He feels it before he ever hears it, or even notices it. There’s a moment of fear struck in his heart, dread curling its way into his bones. His hair fluffs to almost twice its size, electricity calling him even from across the castle.
In the split second all of that happens, he is filled with certainty, the calm stillness of death, although he knows it’s not his. The calm reaching of the void wouldn't call for him.
When the second is over, he hears the loud combustion of his bookshelves. As he races towards the tower, he hears the crackling of fire, the sizzling of boiling water. He hears his dearest Vodka the loudest. She howls in pain for only a moment as her world shudders and implodes and leaves her with a moment of peace.
It takes only a minute to see the aftermath. His bookshelves are on fire, waterlogged from the steam. The plants that he grows in the pond are all cooked, even the hardiest of plants can't survive being flash boiled. The vines that grow across the room are burnt, although the vines on the walls are mostly unscathed.
None of that matters. He grows vines all throughout the castle, it won’t be hard to move them. Those books are ones that have been printed many times, no priceless artifact of the past or old journals. Those are easy to replace.
His dear Vodka.
Lovely, lovely Vodka. His dearest companion, his daughter. He had raised her from the pup he found wandering the outskirts of a nearby village. He had given her siblings a home and he had raised some of them too, but they weren’t his. Of the many companions he had taken in, only Vodka and Redwood had followed him to the castle he built from the ground up.
Speaking of Redwood.
He doesn’t know when he showed up but he feels him pressed against his side, supporting him from where he didn’t notice he had fallen to his knees. His fur is rough and yet soft at the same time. His collar is dyed a forest green, a reminder of where he came from.
He doesn’t need to see this. Or maybe he should.
His sister is gone. How are they supposed to deal with this?
She’s been here for so long, Redwood is new but Vodka had been one of the earliest companions he had found. She’s all they’ve ever known, no matter how many other siblings they had, she was there. And now she’s not.
She’s gone.
There will be time to grieve later, he has to clean up first. His books are still burning and he’s inhaling smoke. It’s not that bad because of all the water but he has to take care of that. He has a couple buckets of sand, he can put the fire out.
The storage room is in the same hallway as the tower so it’s only a few steps before he hauls the buckets out, Redwood following suit. Redwood drags a bucket by the brim while he hauls them by the handles.
With only the small amount of bookshelves and the vines to carry the flame along, it’s easy to put it out. What’s less easy is keeping his eyes away from the left side of the room. What’s harder is ignoring the smell of burnt hair and burnt flesh.
He steels himself and lets himself be a coward for a few more minutes. He goes to fetch more shelves and books, he needs to fix his table. It’s annoying trying to enchant without his table.
It takes more minutes of being shadowed by Redwood to get them in place, but they go by too quickly. He doesn’t want to do this. He’s not prepared.
But he has to, he can’t just leave her there to rot. He can’t do that. He knows that.
So he tries not to cry and faces the music. He steps next to her with her brother at his heels and gathers her into his arms. His clothes are streaked with soot now, the burnt fur where she had been struck being painted on his shirt.
He carries her across the castle and outside with even steps. They only falter once he makes it to the spot nestled into a corner of the outside of the castle that will be her grave.
He sets her down gently, softer than he ever has even when she was only a pup. His shovel falls into his hands and he starts digging. There is no gravestone, not yet. He doesn’t know if there ever will be, he will always know.
This is going to stay with him forever. When the void reclaims him, when he finally falls into his mother’s arms, her name will be on his lips. His daughter, his dearest Vodka will be his final thought before he falls into infinity, before he flies into stretching entropy.
He lays her to rest as Redwood stands by his side, mourning for the rest of his years. He misses home so badly now, and he includes this home he’s made for himself.
With everything settled and the grief hitting him like a truck, he calls Redwood to his bedroom. It’s not healthy to spend the rest of the day curled in bed with him, but he’ll do it anyway.
She’s gone. It’ll stop hurting so much eventually but for now, he’s just lost the closest thing he has to a daughter. Life will start moving again, but he’ll hit pause for just a few minutes more.