Grey sky, grey sand, grey skin and me. The shadow was now barren save for these four things. I had cleared away everything else that was useless and meaningless. The labyrinthine landscapes that Gizette and I had used for our games, the battlefields and armies I had trained with, even the spectacular view of cosmic annihilation that had always painted the nighttime sky were discarded now. They had nothing to do with her, and worse yet, would be distractions.

I laid her body down on the cooling sands. Brushing the hair from her eyes, I could now recall the same subtle gesture of affection she always gave to me. It was the first memory of many and not in the least painful. More would certainly come soon. Grief would consume me even though I felt nothing now, and then I would cry alone. No one else was worthy to do it. As I planted my blade into the ground in front of me I took my position by her side for the last time.

Here I held the vigil of my mother, Inixia.

The first day, I spent looking at her face, now dark with death. Every tiny feature and every expression that it had ever shown me, I etched into my memory. There were some days when I couldn't remember what my father had looked like and I did not want that to happen with her. Father had always been a rare sight when I was growing up and when he had died it was as if a certain piece of reality had died with him. Maybe it was because he had just vanished to me, but it was as if he had become less solid, less... real. I began wondering if the memories I had of him were figments of my imagination even though I knew they were not. I would never forget mothers face, however. And mother had many faces.

She was a shapeshifter.

The next day, I remembered the years I was together with her and tried to force myself to feel something. Although those times had both started and ended in Amber, that place accounted for only the minute or two when she had taken me from Benedict and then when I had taken her from Benedict. I loved and hated Amber so much now that it hurt. I neither loved nor hated Chaos. Even though it was the new world she had given to me, ever changing and infinite in its possibilities, it was always the place I would remember home from. Why did I feel nostalgia for the place she had died?

She was a shapeshifter. She kept her heart on her right.

By the third day, grief had still not come and I began instead to contemplate the mortality that lay before me. Fear crept in as I wondered about the ending that lay waiting for me, perhaps in the not so distant future. The sight of Helioventar, that creation of my father's that Benedict wielded, struck me now with fear. It was death. More so even than the void of oblivion that the Courts of Chaos perched over, it was death. The sight of Ellison's blood upon it flashed into my mind and her gurgled words to her brother and murderer wouldn't leave my ears. I began to shake. A thing colder than the dead body of my mother before me crept into my body and gripped at my heart. Was this terror? Overcome by it, I spent the next several days shivering and wet with the sweat of fear.

After a full week, shame surpassed my fear, for I had cursed my father's name for making that doom. I had gone so far to deny the fact that I was scared not of a sword, but of Benedict. Why was it so difficult to admit? Everyone else feared him, why couldn't I let myself be afraid too? Where had this useless pride come from?

It hit me suddenly that Benedict never showed any fear. He was the only one I'd ever known who was like that. Surely I didn't want to be like him. The thought filled me with disgust. No, that was not it. I did not want to be outdone by him was more like it. I always hated him a little for that quality, and that resentment had festered inside me and grown over the years. I had molded a part of my being based on a person I hated. I could not help but look down on myself for that. I was quickly growing tired of self-realizations.

She was a shapeshifter. She kept her heart on her right. Had she been strong...

I lost track of time before fatigue began to overtake me. The terror was gone now, and so was the shame. My disgust, I had grown accustom to and it plagued me no more. Now I was merely numb, my emotions exhausted too.

I don't know if it was another week or a month, but eventually I realized that the droplets that were hitting the ground in front of me were not rain, but tears. The numbness began to fade and suddenly I couldn't stop crying. Something had broken, finally. That hard cold shell that my heart had crawled into after drawing Sgathaich in the throne room had shattered and now I felt that I would drown. I couldn't even breath. Maybe my tears were, in fact, rain and my wailings, the wind. If so then I was a hurricane.

Mother was a shapeshifter. She kept her heart on her right. Had she been strong I would have driven my sword into her chest with pride instead of shame. We would be laughing at them together now.

Maybe I am strange, a mental masochist, but I wanted to feel that pain. I wanted it to rip me into pieces, to destroy me. Perhaps then I would hurt enough to reflect the love that I had killed with my own hand, that big chunk of myself that was now dead and empty. Death was supposed to hurt, right?

Eventually I couldn't hurt anymore and I collapsed.

So ended the vigil.

When I awoke, years had passed in me. I felt spent and newborn. Every part of me was sore, and that included my soul. As I rose, joints creaked and muscles remembered their purpose. Walking away I rubbed the grey sand from my hands and dusted myself off. Sgathaich was, once again, by my side.

Comments

-- GhenkiTseng - 12 Jun 2007

Swweeeetttt!

-- LeslieLightfoot - 12 Jun 2007

Wow!

-- BenBernard - 13 Jun 2007

Now, you have really surpassed yourself. This was well written, evoked great emotion, revealed much about Aife's character (and personality) and provided a new layer of meaning to the roleplaying events. Bravo.

-- ChrisLightfoot - 14 Jun 2007