I died again for that tear.
Why? What does "I died" mean? What does "again" mean?
I can't remember. I can't manage to remember.
The thought came before everything else, before the air that burned my lungs, before the light that split my eyes open, before the pain pressing everywhere without a center, without edges, just diffuse pressure crushing from the inside.
It burns! Hot, why is this air so hot?
The air rushed in my lungs, too warm. No, where am I? Dense beyond measure, alive like something I'd breathed before.
I was in the streets, with... wait. Is this my body? It's too small, it's not mine! Where am I?
Then a lance of blinding light filtered through my half-closed eyelids.
Ow!
Too white and too sudden. Like someone had taken the sun and pressed it against my face, crushing down hard.
And then a sound.
Is this my voice? My... crying?
I was crying and didn't know why. Didn't know how to stop it. The sound came from somewhere inside me, high-pitched, broken, desperate, and I couldn't tell if it was pain or terror or something else that had no name.
Happiness maybe?
Where am I?
I wanted to move. Had to. But my arms were foreign branches that whipped through the air without command. I was a prisoner of flesh too new.
Okay. Calm down.
Breathe. Just breathe for now, and think.
I was in the plaza just a moment ago. Yes. And now where, in the name of the Gods, am I?
An icy stab to my chest stole my breath. I tried to look down but couldn't move, or rather, I moved, but without will.
Every breath was a sob, short and insufficient, and pressure built beneath my ribs like something inside was trying to get out.
Then, slowly, my eyelids lifted. First a little, then halfway, finally completely.
I think I've seen this ceiling before. So, so long ago.
Dark wooden beams, knotted, with cracks branching like veins. A cobweb in the corner, threadlike, trembling in a draft I couldn't feel.
Familiar. This place felt familiar, I'd already seen it before, probably.
The smell of damp sawdust, dust settled in the corners for entire seasons, and the way the wood groaned above me told me everything.
And this smell, I know it too.
Two giant faces leaned into my field of vision.
Aaah. Don't eat me!
Enormous. Too enormous to be honest. They filled the entire sky above me, too close, and the perspective was just wrong, like the world had been stretched and I was too small to exist in it.
They had blue eyes. Both of them. Clear, almost transparent, and they shone with a light pushing outward from within.
Wait, I know these giants. I think I saw them before.
Their lips moved. And sounds arrived muffled and booming, like I was underwater, and the meaning slipped away before I could grasp it.
"Arek, my love?"
Whose Arek, mom?
Is it my name? Yeah, I used to be called that before… Wait, mom?
A heavy tiredness pressed against my eyes. Heavy. Irresistible and so very sudden in my weakness.
No. Not yet. I need to understand where... where… What is happening?
But my eyelids closed on their own. I couldn't control them. Just this damn body closed them, and I…
…was elsewhere.
A full red moon was up in the night sky. Blood-red moon, the same color of the blade a certain half-fox I knew.
The sky above me was pitch black and a red eye seemed to gape wide, watching everything while seeing nothing, and beneath it the White Tower rose like a finger pointed at something that shouldn't be named.
Tall, immense, impossibly so.
The plaza. I'm in the plaza now.
How? When?
The thoughts didn't have time to form. I was just there. The legs between my waist and feet were tall and strong and I was impressed.
Obviously, dah, they should be between waist and feet but they were… Wait, I was just born. Wasn't I?
These old paving stones under the soles of my boots. The smell of damp stone and burned magic, acrid and sweet together, scratched my throat.
My body responded. I could move it how I wanted. Impressive!
I smiled to myself and an old lady by my side looked at me and stepped a bit further away.
Oh, well, that smile wasn't for you. Oldy.
The crowd pressed from every side and the space left from the gentlewoman was rapidly stolen from a young boy.
"There's too many people, Arek! I can't see anything!"
Small fingers intertwined with mine, demanding attention.
"You are just tiny, little fox."
I turned.
Lirka.
