I half remember your stories, sweet one. Stories that in this life I present as my
own. For clarity's sake if nothing else.
But so much of what I am was gained in your
embrace. How I adored your stories, my
love. Our stories, you called them. The sylphs that swam through endless black to
come drink from the irises of stars. The
church beneath the sea. Or the valley of pages. Trees with leaves of written pages. Lost tongues, you said, oldest regions of
dreaming. Before the moon came, before
the stars really learned to sing. I
remember the quartz shells that littered the beach after morning tide, veined
with ancient light, glinting like they had fallen from night into day. Some seemed carved with sigil and
script, still faintly aglow, your eyes full of mirth as you cupped a few
of them in your hands and told me they were indeed the corpses of stars. That they were transformed as they fell
through our evening colours and into the sea. A winged girl on the beach, her palms filled
with dead stars. Some of them came home
with us, of course. You fashioned fine
jewellery with them, studded our bedposts with them. Light should get a chance to live forever, you
told me. I remember it still. Rapture. Brighter times, my love.
And later, after fires and seething silence stole everything from
us. The Gate of Shepherds, or what
remained of it. Held between our
previous rapture and the heartbreak we came to know so well. You took me there once, to that fabled gate. A place wreathed in mist. Place of the
wraith-cults that whisper now in men's ears. A ruin among ruins. Three vast stone crosses hung suspended in
the mist above our heads. The ageless
crows had made them their perches. The
crosses still hummed, faint but deep, like a tension in the air that might part
the mist at any moment. Cults of the half-light
had sickened the entire region; those who would bend creation itself to mock
the shepherds gate. Yet still the gate
stood and stands. I remember your hair
beginning to move as though underwater as we approached it. Your fingernails aglow,
pulsing pink, yellow, green and blue. Your
teeth lit from within when you smiled at me, eyes clearer than anything I'd
ever seen. How I admired you. Your grace as you spread those grey feathered
wings and rose to the perch of the nearest cross. The crows scattered at your approach,
shrieking and cawing into the mist. Like
children or ancients babbling in a private tongue. Your grin alight as you
crawled the arm of the monument, then turned onto your back to let your wings
and arms hang below. My fearless girl. Iconic, even in grief. No cults of half-light could truly slay your
spirit. But you were younger then. We both were. Only just beginning to find true names for
war. They were only dramas to us before the hush. Stories, I suppose. But we learned the reality of loss. The hideous brutality. We learned all too well, along with those
mortals we tried in vain to protect. I see the change when I look into
your eyes now, beloved, though you would hide it from me. Still a sweetheart, even for one so
wild. The pain, the knowledge of horror in your gaze. How it cuts me. War has aged us. Haunted us, but still we share our songs. No shepherd need more than that, you whispered
to me once. No more than a sustaining
kiss, if that kiss be true. I recall we
were dancing at the time. My love, that
place of the shepherds shall know a full light once more. Soon the
wraith-cults shall have no purchase there. I swear it to you, my Vahishta. It's my life's work. My blood and tears and joy, as you know like
no other. Omkara, my beloved ones. Sincerest apologies from a shattered king. But the iris is open once again. Mercy and Grace, beyond all thrones and
crowns. Such is love, if that love be
true. It is your gate now, Asha.
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