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Hunter looked at the dead lizard. It was a large specimen, a bulky green, and by all justifications it should be his dinner. But his stomach objected, and he could not keep down even a single bite of meat, spewing it all back up as soon as he swallowed it. He was sick.
He was dying. It didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. In the fields around, he saw the worm grass waving, still for lack of stimulation. He wondered if it ever felt sad, being grass. Did it know that it could not walk? Did it know what it was to not walk?
Did he know what it was to not be loved? Did he understand what it meant that he had no parents, no family, no home to go back to? Nothing but the green hands, cold but soft.
He would not live to see them again. He had made his journey, and he had found the person he was sent to find.
Her hands had been soft, as well, for the brief moment she had clasped them around his. She had thanked him, praised him, and offered him whatever words of comfort she could.
To wake back up again, that was what awaited him. So it was said, so it would be. He did not know those cold people, for their flaws and their intrigues, to be liars. So, he would awake once more. Perhaps with a family, and in a warm, gentle place.
“You will not wake back up.”
The voice came from a figure in black. They were a twisting mass of black, actually, with skulls of lizards and slugcats spinning around inside their mucky form, bubbling to the surface and drifting back down. They were him. They were everything that he wasn’t.
“You will sleep eternal. It will be cold, of course, but it will be calm.”
He turned to face the inky blackness, though he did not want to. He wanted to curl up, to close his eyes and feel the warmth of the sun. Why couldn’t he just be warm? Why was it always so cold?
“I’m not going.” He said to the darkness. “You can’t make me.”
The darkness said nothing back.
"I’m not going!” He screamed, looking around for something that could change what was happening. A way out. “…Please.”
He looked at the darkness, and now it was soft, gentle, like flowing water running around his ankles. It reminded him of the green hands, of being small and happy.
“Give me just a little more time. Enough to go home.”
The darkness shook its head.
“You were never going home. You knew that.”
He looked up at the sky. Out here, you could just see the sunset through the clouds.
“That’s not fair. I did it!” He felt the tears chilling his cheeks. “I did it. I saved her.” He coughed, feeling phlegm building in his lungs and tiredness building in his eyes. “Don’t I get anything? Doesn’t someone save me?”
The darkness put forward a hand. It was soft, and now the voice of the dark, that had been so cold, sounded sad and gentle.
“I’m here to save you.”
He looked at the hand, outstretched out to him.
“I’m going to…” He bit back the sobs, though he did not know why. He didn’t have to be strong anymore. “It was so hard. But I’m going to miss it.”
Hunter fell forward, into the gentle arms of the dark. He felt the sun on his back.
It was warm.