Her rust-colored hair shone under the red moon, the fox ears poking from her head twitched, shifting to follow the sounds of the plaza. Big amber eyes that reflected the colors of the luminous petals as they danced in the air.
She stood on tiptoes, even though we were on the low wall of a fountain, but she was still too small to see over the immense crowd gathered in Astermond's main plaza to witness the elven rite.
"Just be patient. Soon the stone podium will be raised."
"Mhm. How you know?"
How do I know?
The thought floated without answer.
Am I in a memory or is this a hallucination? I was being born yet now I'm in the plaza. Again. Was I dying or being born?
I shook my head and flashed my best smile, pointing at the elf on the podium.
"Obviously that elf's a mage way better than me. I'm sure she'll want to show off a bit!"
Lirka's ears flattened like a predator ready to strike its prey.
"Hey! Gold boy! Her's way too old for you. You just a kid and she's like, a thousand or something."
"So sweet. Are you jealous, by any chance?"
Lirka growled and turned away. But her hand tightened even more on mine, small and warm.
Luminescent petals danced around us and someone in the crowd laughed. Magic filled the air with colors that had no name.
Amazing. Just amazing. Petal magic? Must be an elf speciality or something.
My lips curved without me deciding.
Sipar and Emma were beside us, gazing up with open mouths.
Then the mage, the elf with white hair falling like snow, eyes blindfolded with linen where golden runes shone, began to sing. On her cheek, still, motionless, as if time had frozen it, a golden tear.
The tattoos around the blindfold and her eyes came alive and crawled like luminous serpents along her neck, her chest, then her arms. They shifted to the palms of her hands, then lifted and became real, transforming into roots and vines.
They wrapped the heavy stone podium and lifted it high into the sky, raising the mage and her guard with it.
***
I blinked for a moment and the two giants, indistinct but with blonde hair, reappeared for an instant.
Mom? Dad? What…
I was in the plaza again. The stone podium was destroyed, shattered on the ground.
A fight? Here in the middle of the city?
The elf was on the ground, surrounded by golden fireflies dancing around her statuesque body. But the blindfold, that blindfold covering her eyes, was slipping, flying through the air, and her eyes.
Oh gods of men, those eyes!
Eyes without pupil and without sclera, the white part, but completely filled with color. With all the colors of the world.
What do you see with those eyes?
Or rather, not what do you see but when do you see?
The tear shifted. The forgotten eyes.
Slowly and impossibly, the golden tear on her cheek began to waver. The wind stopped as if holding the world's breath, until the drop slipped.
"I know that tear!"
It fell. And the world stopped.
It wasn't a figure of speech. The world literally stopped, and every person in the plaza and the city, wherever they were, at home or on the street, seeing or blind, saw that moment.
The falling tear.
And I… I knew.
I didn't understand what and I didn't understand how. But something inside me, something ancient and terrified, screamed that this was wrong.
Lirka's hand tightened on mine as she wagged her bushy tail.
"Arek? What…"
My stomach clenched and my bones started trembling inside my body. Pure, visceral terror rose from my stomach to my throat in a wave of ice.
Something is about to happen.
The world crumbled like ash.
***
And I found myself staring at the ceiling of a house I'd already lived in.
The same beams. The same cobwebs.
What? What was that?
The smiling faces were still there. Clearer now. Features starting to make sense.
Golden hair fell past her shoulders, her gentle face marked by wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Her expression was gentle and tired at once.
With slender fingers she brushed a lock of hair from her flushed cheek, revealing full red lips, to tuck it behind her ear. A small white scar crossed the back of her left hand, thin as thread.
"You're beautiful, my love. Arek. Your name is Arek, understand? A-R-E-K. Little Arek at that."
The man had a calmer expression, broad shoulders, large hands gesturing as he spoke. His hair was the same color as the woman's. A faint smell of sawdust and oak wood surrounded him.
The woman's voice continued, clearer this time, as she stroked my head.
