken. Why was everyone talking about the old king? Rex's bloody reign had ended with the war, when almost all of his guards had been killed or freed from his control. He'd fled to somewhere on Earth after that. Was he somehow back? Would he be killing again soon?

Sion found himself shaking a bit at the thought of another war. He could still remember the sound that guard had made when his mother had killed her, whatever method she'd used. What if something happened to Ignia, and he was left finally completely on his own? What if something happened to Luscin?

Sion soon noticed he'd stopped walking without realizing, and briefly puzzled over how he'd managed to do this. When he looked around, pulling out of his thoughts to breathe, only one Arietes fox was looking at him. He successfully made her stop by glaring at her and flicking a slightly bristled tail, before continuing to walk again. This time, he focused a little more on remaining calm while he looked for Ignia.

Surely everyone would be panicking if it was really something so serious. No one else seemed too worried. Settling with this logic to keep his mind a little in check until he found Ignia, he felt a little better. It wasn't long before he spotted her bright red, orange, and ash coloured pelt.

"Hey, kid," Ignia greeted as she glanced back at him for a few moments, then "They found Rex, they're calling him Creatura now, actually. No one thinks he should continue to be called King."

Sion perked in interest, still frowning. Ignia wasn't worried, that was good, at least. "Where? How? What's he doing?"
Ignia snorted slightly at the onslaught of questions, before giving one of her annoyingly cryptic answers.

"Sleeping."

Sion blinked. "I'm sorry, he's-"

"He's been cursed. Just sleeping for the past three years," piped up the buck who Ignia had been talking to. He was a former member of the Vespertilio, the group of rebels that had organized and fought the war against Rex- Creatura. That must have been how Ignia knew him, but she was most likely only choosing to interact with him to know what was going on. "There's some kind of magical border around him, though, and everyone thinks it'll wake him up if one of us crosses it, so there's a ban on that area. Although I don't know why they're letting him live."

Sion felt something come up inside him that he'd thought had left him. An irrational, insatiable anger that smouldered more and more as the conversation went on.

"Because no one understands his magic," Ignia snorted. "If they weren't able to kill him no one knows what he'd do down there once awake."

"If regular Arietes foxes couldn't kill him, he wouldn't have run off when he lost all his guards!" the buck shot back defiantly.

"He shouldn't be allowed to live after what he did!" Sion finally flared up. "He's right- he wouldn't have turned tail if we couldn't kill him. Why isn't the king doing something? That bastard killed his brother!"

Then the buck said something Sion hadn't expected in the slightest.

"Should you really be using that word as an insult?"

Sion's ears shot back as he looked at him, mouth hanging open in anger and disbelief, so thick he couldn't even think of anything to say. He turned, and ran.