( This thread is to explain ICly why Pho's been inactive. ^^ )
The countless number of days that he barely managed to drag himself out of bed. The countless, sleepless nights spent trembling and whimpering in fear. The nights he could find a wink of sleep ripped from him by the gut-wrenching screams of his terrors, the sweat that covered his body and dripped off him as he lay sobbing on the bed, hardly able to keep them silent enough to keep from waking anyone up. They had just gotten worse.
Reliving the number of deaths; Persephone, Nala, his own. Reliving the fear of possibly being eaten alive in the Spanish arena, the horrid fantasy that his whole tribe caught blackcough and one by one they dropped off and died like flies -- the little snow leopard unable to do anything but scream in vain during these nightmares until the flaming shadows engulfed him and choked off the screams. His nightmares were just getting more vivid, as if he really were reliving them and it just kept getting more graphic. His imagination was taking a-hold of him and taking him on a wild ride. It would only be a matter of time before he fell off and went plunging into the deep end.
It was a miracle he hadn't snapped at anyone or just broken down somewhere. It was a miracle he was even able to be in the Doctor's Room without being haunted by his imagination. Everyone once in a while he would imagine a dead tribemate, someone who wasn't really dead yet, who would come up to him, cry out in this sickening scream and then vanish, leaving him trembling. Phoenix hardly talked for these past weeks, hardly ate, hardly even was seen. He was seen by his family, but not as much as before. The nightmares were eating at his soul and shattering his mentality. He just needed a little help, but every time he tried to ask Apollo, the God seemed to be busy with something else.
Phoenix didn't feel comfortable talking to anyone else about it at the moment, no one in the real world. Not when he was imagining their deaths and screams for him to help them but he couldn't. This caused a soft choked cry to escape the cub's jaws, teeth digging into his lip as he fought back the constricting panic.