"I think he has your forehead, Tarin. Those serious wrinkles of yours, from when you think too much about money."
Tarin laughed. A booming, sudden sound, like the first thunder of a storm, that filled the room.
"Maybe he's just a bit confused, Mirina. He's been born for not even half a bell, after all."
"Half a bell and he already looks like you. So lovely." My mother's eyes held a special light.
"Am I lovely?"
"No, you are an orc. He is."
"But you just… whatever. I think he's just a bit afraid of the red moon tonight, that's all, dear orchess," said Tarin, closing the curtain over the small window where an enormous red circle like clotted blood hung in the sky.
That moon again?
My mother tensed but dad was oblivious.
"There you go, Champ. Nothing to be afraid of now, see?" His smile stretched from ear to ear. He raised his right arm, contracting the muscle and feeling it with his other hand. "Your daddy'll defend you from that bad moon, yeah? There. Good for the next six years, give or take!"
You are my dad?
Mirina then laughed and the sound was… was so like I remembered…
Mom. You are my mom!
The thought arrived without asking permission.
Yeah mom. Is you.
A fracture deep within.
My newborn heart jumped and stole my breath. For an instant, the smell of blood was defeated by the clean scent of her skin. I was alive. And it hurt.
Is there blood?
My eyelids grew heavy again. So very, very heavy.
I need to... I need to stay awake, I need to understand...
The eyes shut and the darkness swallowed me yet again.
Cold stone under my leather boots and dying autumn wind, smell of rotted leaves and something metallic I couldn't identify.
A flash of dull steel cut the red light. A reflection that didn't belong to the plaza.
My legs trembled beneath me. Sipar, my brother, was in front of me, messy black hair and pale gray eyes that shone under the red light of the moon between the rooftops.
He was smiling like he always did when he was right.
"See, Arek? Look, we're almos…"
The shadow shifted behind him.
DANGER!
The thought exploded in my head, cold and absolute.
"BEHIND YOU, SIPAR!"
I raised my hand, fingers extended, mouth open to scream. The muscles in my legs contracted. I had to run, but my body responded slowly, too slowly. Energy pulsing in my veins without coming out fast enough.
The iron flashed blue and silver and sank into Sipar's flesh with a wet sound. Damp. Like tearing soaked cloth.
His gray eyes, my friend, no, my brother, widened. They trembled for an instant, then the pupils dilated. Trickles of dark blood streaked his chin, coming from his thin lips.
"A-Arek."
His voice was a gurgle, his throat filling with liquid when it should've been full of air.
"Run brother."
No, no!
I wanted to run to him. Had to. But my legs were lead, rooted to the ground. My body didn't respond while Sipar gave way. First his knees, then his hands that searched for support without finding it. His face crashed against the stone with a crack.
Sipar. The name repeated in my head. Useless. Too late.
Something sucked me through the black.
***
Welcoming warmth.
Not that cold paving stones. Not the autumn of the dream.
The heat of a hearth.
My arms, tiny and chubby, waved in front of me. My body giggled. They didn't respond to any command. Just newborn reflexes I didn't know but executed anyway.
This body is useless! WHY AM I NOT AT LEAST CRYING?
Sipar, Sipar, Sipar! I need to get to Sipar. Is he breathing? If I can do something, ANYTHING!
But my body lay peacefully in arms I didn't know, and my breathing was regular, and my eyes opened on that ceiling of beams as if nothing had happened.
My breath broke. No. Focus. Just… focus, Arek, you need to understand what…what's happening, why I'm here, which is the dream and…
The questions piled up without answer. My ribcage tightened.
Why won't my body listen to me?
"Better now, right champ?" Tarin extended his pinky finger toward me, my infant hands reached it and wrapped around the tip, almost whitening. He smiled. "I added some wood to the fireplace, so you'll stay nice and warm."
"Good, dear." Mirina adjusted something, maybe a blanket, soft fabric against my skin. "Will it last until dawn? I don't want him to get cold."
