Wake up...

Midas....

Wake up.

_______

In my dream.

A child is screaming, sobbing, begging. There is a musk on the breeze, bitter and faintly acidic. Warm hair. Loose follicles sting my eyes, but I continue to bury my face in it. Another dry sob cracks the surface. How was it that already...her flesh is cooling? Lifeless. Yon girl is reaching over our corpse -- I look up, bewildered. Silver flakes linger in the corner of each iris. She scrambles to take bits and pieces...bits and pieces. Yar, before a single word could be said the babe ran away.

Suddenly the ground is trembling beneath me and there is another cry. Though this one tis not that of a youth.

_____

My throat burns, it aches with such a fire that I'm startled into awareness by the pain. Lids shoot open to reveal hazy gems rimmed with crimson spider veins. Tis dark. Nighttime? This body is stiff and cold laying upon the hard packed earth. I look around, disoriented. Stone walls surround me. For many long moments I'm unable to move, or speak. Blankly, I stare at the farthest wall as if expecting...expecting? What? Crown shifts to aim a wavery gaze at the entrance of this prison den.

A word slides into the cold air, my chilling breath halos above, "Seele?" Where had she gone? More insistent, "Seele?" No sound. Silence. So quiet I felt my eardrums might burst from straining to hear something, anything. It hurt to swallow, the lack of saliva made my stomach churn uncomfortably. "Fina?" I whispered hoarsely, searching earnestly for her familiar light. Neve croaks a nervous reply from somewhere outside.

It was snowing.

Two sets of very different eyes watched me stumble into a stand. They look on with a silent sadness as I look bleakly into the woods, looking...Yar, they knew what my mind was frantically trying to piece together. Grasped in the talon of the youngest was a little pendent.

______

Fina led me through the wood, I followed with each step dragging slower than the last. Snapshots kept flashing into my mind. Blood on the ground and that ghastly cough of a final breath abandoning a set of collapsed lungs. We emerged from the thicket into a small clearing near a frozen pool. Even with the overcast sky forbidding useful light, I could see a massive crater sloping into a blackened center. Black from scorch marks. My heart began to race, a fine layer of sweat appeared underneath this winter. pelt.

Seele...

I remembered now.

She died.

_____

Phoenix fire had taken her flesh. A roaring glory, one final farewell. A funeral fit for a queen.

Empty, Numb.

To my knees I fell. Uncaring how they scrapped harshly into the ground. Each breath was an effort, my head was spinning. This wasn't how our story was supposed to go.