He waited. He hoped - that perhaps as she uttered his name there’d be something there, a spark, a catalyst, a fleeting thought of a boy dressed in warrior garb who’d pressed his sword into the mighty sway and tried to snag at her stars. But all she seemed to do was smile, cloaked in mystery and enigmas, snatching and clawing at naught, a memory lost to time and space because he just wasn’t worth the agony of remembering.
 
Then she cried.
 
The prince, the General, the monster waiting in the shadows merely stared, confused, muddled, unsure and uncertain of what to do or what to think, if he’d caused the split, the war, of emotions, or if all the vexations of the void assaulted her all at once and she bore it through scars and the hollowed hell whispering through her ears. Her words spilled and joined, offered answers in their rhapsodies, in their saga, in a sojourn of confusion and ignorance, the baffling adornments suddenly pieced together, his mind capable of comprehending the missing gaps. But he let her say everything, not pausing to interrupt, to preface the way she may have fallen from the sky one day, where the blood had come from, where to look or how she’d maneuvered, back into refrain after refrain, biting his tongue, forging his response, staring out into the void just as she might have done – everything foreign, fresh, new because she’d forgotten. The beast allowed her to claw her way to the surface because it was all he could truly do – he didn’t know how to reach down into the rivers and ramparts to free her of this strange, uncanny predicament, where everything faltered, sputtered, ground to a halt. She had to save herself, she had to rise against the bestial tide, the overwhelming toxins, the paralyzing weight of the earth, determined and strong, just the way he’d once known her to be. I know you’re a stranger, she spoke, and it hurt again, for he wasn’t, nor was the rest of the world, and his jaw hurt from clenching it so tightly, for gnawing against the rubble and bedlam, for rummaging amidst the chaos and expecting to come out clean. Finally, when she spoke his name and his convictions melded their way to his features, resolved, defiant, brazen, and bold, every bit a piece of his father and his mother, a true stag from the icy haven and the audacious summits, he uttered what she wished, what she desired. “Ki’irha.” It was simple, but not enough, and he started again, voice ensued and building from the mighty crescendo of his strength, begging it to somehow fold into hers, give her more power, more steel, more perseverance through the unending, stark, desolate haze. “You are Ki’irha, once a warrior, then a Corporal, and finally a General.” He wanted her to hear the embodiment of her valor, to harpoon and press and sear her with the impression of her galactic figure storming across the rimed horizon, blistering and conniving, waiting to strike, waiting to protect, waiting to condemn.
 
Surely she was more than that now, but he didn’t know what else to say. Maybe she’d been foiled into something else altogether, no longer striving for the flickering hues of the aurora, no longer seeking out arms and munitions, no longer gathering forces – and even if she was different, fragmented, splintered, he still believed in her strength, in her endurance, in her persevering shades.

Erebos

i have nothing, but then the have is not as good as the want