#whadda hell i miss dogwarts sm
Grian stares out over the edge of the perimeter. He’s been sitting here a while. He kicks a rock, watches it clatter all the way to the deepslate and bedrock floor of the thing, even as he hears someone approach.
He looks up. He looks at the other for a minute before looking down into the perimeter once more. “You know, on the anniversary of when it all started, we threw a party.”
Ren sits next to Grian and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Maybe today’s less of a partying sort of day, my friend.”
“Maybe,” Grian says.
They’re both quiet again for a while. Grian curls his wings tighter to himself. They almost feel heavy, like this. They almost feel like they wouldn’t catch the wind.
“Any reason you’re out here instead of, I don’t know, bothering S—”
“I’m not… I can’t look at him today,” Grian says.
“Funny,” Ren says. “Neither can I.”
Grian snorts.
“I could ask you the same about—he’s one video call away.”
“Well,” Ren says, and they’re both quiet again. Grian’s hands feel awful. He’s already washes them several times, though. He could go land in one of the little ponds nearby, or the river, and wash them again, but it won’t make his hands or feathers feel less grimy.
After a moment, Ren hands him a can of cheap domestic beer. Grian stares at him, baffled. “Well, despite Doc’s grumbling, I don’t drink the good stuff when I’m sad,” Ren says reasonably. “I don’t taste it that way.”
“I’m not sure getting drunk is a great idea,” Grian says.
“Just a toast then,” Ren says.
“Fine.”
Ren thinks for a moment, cracks his can, and then, in a deep, affected, barely-Scottish accent, says: “To the Red Kingdom! May those bloodstained stones rest peacefully.”
“…to us,” Grian says, “and can we rest peacefully too.”
“Hah!” the Red King says. “I’ll drink to pointless dreams, laddie.”
“Youwould.”
Grian takes a swig of the beer and promptly chokes. It tastes absolutely terrible, as expected, but is unfortunately grounding. Great. He’ll have to admit to Ren at this rate that he might have been right about something.
He stares out over the perimeter a while longer.
“To one year,” the Red King says.
“To one year,” Grian echoes.
“To your victory,” the Red King says.
“To never winning again,” says Grian. “It’s a long way down. It’s a long way down.”
Neither of them leave that spot for a long time, not until after the sun has set and a nearby skeleton arrives to drive them off.