"All night? Mirina, that's gonna cost us." Then a little cough, perhaps in response to an angry look from mom. "...kidding, kidding. Nothing's too much for my Champ!." he said, raising his hands slightly in surrender.
They were talking about warmth. About wood. They joked.
And Sipar is... was…
No. Focus. I need to… I need to understand what's happening. Why am I here? Is this a dream? Or is that a dream?
My eyelids closed.
The cold penetrated to the bone... NO!
***
I opened my eyes. Again. Mirina's smile warmed my heart.
"The warmth is making you sleepy, right love? Sleep, don't worry. We'll protect you."
Yes, Mom.
I closed my eyes.
Emma's red eyes stared at me wide open.
Crouched over Sipar's body, frail and undersized, black hair with red tips like she'd dipped them in paint, falling over her face. Her hands, so small, reaching toward him.
Maybe, I thought, and something inside me clung to that word. Maybe she can reach him. Maybe she can…
Emma's fingers trembled. They stretched out, open, searching.
"EMMA, RUN!"
I was running. Yes running, I could move! I ran toward her and Sipar on the ground with all the strength I had in my legs. This time I'll make it.
The shadow fell on Emma. No, not a shadow. A man... no! A half-man, like Lirka. But this one was different.
Half-man and half-boar.
White tusks reflecting the red moon. One broken. Jagged, irregular. I'd broken it. The thought arrived with absolute certainty. Me. That tusk.
My hands. But when? But how? The memory slipped away like everything else, leaving only the empty certainty: I had done it. Many years ago.
Mom and Dad, I'm sorry for not saving you from this monster.
Those from the dream? Why?
The boar stood above Emma, a few steps from me, too close to avoid, too far to stop. The blade in his hand flashed. Emma's blood gushed from her throat, not red like the tips of her hair, not red like her eyes, but as black as pitch and coal.
She made no sound. She couldn't, she never could. Especially not now with her throat open, slashed, and blood pouring like from an overturned jug, thick and dark, on her clothes and on the paving stones that didn't absorb enough.
Her fingers, still reaching toward Sipar, remained suspended in the air without managing to reach him.
They would never reach him. I already knew.
"Just business, kid." The boar's words filled my ears.
I couldn't do ANYTHING, again, again. Always.
Reality flipped.
***
Large hands lifted me. Warm, secure, and familiar.
They pressed me against something soft that smelled of bread and oak wood, and the scent filled my lungs and a fracture split through me.
Other hands. My sister Emma's hands.
The thought arrived unrequested.
Cold. That slipped away. That searched but never found.
"Oh, little one." Mirina's voice was so close I felt it vibrate against my cheek. "Do you see what your daddy's doing? This is very important work, see?"
"Important?" Tarin laughed. "Pain in the ass is the better word. Tyeron said he needs more beds for the church. What's he going to do with all these beds in church anyway?"
"I heard they're reopening the Eteria orphanage next year. Maybe it's for the children?"
"You think? So is that why there's a new girl helping him there? What's her name? Something like Chiara... Cara. Doesn't matter, pretty girl anyway."
Mirina pouted.
"Tarin Grey. Since when do you think about little girls? I remind you that you're happily married and she can't be more than three moons. Four at most!"
Mom?
"Happily..." Tarin glanced at his wife, eyes wide. He probably hadn't meant to say that word out loud.
"Yes, happily! You VERY happily, at that. Me less so!"
She set me down on a chair dirty with sawdust and left, slamming the door.
My father studied me, scratching his temple and grinning like an idiot.
This is Mom.
"This is your mother," he said.
But it made no sense. Nothing made sense. Emma with her throat slashed, Sipar collapsing, and me here, in this body, with these parents who only worried about small jealousies.
Dad took me in his arms, his familiar smell wrapping around me. He was warm and his wool shirt was soft. He started rocking me, and the world spun.
Slower! Slower!
I clenched my fists on his shirt.
My eyelids fell, heavy as stones.
