Alone

Alone.

It was dark and the sounds of liquids dropping to the stone floor below echoed louder than any thoughts that tried to form in her mind. Only a faint ripple of light like a beam of halfhearted hope shone faintly into the cell from the barred window.

The light streamed through like love through a breaking point.

But she'd already tried the window.

Just like she'd already tried the gates, and the floor, and the cracks in the walls. She'd tried to scream, but the sounds rebounded in the still air and returned like wraiths in the night. Now she sat alone, curled in a corner of her confine, a room many times too large for the single creature it held.

She hadn't been cold at first.

The rage had fueled her, kept her burning long after her fuze had withered into dust, igniting the embers in her heart with little more than force of will and defiance.

Pointless.

The walls were magic. She couldn't pass through, and she couldn't break them. Nobody came to her aid. She could pound away on the walls and kick at the door and scream to her heart's content.

But nobody would care.

Her fur damp and greyed with dirt, she curled into a tight ball. She'd already picked her favorite corner of the cell. It wasn't any cleaner or warmer than the others, but she couldn't see the window from here. She didn't want the light to shine where it wasn't wanted.

She was alone.

...Until she wasn't.

The door creaked open and rested with a heavy thud on the stone behind it, and the rhythmic jangle of armor-clad footsteps approached at an irritatingly loud stride. Her eyes opened one by one, gazing sightlessly into the darkness before her. She could only listen as the sounds stopped right outside the doors to her prison.

For a moment she wanted to turn, but her body didn't respond. Instead, she leaned limp against the wall, unsure if she was ready to endure the inevitable talk. But it came anyway, in Dante's sweet-like-sugar princely voice, as though he was somehow unable to be angry.

He sounded... tired, rather, and leaned his head on a pillar, his small horns clinking dully against the stone.

"Are you done fighting with yourself?"

Kane didn't answer.

His voice droned on like wind through the trees, rustling the leaves and bringing the promise of rain to the fields. She listened as though she craved it, the mountainside, the mist in the morning, the first to see the light spark daytime in a world eternally shaded by trees. Her thoughts wandered to the lights from a distance, little stars from the cities below, the silence.

It had been peaceful there. And she hadn't been alone.

...She had never been alone. Not like this.

Never like this.

Dante's voice echoed around the chamber, a single drone in the stillness, until it stopped. Had he asked her a question? She didn't know. The silence spread between them, lightyears apart like galaxies.

He tapped the pillar impatiently.

Still nothing.

Moments passed, and the water dripped from the ceiling again.

The cold was all-consuming, a cool dagger to cut open a flaming heart and watch the innards spill out like syrup from the trees. Her mouth opened, her throat clogged and raw from shouting.

"...I miss him."