Arduous

Orange. Autumn foliage, rust, sunlight spilling onto a closed mahogany door. Paper held up to a candle to inspect it. The taste of bile as the guilt is pushed down again.

His antlers are growing, slowly but surely. It's not a painful process by any means, not really – like shedding feathers, down replaced by things capable of flight.

Soon they can be decorative again. But it is not blue jewels that crown his antlers this time. No, the days of that are long over – rubies take their place instead, the light catching on them to cast droplets of blood upon the ground and the people who pass around him. Far more beautiful, Kit would agree.

There was, of course, no space for such frivolity when working in the NOTE. But that is more joy than anything. His shirt and trousers are a crisp, unblemished white. The colours of someone he owes his life to; the colours of someone he resents.

He dons a black velvet cloak, making the customary unnecessary motion of dusting it off. Unnecessary, because as always, it is pristine.

Rhys smiles.

Black. Tree trunks in winter, ink, the dark behind your eyes when you close them. The night sky persisting in staining every hour it touches. The taste of tears as they are pushed away again. Black; because the Story can't end yet.¹⁾