Catching Fog

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She knew not the light. She knew not the warm caress of the sun nor the smooth kiss of wind on her cheek. Bread tasted of ashes, water of soot. She had given in to her despair, let it flood her heart until it sheared away the pain, until nothing was left but this terrible blackness that was not even really there. Her body had long ago stopped answering the calls of her mind and now, did not even connect to the more gentle but desperate touches of others. She knew not what day it was or how long it had been since she'd slipped away into the void. She cared not.

In the great emptiness, in the dark absolute that numbed the hurt and kept her from being driven mad by grief she lost her will to be. She gave it up freely for they had all gone and left her utterly alone. There were no faces in the void. No sweet touches, laughs, kisses given in tenderness, in love abandoned. She wished for neither for neither would bring her the release she longed for since her heart had been taken from her very breast.

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The wind wipped leaves in his eyes, branches catching his every step. Scratches adorned every part of his body exposed. There was a permanent itch in his side, one he had ignored for days without end; a week now. He felt nothing for those he had left behind because he could not remember them anymore. His senses barely registered the variations of the sun on his face, the much too quick passing of days into nights and nights into deeper exhaustion.

His steps, unaturally quick had damaged his legs but he did not feel them. His beard had grown, shadowing his cheeks, his hair was wild with dirt and brambles but he did not feel these or if he did, he had come to accept them as part of what he had become during this chase; this hunt. His heart had dropped in his chest like a boulder let loose on the cliffs by the raging seas underneath, crashing to the pit of his stomach with a force that numbed nerves and all his senses, leaving barely enough to feel his despair; enough for his rage to keep on smoldering in his head.

It was the only way he knew how to remain himself or moreso, how to regain himself once it would end. In this loss of humanity, this willing abandon into the realms of wildness his mind had retreated to a deeper part of him that would shield it from the potential outcome of his quest; its unspeakable conclusion. It would rise again only when he would find that which had been robbed from his heart.

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She walked in grey lands of mist where light was always even, always the same, always empty. There was no sky, no horizon line to define where the world begun and ended. All was grey without any definition of reality but that which her mind wispered to her to make it real enough.

Her steps wandered as nothing was truly seen or truly felt. The destination was unimportant, only walking on was.

Flickers of light danced from time to time at her side but she closed her eyes to them and kept on. To her, they were temptations, calls back to a place she did not wish to go back to for there was nothing there to make her wish she'd turn her feet around and look over her shoulder. She could not face it. At her back, she was sure was only the stark, cold truth of loss and despair. She would wander forever, grey mists floating about her slim ankles.

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By the ancestors she would not let her home crumble in around them like so many leaves on an autumn oak; she would not!

Orders had been given to all that could feel her, her soul-voice rising imperviously above the savage wail of the winds. Shutters had been drawn, summer quarters abandoned for the stronger, safer winter housings. The large maple gates had been sealed shut at last, once all that could be had been either evacuated or sheltered.

Now, in the relative quiet of her empty rooms, she gathered her resolve around herself like so many folds of a blanket, seeking to shield herself with it for the days that would come were certainly some of the darkest the world had seen. To despair, she thought, would not do nor would fear. She had despaires enough and feared a great deal more. When her children would return, they would find a home and a safe place between the ancien walls of her family. They would find healing - and peace.

Thinking of them, she straighened her head and called her daughter and greatest friend but in the following silence, while the wind outside quieted down only to charge stronger on the next tide she let herself shed a few tears, softly, sadly - for all of them.

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Aaridys

'We will go home' Vanora