Sunrise Ridge i want it that way

RIP Aytigrass ;.; feel free to fade with your next post!

If Cottongrass wanted Aytigin to feel hurt, then he'd succeeded. It had been so long since he'd shared his actual thoughts and feelings to someone else, unprompted. It had been so long since he'd been prepared to warm up to the idea of actually maybe one day being open to a relationship of sorts. The younger man before him had been a sort of light at the end of a deep, dark tunnel that Ayti had been travelling down for years now. He'd seen a good future for them. He'd hoped.

Which is where he went wrong.

All of the warmth and butterflies that had existed within the Delaney since he'd first met the snowball chilled and died on the spot. Because he knew a true, honest goodbye when he saw it, and he'd been stupid to think that Cotton would ever care for him. Stupid to think that, after the life he'd lived, anyone would want to be in a relationship with him.

That anyone could love him.

God, he hated that word.

He wanted to say something cruel. He wanted to be angry; to pin his ears back and snap and snarl. But for some reason, the dark-furred man could think of nothing to say. Didn't even feel angry, really - he just felt tired. A sigh pulled itself from his lips and he rose to his paws, avoiding the white wolf's gaze entirely. Turning his back and starting off toward Hearthwood again, Aytigin decided that he probably needed to say something, and no word encompassed it better than,

"Goodbye."

{ exit Aytigin }

Maybe the easier response would have been for him to leave without hesitation. To force his motionless limbs to move and propel him away from the clearing without an explanation. But he never was good at being gentle. Not when emotion poured through him like a rushing river that was made swollen by heavy downpour. This time proved no different. He hadn't come all this way to leave the man before him full of hopeful what-ifs.

He watched Aytigin Delaney leave with quiet yellow eyes. And when he finally heard his one last goodbye? He forced himself onto his feet and turned on the spot. There was no use in loitering. Not when the creeping suspicion that had lingered just behind his eyes was out in the open. It didn't make him feel any lighter. But maybe it didn't need to. With nothing but acceptance inside of him — Cottongrass faded into the surrounding forest. His journey back to Wild Rye Fields would be long.

But he would make it.