It's Been A Long Time || nightmaresincarnate
It would be impossible for Nightlight to forget a man like Pitch Black. A man who'd he'd spent hundreds of years inside of. A man whose very heart he lived in. He poked and prodded at each corner of the ghostly man and came to know only pain and shadows. For a boy like Nightlight that sort of thing is impossible to forget, like when a young child first steps through a haunted house, with ghouls and zombies clawing towards her. She screams, she falls, she clings to her parent and hopes and hopes above all else that the demons won't catch her. But Nightlight had no one to cling to. He had the same sentiment without the safety or solitude of a nurturing hand. He spent his days alone in the horror's of the Nightmare King.
This turned out to be a double edged sword though, because inside he witnessed and came to know all sorts of things about Pitch that he was sure the man didn't know himself. He'd seen the fear and loneliness and suffering, he'd seen the insecurity and the nightmares of his past. Nightlight had a specific picture of the man's pain and would be hard pressed to forget it.
Even now as he sits on the branch of the tree, peering down at the rickety old bed covering a wide open hole. As he sits he plays the pictures in his head, recalls the screams that kept him terrified himself. Certainly he tried to suppress all of those terrors when he escaped but it wasn't that easy, especially after defeating the man so many times over. As soon as he sees a flash of a shadow he stops, waits, listens for a sign that there could be danger. Still Nightlight hasn't come to know which is worse, Pitch's hatred for himself or for the world around him.
The light waits, pausing from his guard duties to watch. He's seen the shadows move there before, crawling down the walls and up again when the moon can't catch them. Nightlight has known about this small home for longer than he'd care to let on but he hasn't had the care to investigate yet, hesitant to what he might find beneath. But Nightlight is a child. Ripe and young even with his years of experience. He's curious. He's not one to let himself be taken by fear and he is desperate to see what has become of his long time enemy, what has become of the prison he'd spent centuries in.
Swooping down onto a lower branch he takes one more breath before he plunges, sliding between the rickety legs of the bed. It's dark, but he's light for a reason. The staff leads him forward, cascading a white light upon things closest to him, his bright eyes trailing around for a sign. A sign of what he's not sure, but now that he's come exploring he's definitely going to look out for something dangerous.
