His memory was... admittedly not the greatest. Now, don’t get ahead of yourself, he remembered things. Just not always when he needed to or when others normally would. If someone came up to him and said, “Hey, remember when we went to that pond and you fell in?” he wouldn’t have any other answer than a prolonged dead stare until they inevitably shuffled off in discomfort. No, his memories were triggered by stranger things, like phantom smells that no one else could detect but that would send him spiraling down a rabbit hole of what once was. Or, when he comes across a certain patch of land — it could be any combo of tree, bush, and rock, really — and suddenly he’d be spouting off with, “Hey, remember when I pushed you down the ravine? Fun times.” Of course, if you didn’t remember, that’d be alright too — making memories is one of his favorite pastimes.

Unfortunately, it was the important events he could only just barely remember, like a wisp of a dream, fading away the longer he was awake. If he closed his eyes and let his mind wander, he could just see the fading figures of his parents as they walked alongside him, chatting about this or that, his mother throwing back her head to laugh, his father gazing at her with such love it made even little Stygian uncomfortable.

What he could remember most in vivid detail is the day he died. It was an ordinary day in Primal Instinct’s land, hanging out with his best friend at the time. He’d taken a chance to confide in her the darkness he felt emanating from the woods nearby, and in her usual way, she was willing to investigate the phenomena with him as soon as he was ready. Whether it was her offer of support that suddenly gave him a spike of blind courage or the idea of seeing the darkness again, he didn’t quite know, but one second they were standing there talking and the next they were traipsing through the woods.

The next moment, he was lying on his back with a couple of fractured bones and staring up at cats he’d never seen before in his life muttering about how he was crowfood until he moved and one of them screamed. They ran off pretty quick after that. He’d never given much thought to how he’d ended up there exactly, nor if there was any foul play involved. It’s hard to be a detective when you’re aching all over.

But now that was in the past, and here he was, stuck in an ice prison surrounded by white and amazed the light glinting off the snow hadn’t blinded him yet. He hadn’t seen rain in such a long time... He closed his eyes, desperately trying to conjure the scent and sound of a rainstoem. For a moment, he thought he could hear thunder off in the distance, and he smiled privately to himself.

That was until it got louder, more grating, and started actually forming letters, then words. He grit his teeth and opened his eyes, glaring at whoever thought it was a good idea to come over to the prison and talk to him. Talk at him? He had a hard time listening, their tone was like claws against stone.

“What.” He snapped.