Cry Softly and sleep well?

I walked along the bank of the stream for a while then then realized I didn't really know where I was going and I was alone and ...

I was alone.

Even when Ollie came to sit with me for a while, I still could not shake that feeling.

He said all the wrong things for all the right reasons and it made him endeared to me for trying. Then He added that He would step down ... Ubar be damned. I couldn't let that happen. He had his duties just as his commander did and I would not interfere with them. It went deeper than that he explained. He had been promoted through the ranks by Kam himself. There was a loyalty to him that the guard held to tightly. Better to die among the ranks for what a man believed in than to live a sheltered life standing on what he did not. Yes. I could well understand those words that somehow brought a bit of smile.

On our walk back to my wagon, he reached for my hand. That meant something important to me that few would understand. He said he had learned the other side of trusting someone because of those moments on the top of the canyon. He would never forget. It may not have been appropriate but I lifted to my tiptoes before he left and kissed the scars on his cheek. I told him He was a good man, one that could allow himself to soar within his imagination. That was a precious thing... not to ever forget that either. He told me if I ever needed a guard for another journey to let him know. I couldn't give him that promise, so I just nodded and went inside my wagon.

My braid began to unwind in my fingers and the brush slowly ran through the strands. I caught sight of the ahn glass Aunt had given me, noticing that there was only a slender horizontal line left in the upper chamber. There was a sudden urge to reach out and turn it over .. to turn back Time. To live the past envar over again. Live it richer. Live it better. Live it fuller. As if the sky heard those thoughts and scoffed, Time slowed to give the night a crystal clarity. The reflection of the woman in the mirror was one I barely recognized. The weight of pain darkened circles around her eyes. An etched furrow had begun to form on the smooth finish.

She was sadness.

Strange what we remember. Not always what we choose but what stands out most in our lives. The good. The bad. The indifferent. All without discernment at times but just an impact that it carries. One that lingers in our subconscious. When I had reached to touch his mouth .. in the same way I had so many times before .. he had flinched. For the first time in the past envar .. in the time the sands had run their course through the glass .. I had felt like an invasion of his personal space. It touched deep into a place I did not understand.

He had asked me to tell him of my journey .. not because he held interest in what I had experienced but because he needed something beautiful ... something uplifting in his life at that moment. I had lain only a portion of it out before him. How could I describe the flight of imagination to one that had not been there?

I had lain a portion of the vision Orahjinn had shown me as well, that a raven had come to me and I held bits of food that it did not eat but carried to feed another. The Ubar's words .. the moment ... resounded in my head over and over again ... Must have been a male .. perhaps taking the food to his mate.

I felt so alone.

Words and moments.

Bits of time.

Pieces of veins opened and left exposed.

I wanted to make it go away, make it all leave my head. I wanted to remember something else instead .. something beautiful and uplifting in my life at this moment. I wanted to remember the sweetness of the smiles sharing a box of candy with friends had brought. I wanted to remember how it felt to be among the verr watching over them.

I wanted to remember something like the joy I felt when two small chubby hands grabbed my hair and dragged me to an open mouth kiss all sticky and sweet and wonderfully pure and filled with all the goodness of a warrior's heart.

It was a memory that stung more than it brought peace. I felt that longing to have and to hold a child of my own. I felt that wistfulness that this was not going to be now. I felt those pangs of absence that there wasn't going to be someone to wrap their arms around me and whisper in the darkness all the soothing things that brought pleasant dreams.

The tears began to fall and I gave in to them.

And The Darkness cried. "Never alone."

I wasn't aware when the last grain of sand fell, just felt the delicate hover of the UI's wings open and spread over me tucking its little clutchling in. I only heard the whisper from a far away place. "Meet me in my dreams and I will show you the gleam of my fangs and razor of my talons."

I closed my eyes for the last time that night, red rimmed swollen and raw ...

And I murmured. "I will scream just for you."

"Then for now ... Cry softly and sleep well."

And I did.