I stand afore a field of purple heather swaying and dancing like locks of hair, the sun low and hazy on a spent sky, and the hum of insects low and throbbing. Beneath my helm sweat prickles, yet it is a distant sensation.
The situation is precarious, but I cannot say why. The feeling of unknown is merely a discomfort, something noted and moved on from, so I begin to walk through the heather. They swat and chew and claw at me as I pass, yet my strength out-maneuvers theirs.
In the heart of the field I can feel the heat growing. It prickles at my brow. The air begs for me to remove my helm, although I know I cannot for my burden is far greater than anything the heat can offer. Still I wonder whether I ought stop a moment and wipe my brow in the safety of my own person. Then I think better of it. There is something in the air, that which I cannot name or even think long about, lest it take its cue to come out of hiding. All I can do is fight through the heather.
A soft sigh graces the air. No more than a breeze, I’ve little doubt. Yet in the array of heather and the heat and the sweat rolling down my brow, my mind imagines the breeze says my name. Not the name I give strangers. My true name. And the voice is Hers.
I stop and pause, feeling unsettled, but I do not linger long. The Enemy knows many names, secret ones included. If I do not acknowledge it, then perhaps the Enemy shan’t know it was my name he spoke.
I come to a thick place in the heather where the purple flowers soar above my shoulder. The path becomes so difficult I reach for my great sword and begin to beat them madly aside. It is a weapon for battle not gardening, yet I find both much the same in that moment.
The breeze stirs again. I wait for my name, but this time it is a sob.
Tricks of the enemy, no doubt.
The air is on fire. I can feel the heat lash across my helm and sink inwards. The sky demands I remove my armor and stand before it unarmed and defenseless, yet I persist. Every step is a labor, yet though my blood denied, it cannot help what it is and endure the trial in a way no man could.
The air does not speak again. She does, her voice so clear and sweet and fierce that I cannot deny it.
“Help me,” she says through the heather.
I cannot help what I am. In my mind I know it a trick. I know the Enemy works not through what you can see, but what you cannot, and plays it against you. I know even as my hands claw fiercely at the heathers it is a trap, and I shall soon be ensnared. I know that no matter what I find at the other end, I cannot take back her very last breath. For that breath had long ago been spent, and to deny her mortality is the same as denying who she was.
I am what I am, she was what she was, and the Enemy is what it is.
I claw through the heathers, not knowing what I shall find but knowing it an ill, sick force against me.
She stands before me.
Not as she was. Not helmed in her father’s armor, clutching the battle axe he had bequeathed her, and shouting in glee to lead her people against the tyrant forces of evil.
Not as she had been. Not a young, naive girl in a soft wool dress spun from her cousin’s flock, clutching her father’s stolen battle axe to face off against a foe with no hope of survival.
I find her as she is. I cannot see her face well beneath her guise, save the liquid green of her eyes and her downturned lips. Dark raven feathers garb the back of her cloak and twirl strangely in the passing wind. Yet still she holds her father’s battle axe, not as a weapon, but almost like a very large stick a child might hold to feel safe again.
“Ilerra,” the words pass my lips though I cannot fathom control of them.
I approach, yet she backs away. I pause, confused, wondering where my folly lays. I study the curious air about her.
I’d never known her to be afraid of me. I do not speak, but drop my great sword to be swallowed by the heather. As I draw forth, she does not shy back but watches me strangely.
“You’re not really here,” she says quietly.
I do not respond. Rather I walk forward, drawing up my fingertips. She is right, I suppose. Neither of us could really be here, together. Yet in this moment, it does not matter. She watches me yet does not turn away, waiting for the one moment of touch in the infinity of moments before.
Then I open my eyes.
I stand alone afore a field of purple heather, the sun bright and high in a noon sky, and everything is silent. The air is cold and the winds are still.
I wait a moment longer, yet nothing is there. Had it been no more than a waking dream, sent to torment me in a moment of idle thought? I suppose I cannot attest my mind to be kind to me, yet I sense something else. A vein of truth beneath the mirage of fallacy.
The air is quiet, yet beneath it I can feel.. a hum. Quieter now. But there. As though I need only reach out and pull some invisible string to feel what lays at the other end. I close my eyes, mulling the realization. When I open them, nothing has changed but myself.
I can find her. I know that power lays in myself, so deeply buried I could only find it in a moment of my deepest solitude. I pull at sensation of the hum, imagining my own hands reaching across time and space and thought, until I can feel Her at the other end.
With open eyes I begin southward. It is time to go home at last.