No. Please. I don't want to sleep. Please.
"Should I go slower, Arek? Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye."
My breathing grew heavy.
Warm and soft.
A chipped tusk.
It reflected the red moon, the jagged edge catching the light and transforming it into something alive, hungry.
The boar turned.
Hairy snout. Small, cruel eyes. The blade in his right hand, still dripping with Emma's dark blood.
"Damn you!"
The venom scraped my tongue, burned in my throat. Hatred detonated through my core, so intense, so pure it was real fire, fire devouring from the inside.
"YOU'RE the one who…"
The energy responded. Hot, alive, familiar, from the center of my body to my hands, it burned in my veins, responded to my rage without asking permission.
Lirka. The name exploded in my ribcage, urgent and absolute. I have to.
Stone. I need to use the stone.
Palms pressed to the ground, all the energy channeled, pushed, screamed into the earth that responded. A spike of rock emerged from the paving stones, spiraling, whirling, pointed toward the boar.
I HAVE TO. This time I'll be enough.
The bestial stopped. The blade flashed an instant, then vanished, sucked into a ring on his finger.
"Don't you forget something, boy?"
His hands raised. An index finger pointed behind.
Behind.
"This time I'll kill you, bastard! I won't…"
The kick hit my ribcage before I finished the sentence.
Why didn't I turn around?
The world flipped: sky, earth, stone, everything spun. My back crashed against the wall. Cold that bit through the tunic, then heat that burned along the spine. A deep, slimy noise inside, something that crunched the wrong way.
The beast was bigger than the boar. More muscular, too.
I know him.
The darkness swallowed him.
***
"See? I'm getting good at this." Dad bragged to Mom. "Asleep before I even finished."
"You bored him to death like always!"
NO!
The cold of the paving stones bit through my tunic. I was lying on the ground and the immense half-dog, half-man brute peered down at me.
The boar approached. Small eyes like wells reflecting something I didn't want to see.
"Take the book from the girl."
Book?
Emma. The plaza. The rite. The fight between Elves. She'd found something.
"Why?" My voice came out broken. "Why are you doing this? Why are you hunting me?"
"Hunting you?" The boar laughed. A fat, greasy sound. "No offense, kid, but I don't know if our paths have crossed before. This is just business."
He doesn't remember me. Doesn't remember killing them.
Cold in my side. A sliver of ice that wouldn't melt. Then heat, my blood slipping, flowing out.
Not again. I failed again.
I lowered my gaze. The tunic soaked in dark red, already cold at the edges, still warm at the center where it continued to expand. The fabric clung to my skin.
That familiar red. Had I seen it gush from my chest, from my neck hundreds of times? No. Not hundreds. Many more.
Impossible. What am I thinking?
On the paving stones, today. Other times on snow. Or on a meadow. Sand.
I can't possibly know this. I'm just going crazy.
I pressed on the wound. Blood slipped between my fingers, warm, viscous, unstoppable. It spread on the paving stones in dark rivulets.
Lirka. Where's Lirka?
My lungs collapsed completely. The air wouldn't return even if I tried with all my strength. One eye against the ground, the other staring at the large red moon.
My body was… colder. Colder and colder.
My stomach rumbled.
Hungry? Really? I'm dying and I'm thinking about food?
***
Heat. Filtering through my back where I was curled up. The scent of bread and hearth from the clean apron Mom wore while she rocked me in her arms.
"And don't smoke the pipe when I'm with the little one!" A quick gesture of her hand toward Tarin.
He immediately left the room.
My stomach tightened: empty, insistent. The body, this traitorous body, didn't care about the terror filling my head.
"You're hungry, right Arek?"
Mom's eyes lit up. They returned to me, soft.
She smiled, and there was something in her eyes that hurt to look at. A vulnerable love.
Don't look at me like that. Please.
"Come here, my little one."
She uncovered her breast, large and soft. The pink nipple brushed my lips.
