Within Our Veils

"What Death brings, what it leaves and what it has to say."

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I woke up not able to breathe. Drowning, flailing. Underneath a push and pull of a tide. My head broke the surface as I flailed and gasped. 

Death at its finest. The branches once alive above me, empty and barren.

 The stream that once trickled was a lonely drip. The clear pool of water drying up from around me. I stood in the center, my dress nearly transparent and clinging helplessly to my frozen skin. My eyelashes turned to frost. 

I smelled cedar on fire. Ashes left dwindling through the wind. It was no longer a warm breeze and the sun that was once warm was black as night. A harsh slice of ice cutting through me.

He who had laid before me was gone. I pressed myself back under the frosty water, searching for him. He was nowhere. 

But his scent lingered. His smoky shadow wasn't far. I gripped my stomach, resurfacing. The water is nearly ridgid with ice. Why was there no veil? No choice of curtain to walk beyond. Why am I still here, cursed to walk back over a heaven gone cold.

I stumbled to the edge of the blackened forest, spotting only a few green leaves left. I nearly flew from my body, at the sight of bodies strewn across the dead woodland. Their arrows snapped and their bows hung from the branches above them. Why? What message would that have left? Their wounds were by sword, it was obvious who had left them with such deep lacerations.

My eyes gazed over the ashen mountains. Flakes of snow and ice, just falling down. His abode still stood but frost painted the walls. Was he there? Or was he among the veils I could not reach?

I checked my footing, the wound in my stomach healed but not. Still weeping blood, but somehow closed off, death chose to slip away. Was that a blessing? It doesn’t feel that way.

I stepped down the steep cliffs and rocks. Dodging the hot spots under ash. The familiar smell of soot and heat. I couldn't understand what it made me feel inside. I paused behind a boulder, as I watched those souls I believed to be his people, float by. Without a care in this world, without a purpose. Empty eyes, but a rage full of passion the way they held themselves. That rage, was it all they had left of themselves? Is that why their violence is so rich with hatred? They have nothing left but riddled emotions. Broken up feelings with no true purpose to them. 

I silently stepped away from that path, choosing the direction that had no path at all. How could I fear a sword after I’ve felt one? It is no longer the terror of an unsolved mystery. 

The pain, however. I'll never be rid of the ache and the fires that bloomed from it.  My cream dress, heavy with water still, the hem black from the ash. The itch of my skin as the material stayed plastered over it. My dark long hair, sealed to my face and neck. I lost my footing from being distracted inside my head. I stumbled forward. My arms, tearing from the stones. The sharp sands. The nipping frost. 

I cried out, digging my fingers into the ground until they wrapped around a stone large enough to hold me to a halt. I rolled onto my back in utter failure. Doomed and drained of any hope. I was marching to a grave most likely. A castle without its King. 

I heard a voice echo over these rocky hills of madness. Cutting into my mind, I lifted my head off the ground to listen. 

“Raela!" 

I grabbed a hold of my shirt, forcing myself to my feet. Desperate to find him, I slid back farther, my feet losing ground. I screamed out as I held onto a ledge. The drop below me despairing. 

I pulled half my body up, swung one leg onto the ledge, and rolled back onto the ledge of the cliff. Fire crackling under the sands close to me. I sighed exhausted and beaten by this fire land. 

His voice disappeared, like a mirage, dissipated. One tear leap from my eye but my other was too dry. I sat up and began to walk around the ledge, looking for a way down. I saw a flickering glow of amber in one of his balcony windows. 

My chest pounded with bittersweetness. Did he wish to see me? Would he prefer me done away with? I crawled further down until I met the gate. I peered up, remembering his name.

“Vaerandor!” I shouted out, my throat dry and barely able to project. But the gate grumbled and pulled. I squeezed in before the soul finished opening it. I stumbled towards his door and pulled on it heavily. Blood seeping down my hands and legs from the fall, my dress still stained from his sword. My skin blackened with ash. 

I paused before entering. I couldn't will myself to go any further. I stepped back and left what little warmth the walls kept inside. I began the ascent back up the mountains. I was as empty as the souls that drifted around this land. But my burden was not anger but grief. So heavy it dragged me nearly to the ground. Crippled. 

The snow began to come down more, the fires were still not snuffed out by its frost. I slouched against a boulder, looking away from the tower. My eyes scanned the peaks, praying to find another forest untouched by him. 

A voice whispered out, filled with a strain of bewilderment in his tone, “Raela?" His own mouth sounded thirt ridden. 

I shook my head side to side against the rock, " I do not know whom you speak of,” I whispered weighted down.

" It feels right,” he muttered as he knelt in front of me gradually.

“It doesn't sound right," I responded my teeth gritty from ash. 

“You’ve had many names, did any of them feel right?" 

" Id wish to be nameless-”

" -you’re someone people would wish to be recalled, “ he replied softly but harshly, " you cannot be one of them."

He was meaning the ghosts on the plains. Wandering Forevermore. 

“Who deserves such a fate?" I was saddened by those cold bodies. Empty of thought.

“Not you,” he pointed out gently but with a hint of irritation. Irritation likely for me still being welded to his realm.

I brought my gaze back, setting it on him, my face felt hollow, "so now what,” I asked the question I dreaded, "what do we do with me.”

He crouched closer to me, to pick me up, "we'll find another way to make you sleep.”

My head almost fell back, since my neck was weak like the rest of me, “sleep," I mumbled dully. More like finding another way to die. 

“How many times will it take," my voice broke, syllable by syllable, like crackling flames.

"However times it must," he stepped and slid down this mountainside like it was no more than a mere hill. I rested my cheek on his metal steel plate, his body cold as ice. But the smell of him, fire and a forest burned into dust.