Resignation

Lying on a cold, wet rocky surface, I woke, covered in blood and a strange blade in my hand. I have no idea who it belongs to. My head aches as I rise, and the blood has crusted to a stiffened mess upon my clothing. As far as I can tell, there isn't a scratch on me, and even as I stare around in this lightless place, I can not imagine where I am. The blade in my grip pulls my attention, and as I stare at it, in the monocromatic darkness, a flash of the beach wall, and a man cowering before me. Who...?

I struggle to my feet, and my world spins, and pain seeps into every molocule of my ravaged body. I did not ask for this....I did not know...when I followed him, that this would be the curse upon me. I stumble to a pool, the water calm and oddly warm and I barely recognise my own reflection in the surface. The humanity that remains in me, screams out to be cleansed, and so mechanically, I try to wash away the taint, but I only wash away the blood. I scrub at my skin, what I can get to, and try to erase the anger, erase the guilt, and I weep tearless pain into the dark, and I pray. There is no safe altar now, no place to go to find solace, the Dryth saw to that. So I pray here, and still no matter how I plead, how I pour myself into my prayers, She is deaf to me. Is this a test? Must I go only on my faith, that She will not abandon me, and that this suffering somehow serves her? I can not say.

I sit there then, in the quiet, in the ink blackness, and my mind is pulled towards those I love. yes...I love them, me...even as I am, still ache with the pain I cause them. A little smirk curls up one side of my ashen lips, as I recall another time, in a warm pool, with wine and strawberries and laughter. They still, desperately cling to the hope that those days will somehow return to us all. I know better.

They have each other, and I protect the flickering hope, that one day they can forgive me, for my time is short, and I can not go on like this.