My body responded before my mind. My mouth opened, latched on, sucked.
This is milk, I think.
It was warm and dense, so very sweet and thick I couldn't stop drinking it.
It filled an emptiness I didn't know I had, slid down my throat, spread into my belly with a warmth that…
Warm like... Like what?
Blood. My blood? Warm on my hands, viscous like milk, flowing between my fingers while I pressed on a wound I didn't have.
The taste of milk mixed and changed with iron. Both on my tongue.
Sweet and dense. Salty and thin. Both flavors warm. But two different warmths. One that nourished and one that drained life.
I didn't understand why I was crying while I drank. Warm tears sliding down my cheeks, mixing with the milk at the corners of my mouth.
But my body kept sucking. Uncaring and avid of that motherly warmth.
The tiredness of being born just days ago. The warmth of the embrace. The heat of the milk in my belly. My eyelids began to fall: slow, inexorable.
Yeah. How nice to fall asleep in Mom's arms.
I want to have a good dream.
Please. Just a good dream this time.
"LIRKA!"
The scream tore my throat, but it was useless. I didn't know where she was, where she'd gone.
And me lying on the damn paving stones. One eye resting on the pool of my own blood, the other seeing the moon's reflection in the red mirror.
I have to find her.
Get up. GET UP.
But my arms didn't respond. My legs didn't respond. Nothing responded.
Something was growling behind and above me. Screams. Barks. Skin and clothes torn. Broken metal.
Inhuman sounds. Guttural, bestial.
What?
A paw stomped the ground next to my head.
White, with gold reflections in the bristly fur. Big as my body. No, bigger. The weight sank into the stone with a dull crack.
Black claws that sank into the stone like it was soft mud.
The stone cracked. Small black veins spread from where the claws had penetrated. Cracks that branched from the point of impact, black as the nails that had created them.
Something damp stirred the air around my hair. Large. Hot. It sniffed me.
A breath that tasted of fresh blood wrapped around me, made my soaked tunic vibrate. The breathing, heavy, labored, blew on my neck. The smell was something that shouldn't exist in a city, in a civilized place.
Is it you?
The thought arrived small, terrified.
Lirka, is it you? What did they do to you?
I wanted to turn around. I wanted to see her face, understand if it was her or something that had taken her, if I could still do something.
But my body didn't respond.
Trapped in death's grip that drained my strength.
And I…I couldn't see. Couldn't understand. Couldn't do ANYTHING.
I can't do a bloody thing!
***
The truth arrived cold, final.
I didn't see her. I don't know what happened to her. And I'll never know.
My hands shaked.
Tiny and stubby fingers opening and closing without coordination while I lay against Mirina's bosom, the taste of her milk still warm in my mouth.
And then something stirred inside.
Something inside my skin moved and stirred.
A pressure. A will. Something pushing against the boundaries of this flesh that wasn't mine, that wanted OUT.
Come on. Arek, move.
My fingers contracted. A spasm, then a barely hinted movement.
Just MOVE!
A burning sensation in my chest. Like pressure of some kind. A beast trapped that wanted out.
My hands closed forming a fist and the knuckles went white.
My tiny nails sank into my palms. I CAN DO IT.
The thought exploded, triumphant. I can control it. I can!
My fingers opened on their own.
Then they went limp, caressing the empty air.
My will shattered like glass, and what remained was only heavy and empty tiredness.
No, please.
The body was winning again.
I can't even make a fist.
The truth was ash in my mouth.
How do I think I can save anyone if I can't even use my hands?
But it was too late and before the thought was completed my eyelids were closed.
~ * ~
Total and complete darkness surrounded me.
Black like ink. Absolute.
Empty.
Something pressed from every side, dense like water, but heavier somehow, like a presence without form that crushed me against myself, inside myself, until I no longer knew where I ended and where the black began.
And in the black there were four.
I didn't see them. Not exactly. But I knew they were there, with the same certainty I knew the heart beat in my undersized chest.
