Are
"And I will answer." Are said, nodding and turning his red-eyed face to the mask in the dark. A grin that should have sent the cobbler packing, running for home, screaming bloody murder and crying out for help. But he didn't. He stood where he stood, and looked upon the god before him with a strange sense of comfort. Like a fading man wrapped in warm blankets and rocked to sleep by the waning songs of a life well lived.
A life that flashed before his eyes as he did as he was told, allowing them to slide shut and inadvertently opening his relaxed mind to the world around him. Near frozen water came crashing down, again he sank and saw his world fade away as he left the surface behind. This time though, this time he turned towards the great darkness beneath. His whole mind laid bare and open, no smoke or mist to obscure what he sought the most.
There she was.
Signe.
All the wounds the thought healed by time re-opening as the memories came crashing back. Crimson ribbons ripping across his mind as her divine visage came before his inner eye. His hope distilled into the radiant glow of the one he loved the most. He would have done anything to go to her. To meet her hand there in the depths of his mind and to forever remain enveloped in her loving embrace, but she was but a reminder. As was the pain. A reminder of what he fought for and what his life had become. A fight.
The cobbler smiled at her, but turned to the surface above to once again join the world of the not-yet-dead. Lungs and eyes burning he breached into reality, greedy gasps for air ringing out into the night as the cobbler returned to face the Shepherd of the departed.
"Thank you, dark one. I am in your debt."
A life that flashed before his eyes as he did as he was told, allowing them to slide shut and inadvertently opening his relaxed mind to the world around him. Near frozen water came crashing down, again he sank and saw his world fade away as he left the surface behind. This time though, this time he turned towards the great darkness beneath. His whole mind laid bare and open, no smoke or mist to obscure what he sought the most.
There she was.
Signe.
All the wounds the thought healed by time re-opening as the memories came crashing back. Crimson ribbons ripping across his mind as her divine visage came before his inner eye. His hope distilled into the radiant glow of the one he loved the most. He would have done anything to go to her. To meet her hand there in the depths of his mind and to forever remain enveloped in her loving embrace, but she was but a reminder. As was the pain. A reminder of what he fought for and what his life had become. A fight.
The cobbler smiled at her, but turned to the surface above to once again join the world of the not-yet-dead. Lungs and eyes burning he breached into reality, greedy gasps for air ringing out into the night as the cobbler returned to face the Shepherd of the departed.
"Thank you, dark one. I am in your debt."
