A New Perspective

I have tasted death, from both sides now.

The evenings, three in a row to be precise, had been peaceful within the city walls. Yet, while behind closed doors, and among the back tables of the afternoon taverns, whispers of dark things, dark times, of bad weather and bad omens.

The first one fell, easy, like all the others. Then...well....I spy with my little eye, something alone in the alley. I could not resist, so cocky and confident I had become. And so, I crept weightlessly towards him, his armor unexpectedly deflecting my first strike, and his sword flashed in the lantern light streaming in from the street. Two shots, or was it three. It does not matter, because in that next moment, I was lying in the sand, naked, alone and laid bare.

Slowly lifting my eyes to the alien surroundings, I rise shakily to my feet, gazing out over the molten river, and beyond its shores, to the great walled city. It seemed like forever had passed, and yet, as if but a heartbeat, when She rose, lifting like a pool of liquid pitch, seeping against the laws of the Gods...upwards and formed into the Dark Queen.

"Sooner than expected......" a gentle voice, a lighter touch, alive and yet devoid of it...."perhaps it is just as well....this way...we can talk" and converse we did, for eons, or was it hours, moments? I am not sure, it is like a drifting haze in the back of my brain. I remember Her saying, "I am sending you back now" and the vacant hole it left somehow in my soul, as I was ripped from Her side, will never again be filled, or complete without Her Presence. I remember those words, and my new purpose, and I have tasted death from both sides now.