Colors without form. Sensations without body.
Blue. Tired and broken, like water that remembered every pebble from mountain to sea. Every passage. Every fall.
Silver. Traitor. As always. My brother's eyes before…
No. Arek, don't think about it.
White and Red, the ones who this time hadn't even had time to be born.
And then the fifth. Gold.
Gold is me.
Light that illuminated nothing.
Who are you? I know you, right?
No answer came, but that silence weighed like being among friends. Among companions with whom words weren't needed to feel united. Companions on a journey that had lasted too, too long. Thousand upon thousand of years.
And then the weight. Infinite certainty that crushed my lungs.
This is the last chance.
I shouldn't know, but, somehow, I just did.
I knew that if I failed again, everything would have been for nothing.
I have to remember.
The thought arrived desperate.
I have to remember. Lirka. Sipar. Emma. I have to remember that…
But the names slipped away. They were there, almost tangible, but then disappeared. Like trying to hold smoke.
No. Wait. Don't…
I tried to grab them. To hold them tight. But I had no hands to catch them, not even a body. Only that golden light that trembled and faded, and the names were gone.
***
White light and familiar voices surrounded me.
"Dear, he always falls asleep so fast. Could he be sick?"
"No way, what are you talking about? You just worry too much. He's just like me, see? You always say so yourself. Tarin, you fall asleep as soon as you sit your ass down and don't help…and whatever. And, I might add, with pillows this soft..."
"Tarin, don't touch! Not now."
The voices came from above. They were warm, soft and familiar. And silly, so very familiar. I tried to smile, thought I'm not sure my expression changed
"Honestly, it's been a long day," said Mirina. "For all of us."
The body lay quiet. Breathing regular. Heart beating slow and steady.
Something inside screamed.
I don't want to sleep. I need to stay awake. I need to remember. I NEED TO…
But the tiredness pressed like a wave, irresistible, and my eyelids. My eyelids were so heavy, so…
They closed.
And in the darkness.
Lirka. Just Lirka.
Just her. No blood anywhere. No deaths. No big and terrible monsters.
Just Lirka and her beautiful laughter.
The most amazing sound I'd ever heard. Clear as a pure gem. Warm as the fireplace in a cold winter.
Her fox ears lifting when she was happy, her tail wagging behind her.
Then she closed one eye and stuck out her tongue. Her cheeky mischievous pose.
We will always be together, as I had promised.
The thought formed halfway, then started to crumble.
Did I promise that?
The memory slipped away like oil on water. Every time I tried to grasp it, it shifted, dissolved between fingers I couldn't close.
No. Please. Not this. Not her. Not even…
***
I opened my eyes and I knew already…
The ceiling, the beams, the cobweb in the corner.
My breathing was calm and my tiny body relaxed. Warm milk in my stomach was warming my insides.
I have to remember.
But what? What did I need to remember?
There was something. Someone. A name on the tip of my tongue, almost there, just almost.
My eyelids were closing again and this time sleep arrived like an unexpected tide.
I fought with everything I had. With all the will I could gather in this body too weak, too underdeveloped, that wasn't mine.
Wait One more moment. Just one moment, please. I need to…
There was a name. I know it. Important. The most important.
L…
Something that started with L.
Lir…
Almost there. I am almost…
But it was fading.
As always. As every damn time.
And as I slipped into the darkness, as the world dissolved into nothing, I heard a voice.
My voice.
It was hoarse and old. So very old. Broken by centuries that didn't exist, worn by eras I couldn't remember.
A certainty.
"This is the last one."
And I, in the darkness swallowing me, whispered without voice:
"I know."
The name faded away from the ending.
First the final "a." Then the "k" and the "r." Then everything else.
Lirk…
Lir…
L…
The emptiness spread in my mind and wrapped around me like a warm blanket. Only sleep remained. A safe warmth, promising not to hurt me.
Lying so convincingly, that tempting promise, I had no choice but to believe it.
And then…