tell me what it's like to feel alive

and on their altars you lay your heart of stone

Never before has Aamu's world been so dark.

With eyes glazed over by the moon he walks slowly (carefully, hesitantly, blindly) sweeping what's ahead of him with a rod, but still not trusting the floor. He's got the back of one hand trailing against the wall, creeping like disease through the Temple.

He's not gone out much the past week. It's been too difficult, too uncomfortable: he's had plenty of time to get used to the idea that he's going blind, plenty of practice as the world darkened and darkened, but now that it's all pitch and tar under the fullmoon he's unnerved. Unsure. Vulnerable.

Being cursed is nothing to be ashamed of, or so he tells himself.

Slowly he makes it to the shrine at the back of the Temple. He would've liked to go to the forest again, but he hadn't been able to work up the courage to go out into the night blind and alone, and despite Isla's offers to come with him he thinks he doesn't want any witnesses to his conversation.

Carefully he lays his small bouquet of spring flowers on the altar. "Are you here?" he asks quietly of the dark.

Oh, oh, oh. The Voice is not here, unfortunately for Aamu once again. But rather than finding something that might help cure the Ascended of his blindness? The blind man finds himself placing the flowers on the altar, and he finds himself suddenly compelled for closeness of anyone and everyone. Aamu has been cursed (again!) He will be compelled to hug all characters he comes across. That’s right! All of them. It will be cured at the start of Longheat.

and on their altars you lay your heart of stone

He waits, again.

Waits and waits and waits, but only silence greets him, holds him, wraps around him; silence and emptiness. Loneliness. There's no one—nothing. No Voice, no human. The black void stretches infinitely around him.

And in it he craves .. touch. To wrap his arms around someone, anyone, to hide his face in their nameless shoulder and pretend he can still feel the warmth of their skin as clearly as he feels the beat of their hearts. Hollow and tired, he hugs himself, closing his eyes and waiting until the swell of reanimation fluids stops threatening to spill from his blue eyes.

He's three hundred years apart from all he ever loved and held dear. Three hundred years late to a death in which he will be separated from many of them anyway.

It seems unfair.

Eventually, he leaves the empty temple behind.

( Fin )