Everything had felt like a failure, so far. Pennyroyal, the Nightshade who couldn't carry on and do what was necessary. Pennyroyal, the boy who couldn't find glowing blue runes across miles and miles, days and weeks away from home. Pennyroyal, the most useless Nightshade alive, just a bump on a log who couldn't try anything with success. He wouldn't have blamed Verbena for letting him go ahead, or leaving him altogether; he'd been forging on with a pace most unhealthy since the beginning, and considering she was the only one feeding them both, food and their energy was waning.

Or maybe that was just poor, stupid Pennyroyal, who seemed to inherit only one thing from his Father: the soul-capturing, desperate, obsession, the way he would drive himself into the dirt further with every step and keep going.

Perhaps that's why a perceptible, gut-wrenching pull was too real too ignore. He barely noticed the strange passageways the dream visitor lead him through, nor the bite of frost against his paws as they emerged nearer to home than they had been since the start of all this. He did, once or twice, think about the shade of the snow -- but other than holding back the need to puke here and again, ignored that just as well.

Nothing else mattered. Only completing something, anything in his life. His legs take him quicker at the urging of the visitor, lulled back into a frantic lope. There is no better judgement calling for him to slow, to break, to stop this.

And when Penny finally saw the table, the faint glow of victory, he lunged to touch it.

This. This is what they'd been searching for. Would he have to push the two pieces together, somehow, or was he enough to awaken it?