We had been making progress through the winter hellscape, but due to the lack of food, it was getting harder and harder to muster up the will to move forwards and get out of this forsaken place.
Our bodies were becoming paler and paler as the days passed and we stopped making as much progress, we even started to skip a few days here and there as well as stop having sex so much. We still did it every few days but the frequency at which we had sex slowly grew wider and wider.
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A couple of weeks had passed and slowly, we were travelling less and less each day, then we stopped travelling more than once a week.
This morning, when I was waking up, my mind was in a haze and almost mistook Shirayaa as food, which was a terrifying thought. I didn't speak to her for the rest of the day, concerning her, but I just couldn't bring myself to look at her after what I thought this morning.
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Another few weeks pass by and we weren't any closer to figuring out how far we'd gone and how close we'd actually gotten to the golden pillar. It was beginning to seem hopeless at this rate. Most days and nights we just spent together in each other's embrace, too tired and hungry to do anything, and even if we did muster up the will to do something, it wouldn't amount to much anyways.
The following morning, she confronted me about what had happened yesterday.
"What was yesterday all about?" She asked, clearly annoyed that I avoided all attempts at interacting with her in any way, I even refused her offer for a quicky.
"..." I just sat there, not responding or making a sound as I looked down at the floor with a guilty gaze.
"I've known you long enough to know what that look means, tell me what you're feeling so guilty over so we can go back to normal and maybe die together in peace." She said with an impatient tone.
I bit my lip as my body started to shake, not wanting to say what I was about to say.
"Spit it out already!" She shouted at me, her hunger making her more impatient.
"I-I... I m-mis-mist-took you as f-f-food yesterday." I managed to say with tears streaming down my face as my body quivered in fear as I dreaded her response.
But no response came, no words, no physical violence, nothing. I was confused but also still scared of seeing her reaction. I somehow managed to muster up the courage to look at her and just saw her looking at me with a dry smile.
"…?" I was really confused as I didn't know how to interpret that face.
"Is that all? Haha! Don't be so stupid silly, it's obvious that you'd think like that after being starved for so long, in fact, I thought the same thing this morning." She said with a cheery tone, but still laden with a heavy undertone.
Again, I didn't know how to respond to that, I just kind of stared at her with a blank despondent gaze.
"What? Don't look at me like that." She said with a slight disgust in her voice.
I sighed, knowing that we truly couldn't last much longer like this.
"I don't think we can go very far anymore, I mean we can barely even muster up the willpower to wake up. Is it even worth it anymore." I said depressingly.
"Hey, don't think like that. Yeah, we may be stuck here for what remains of our now limited lives, but at least we're here together and not alone." She said, trying to comfort me.
"Hahh..." I sighed again, knowing that everything she said was positive, but I just couldn't look past the bleakness of our situation. I wanted to grow older with her, start a family with her and then look over our children as our parents were never truly given the opportunity to do so. But it looked like that would never come to fruition now.
"Let's just spend the rest of our mortal days together here then... Not like we can do much else anyways..." I said somewhat dejectedly, but still, she was right that I'd get to spend what remained of my life with her, which was the only good thing about this situation.
She gestured for me to come over and embrace her, and I did so, finding a small comfort in doing so. We then soon fell asleep for a long while, a few days at best before waking up once more to spend our time awake not doing much and barely talking that much as we'd run out of things to talk about.
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Several weeks had passed since I first thought of eating Shirayaa, and these thoughts kept on coming back. She had the same thoughts as well. We joked about it every now and then but we barely chuckled, knowing that our hunger might actually make us do this.
And that scares me. I don't want to do that. I don't want to eat the woman I love.
At that moment, I felt the gaze of something other than Shirayaa. I knew I was being watched, but why did its gaze suddenly return, or did it get stronger? I couldn't tell as I was too hungry to sense it before.
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Another week went by and we now lacked the strength to even do anything, we couldn't speak nor could we move. We would just wake up, maybe open our eyes to look at the visage of the other person sleeping, and if we were lucky, look into each other's eyes when we were awake and managed to open our eyes.
I was feeling very drowsy each time I woke up. I don't think I'll be able to last much longer, and I don't think she will either.
But I didn't want to die like this, I at least wanted to hold her hand as we left the mortal realm and went to our respective afterlives. I would probably go to hell because I'm my father's spawn, and she would go to the serpent's heaven, where all the serpentine races could feast for the rest of time.
The thought of never seeing each other again brought me to tears as I looked at her, trying to burn her face into my memory so that I'd never forget her, not even after an eternity.
Still, I made an effort to hold her hand. I managed to flop my right arm over to her, hoping she would grasp my meaning when she next opened her eyes.
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But I never got to feel her ever again.
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(Dorrak POV)
It had been about a day since we had put Traytora into the fire but it seemed she hadn't come any closer to waking up.
Then she suddenly started to scream.
Loudly.
It was painful to even listen to that sharp, shrill screech that was laden with pain. I could tell as it reminded me of the time she was trapped inside the facility, but this was clearly whatever she was dreaming, or more accurately, having a nightmare about, was more painful than what she experienced when having her soul torn to pieces.
I knew I had to get her to wake up somehow, but I couldn't think properly with her constant shrieking. So, I just went with the easiest option of just hitting her. Even if it didn't wake her, it should at least stop her from screaming.
I stood up while covering my ears as best I could and ran straight to her. She was still in the fire but I should be able to take a small bit of it.
As I reached the middle, I could barely make out that she was laying there and so I flexed me legs and kicked her right in the abdomen, sending her flying out of the fire and I think into a tree.
I rushed out to see that she had indeed crashed against a tree. I also noticed that she had stopped screeching.
I just hope she's okay.