Notes (updated 1-20):

You know the cool thing about cleaning out your closet?  You find notes to stories that you didn’t know existed (like this one) ^_^ .

As for the story in its entirety; please ignore any historical inaccuracies (I remember most of what I needed to know, but’ll probably slip quite often, but that’s what first drafts are for, after all) and minor character inconsistencies between this bit and the rest (it has been a year between writing the two, but they should be pretty much the same.  Oh, and this part of the story is supposed to be quite a bit different from the rest; that’s how I like my prologues.).  And the chapters will get longer (promise), but I’m very restricted as to what and the amount of information I can include in the early ones.

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“There’s nothing,” I said to him in the darkness, “Nothing left at all.”

“What used to be there, Little One?”

I wept.

“Hush,” he whispered and pulled me closer, my shoulders up to his.  Quietly into my ear, he said with his cool breath that sent shivers through me, “Don’t cry; tears were not meant for you.”  Gently, his lips were placed on the top of my head for a moment, then he asked, “Now tell me, tell me everything you need.”

There was a silence, a short silence in which not even the air around us dared to move, only the invisible colors before my eyes.  “There’s nothing,” I answered, “Nothing at all to be told.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”  Before I had given myself the chance to think, the word had escaped me with a short breath against his hand that caressed my cheek.

Settling back from these thoughts that were so cruel and into his cool body, I closed my eyes.

“Is that it then?  All there will be forever?”

“And all that ever was.”

“Are you sure it’s that simple?”

I wasn’t.

“Yes.”

Dreams of fires and bodies and rubble threatened.

“You want nothing more from this, then?”

You are through with your innocence?

My innocence is through with me.

“No.”

With a grace I then thought impossible, he slid out from beneath me and laid me back against the bed and pillows stuffed with fresh leaves.  “Sleep then, my beloved, and tomorrow it will be done.”

“Stay with me.”

“I cannot.”

“Then take me with you, please…”  Blindly I reached out for him.  “I’m afraid to be alone…”

“I know, but you must.”  He returned my hand to me and kissed my hair once more.  “You must know this now.”  I felt, with that cursed sense of mine, him standing over me, looking down on me with pained eyes.

Just before he left, I heard him whisper, “Because you will never know it again.”

And he was gone, into the dark dark night that he would grant to me so I would never have to fear.

I followed him through the streets with these sleeping eyes of mine, drifted near his shoulder as he went with those powerful eyes through a sheet of blackness that was, in this state, made white.  He knew I followed, he always knew, and he let me, but only like this, only when there was no body of mine to accompany us into those dangerous places.

And he strode calmly, as one who has nothing to loose to those evil creatures everywhere but also as one that has nothing to gain, and therefor is free of worry.  He went from one place to another, waiting for something of interest to appear, and then he would glance back at me and smile a farewell, sweetly commanding me to leave.

That night, when I felt the time drawing near for my departure, I drifted back away, but he whispered to me, Stay.  I did.

He lead me through an alley, pursuing something I could smell and hear and taste, but that eluded my eyes.

Now, he whispered, what will you use this for?

I don’t understand.

Look up.

I saw a familiar form, a stance and soon a face that brought fear and hate to me.

For vengeance?

The man looked to us with a smirk, that evil man from that evil day.  “Come to take my daughter, now?” the man asked mockingly.

He said nothing in reply, but asked me, Would you kill him for that day?

I wept dry tears.

Would you? he persisted.

No, I answered.  He is for the gods to punish.

The gods, you mean the ones that you deny?

I said nothing.

Leave now.

I did, but the screams and cries followed me back into my bed and crept into my dreams.

They plagued me that night and into the morning, my dreams of things that I could not stop, for they had already come to pass.  I wept for them, wept deep into the day and until the night met up with me and he came once more to my side and stood over me.

“If not for vengeance, then for what?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.  Oh, how terribly I wanted to reach my arms out to him and have him cradle me in his own, tell me as he had in the months before that it would be fine, that she was alright at meeting with the gods.  Now, though, I knew there was no comfort left to be given.

Lifting my chin from my hands and shoulders, he looked at me with those eyes that spread the dark veils and glimmered softly in light that had no source.  “What is there, if not purpose?”

No words came, only feverish images with feverish screams.

“There is purpose,” I answered, seeing the amber of his eyes and the pride he held deep behind them.  “If the sun is hidden in the clouds, does that make it gone?”

“No,” he said softly and sat down beside me.

I felt him looking at me, examining each hair and curve and pore, running his gentle fingers over my skin as he went.

“Then,” he asked, “is there anything more that must be done?”

“No.”

Drawing me up next to him and brushing my hair back from my neck, he said, “Tell me of it one last time.”

Carefully, he forced a sharp pain on me and I gasped, but was silenced by his calming embrace.

“There is a light…”  I found it difficult to form the words with the life being borrowed from me.  Just for a moment…

“But there is darkness too…  So much darkness…”

His fingers massaged the back of my neck, coaxing me on.

“Not even a candle…

“And there are tears, colorful tears of white covering the ground.

“You…  You are there, and you ask me,

“‘Where are we going, Beloved?’

“And I reply, ‘To the stars.’”  Hot tears rolled from his cheek that was pressed against my own, down my neck, where they were trapped by his lips that quivered on the wound.

“But we can’t find them, the stars.

“We search everywhere, but there is nothing.  They’ve gone, they’ve left us here in the dark, and we can’t see.”

My voice had dwindled down to a whisper and my strength had faded into him.  He held me tightly, terrified of some demon that I could not see.

“‘You’re afraid,’ I say, and I take your hand.

“‘Only for you,’ you answer, and then you cry.

“And the light…”

He pulled back and pressed a finger to my lips.

“Hush, Beloved, I know the rest.”

“I guide you…”

Some heated liquid poured through my lips and splashed down my throat, tingling as it spread throughout me.

To this light you can’t see.