The Draconequus sighed softly as he closed the book and quietly slipped it up into the shelf above, before reaching up and slowly rubbing at his forehead. His suit jacket hung off the back of the chair he was sitting in, and his cane was nearby, left leaning against a shelf... but he didn't need it anymore. It was an amplifier for his powers... he needed his cane, his rings, his prayer beads, his notebook, all of those things for his abilities to work. Abilities that were no longer necessary.

“And I need the hat to look cool.” Allonym murmured quietly, reaching up and touching his head... then he glanced up before looking around the hovel he lived in, and smiling at the sight of the fedora on the hat rack. He pushed himself away from the desk... then grasped his stomach and closed his eyes tightly before smiling faintly, whispering: “Damn.”

He shook his head out, the Draconequus breathing slowly before he carefully straightened and gazed silently around his one-room home. His beaten writing desk, a messy futon where he slept, little more than a nest of old blankets and pillows, cases of cola and energy drinks piled up next to a beaten-up little fridge filled with more of them. Shelves lined the walls, all of these filled with books: history books, fantasy books, and unsurprisingly, plenty of comic books. The Draconequus smiled faintly as he strode carefully across the room, dragging one leg slightly behind himself as he looked over his possessions: there were plenty of loose papers, too, doodles, and notebooks, and binders, and just random knickknacks here and there as well. He was a pack-rat, but... he supposed that was in his nature.

Allonym grunted and stumbled a bit as he strode towards the back door, half-falling forwards, and his prayer beads jangled quietly around his neck, reminding him of where they were. The Draconequus reached up, squeezing them silently through his shirt as he breathing became more labored, and then he straightened and looked silently towards the back door, past the smiling portraits on the wall, the framed letters, the faded mementos of what was gone...

He smacked his temple a few times with the butt of his palm as there was a whistling in his ears, the sound of a train, the scream of metal on metal, and then he shook his head hurriedly out before squeezing his prayer beads compulsively through his shirt again. Then slowly, carefully, he made his way forwards as he whispered: “Writers are very unimportant in the long run, you see. It's the characters who make the story... who tell the story. We writers... we get so arrogant, thinking that... even when we come up with an original idea, it belongs to us... it doesn't. It belongs to the story. It belongs to the characters we make experience it, and dance to our whims... except, oh ho, sometimes they have their revenge, don't they? We get so attached to certain ideas, certain concepts, they become real and tangible to us, and we become willing to give up anything... anything... to see them last just a little longer...”

Allonym silently pushed through the door, then he smiled faintly as he let it swing closed behind him before leaning back against the old wood, gazing silently out past the trees and over the crystalline, gorgeous lake in the distance. It was beautiful here, his own personal little paradise. It was something he wished he'd been able to share... with someone special.

He quietly stumbled forwards, striding a little down a cobblestone path, past a single tall tree... and then he smiled faintly as he looked down, reaching a small, pretty slope. Roses, so dark and deep they looked black, grew wild here, in a natural wreath that surrounded a polished slate tombstone. A bouquet of the same flowers rested in front of the grave, and Allonym calmly sat down beside it as he leaned one arm companionably overtop it, smiling faintly as he whispered: “Hey, you.”

He halted, looking up into the beautiful sky above: the sun was beginning to set, and he thought he could see the faintest sight of stars twinkling in the firmament beyond the clouds, his eyes studying the constellations as he said quietly: “So I finally finished recording that silly story. About the ponies, yes. I know, it's silly. But hey, I've always been a little silly, huh?”

Allonym smiled over at the grave, then he shrugged a bit as he shifted, wincing and rubbing at his stomach before he flinched a little as gray visibly spread up from beneath his collar, and then he murmured softly as his eyes flicked back to the grave: “Hey now, don't worry about me. I think of it as... I'm on my way to come looking for you, you know? It was worth it, because... no one will ever know what these ponies were like. How in their stories, I saw a little of you and me...” He closed his eyes. “No, I saw a lot of you in her. You were always my hero.”

Allonym quieted, then he smiled softly as he rested against the tombstone, letting one arm fall across his lap; and slowly, gray spread down his ivory-scaled fingers, became first immobile, then petrified completely. It spread further, as Allonym whispered: “I'm just an Avatar, halfway between one world and another, half made of lies, half made of truths... and who knows which is which? So this is a fair sacrifice. My life, for hers. She's only a written character but so what? So am I. So are we all, even the readers are just... just the characters in someone else's story, and I wonder if they realize that? But all of us... we do get choices in life, to forge our own path. To break our given texts, to speak a new dialogue, to... to do something, anything, differently. And I have now... I've saved them.”

He trembled a bit, but he smiled warmly, radiantly, making his features look younger as his mismatched green and chestnut eyes gazed silently down over the grave. “I saved that little shard of you, even though I couldn't save you all those years ago. I can be happy, knowing that... that is a worthy sacrifice, especially of a... a worthless, blotted, badly-formed pseudo-character like myself.”

He laughed, then shook his head slowly and smiled faintly, closing his eyes and whispering as the gray spread over his features, as his arm petrified in place over the top of the tombstone: “I love you. I'm... I'm just going to put my head down for a minute, and then we'll watch the sunset together like old times, and we'll laugh, and we'll dance like we used to dance in your apartment... we'll do all the things we used to... but... I just need to put my head down for a moment...”

Allonym shifted as best he could, silently curling over the tombstone, head lowering to the arm curled overtop it. As he did, his features became gray stone, lost some of their detail, but in the smoothness could be seen serenity... in the expression that remained, a tender smile, a quiet joy. In the way he rested calmly, there was the knowledge that even as he went to sleep, a thousand thousand stories would continue on, the same as they ever had, undaunted by the changing of times, the rise or fall of society, the very shift of the planets and the moon and sun. Not the sky, not Heaven, not Hell, not all the cosmos nor all that which lay beyond had any sway over what stories would be told, how they would continue, and when they would end... not even the writer's pen could determine that. Only the characters and players, who acted out their roles, never understanding until the last moment how important they were to the universe around them; how all are players upon the stage, but a stage is nothing but a hollow without players to fill it.

Silently, a raven fluttered down and landed atop the shoulder of the now-statue of Allonym. A single black rose was in its beak, and it looked back and forth, eyes gleaming before it dropped the flower, letting it roll down the slope of the statue to fall into the upturned hand frozen in its lap, as if in blessing, like an omen of peace. Like a sign that he could sleep, and the world would continue to move on without him.

The raven leapt to the air and flew away, leaving the black rose behind, gently gripped in the hand of a lover who sat with his beloved, refusing to be parted even in death. And above, the sun set, the night came on, the stars shone and the moon blessed the earth, and still, the stories always, always continued on.

Cherish what you love, while it is here;
Cherish what you love, even more when it is gone;
Cherish what you love, and never be ashamed of it;
Cherish what you love.

August 24th, 2012 – October 3rd, 2012