Midnight of the Day

Trinovantum is not my home.  My skin knows it.  My bones know it.  Black-as-crown still remembers.  I pray that soon I will break these chains.  I'll feel those waters all around, and that soil beneath my feet.  The scent of birch.  Cathedral of canopies, held forever between her gate and my spear.  How spring held my deaths, and winter my lives.  Ashen skies.  Midnight of the day.   

    Home, remember me.   

    River, carry me.  Oh, how it aches to speak anything even approaching truth.  A murdered tongue, a lost wayfarer.  Foreign in all lands, even those that loved me.  Prow, helm, shield.  She was singing in her sleep.  They killed her right in front of me.  They slit her throat, and she was singing still.   

    Oh, Fallen.   

   You think I'd forget?  I forget nothing.  What life loses, dream recalls.  All Songs.  You tried to mock me. You tried to mock us both, making monsters of our love.  But you failed miserably.  Behold, she is alive forever more.  As am I.  Not as a prince, or king.  As servant and slave.  As bear, and wolf.  

    Indeed.    

    The price and tithes of this knowing.     

  Hideous secrets, far lesser than my own.  Fallen fractals, corrupted chronologies.  Temesh, ye mighty.  Still you grasp nothing, of rivers or words.  I pay this gladly.  So gladly.  I shall take that knife from your hand, murderers.  And I shall turn it upon you with the wrath of Allfather.  She was singing in her sleep.  She is singing still.