en natt så kall och månen den var klar

Why anything, why everything.. why could he touch with his voice, and why could he still alter things with a mere breath? It seemed cruel, almost, to give him small tastes of the things he'd lost when he cast off his cloak of lies, because he still longed for them, for the power he'd held over others—power, when he'd sworn all along it was an honor, that he were there for his people and not for himself. And still, the simple, small change he wrought with the softness of his voice, was enough to send his heart cracking, aching, with the desperate longing for a time gone by.

But there was no going back to it, not re-capturing the lost moments. Because that was the way of time: it moved ever on, but he'd forgotten to move with it. So in his future, he was mired in his past.

"I'm right here, so you can't have killed me before. Are you sure that you haven't lost your sanity as well?"

His ears fell back, but not all the way in anger. Hadn't he just told her he was crazy, too? That he didn't know what the fuck he was doing anymore? But if it was one thing he knew, it was that he had killed her, here in this very meadow, when she had been someone he didn't know—said things that the Delinne of that time would not have said, but that she later had come to say. Was it some weird intersection of time streams? A piece of the future acted out in the past? "I just want an end to this pathetic thing I call 'my life'." The words echoed through his mind, kill me now, end me, but this time, Irma didn't surge through his mind and veins to guide him in that final act of anger—she remained somewhere far above, vaguely curious about what they were doing, but not interrupting. Not helping out. Not shredding his mind.

She asked him a question and he opened his mouth, with no idea what would come out, but in the end it was only silence because she spared him, and herself, from having to hear the truth. He swallowed it, the answer not even he was sure of. Some things were better left unvoiced.

"Come on now. Taunt me. I'm pathetic, too caring for my family so I can't even take my own life. I bet that's what you really want to do."

The sunlight struck a single tear on her cheek. It was ironic, that they felt much the same way; Mauja did not wish for death, precisely, but he'd spent two years walking blind through a dense fog, where nothing ever went deeper than his skin, and nothing ever made sense. He was desperately tired of it, sick of never knowing who the hell he was or what he wanted, and never feeling anything for longer than a few moments. He clung too desperately to life to consider death an acceptable exit, but if there was some way he could just come back to life...

He realized he'd been silent for a while, just staring at her. Wordless. Because what could he say, when he had nothing to offer? Neither comfort nor cruelty came to his tongue, because he would not lie to her—not right now, not anymore, maybe not ever again. He didn't know. Just sighed.

"I don't see the sun anymore," he said, quietly. It was out in the sky, of course, bright and vibrant with new life for the new year, bathing them in its yellow light. "Everything is just gray, and shallow. It's like I've forgotten how to run, or even walk—I'm just crawling through the gray sand by a waterless ocean. And sometimes, I think I hear a bird chirping, or catch a glimpse of sunlight striking waves, but there is nothing but a wasteland of dust..." And he'd struggled, and kept on crawling, for so long that he didn't remember what it felt like to live anymore. The glimpses he had, of emotion, of feeling, were like the faintest cold breeze on a too-hot day, so quickly forgotten after they faded.

"I've died within, but my body lives on."

Se dem brinna över verkan se dem dansa framför bål
Se dem mässa inför satan se dem smida sina stål