BREATH

Written on October 1, 2024 (♏︎)

Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2024 for prompt No. 1: Race Against the Clock (Panic Attack).

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Golagros should have been used to humiliation by then—used to it or pushed beyond it. A week of stupendous failures and three days marching north from the windflats: he ought to have been too hungry and hunted to give mind to pride. Lord Beoulve had lived. Dame Folles had died. The brigade everywhere past Mandalia lay scattered or slain. In the midst of all that, Golagros Levine amounted to very little, and he should have liked to care about those happenings gone before as much as the coneys and bramblings about them did.

On day four—fingers numb and belly full of pine bark—Golagros failed in such animal stoicism. He woke. He fumbled about to find his satchel half frozen and his hostage still warm beside him. Collapsing into silent sobbing, he doubled over wordlessly and could not move himself back to the road. He fell down instead beneath the open sky and shook like a falling sick beggar, the world around him receding into the roar of his own heartbeat.

It was some minutes before Golagros heard the thrum of a steady breath setting a tempo for his own—heard it, felt beside him its silent owner, and resented them both.

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