Don’t wait for me

Don’t wait for me, she says. Her voice is a whisper, but it fills this cavernous room with ease. She shifts on the spot, flickering into view for a moment before her charcoal clothing melds back into the shadows. I want to protest but I can’t. The tone of her voice is foreboding; chilled and distance.

She really wants this, I think. Uncertain I reach out a hand but she rebuffs my attempt by stepping even further into the shadows. Shadow-thief, I murmur aloud. Beautiful-one, smoke-on-water. I name her names and she stills. Now it is her turn to be unsure, unwilling.

Dark-before-dawn and flitter-thought, I sigh, reveling in the taste of such divine words on my tongue. Even I do not know her true name, but it matters little now. Soon she will be gone and I…I will be alone once again. It was fated to be so but I once refused to believe such petty prophesies. Hard to now, though.

I pause then cock my head. It is time. Time to act or time to stop. Time to end the story and begin again. Time, time, time…it is the one thing we have so little yet so much of. ‘I’m out of time!’ they shout. ‘I have all the time in the world!’ they whisper.

If you go you know I will follow, I murmur. I step near and pull her into an embrace. The hard edges of her armor presses against my soft skin. I bask in the sharp pain, willing it to pull me back into reality.

Reality, she muses. She read my mind again, just like she always did. But will never always will. It’s fake, you know, she continues in a high voice. Reality isn’t really true. After all, whatever you dream is possibility. So dreams are true as well. But does it really matter?

No, I hum softly, pressing my face against the silkiness of her neck. But does anything matter these days?

It does, or I wouldn’t be leaving, she grumbles and pushes me away easily. She can tell I’ve given up, the way I don’t fight her subtle push and how I hang limply, unable to do more than tap my fingers against my thigh nervously.

You know I will come back, she adds. Now she’s turned away from me, no doubt eying the small door that leads from this prison.

Just…give it some time. And with that she’s gone; little more than a whisper of smoke of a dying fire; the last bit of light before dusk settles down on the world; the faintest echo of the battle cry of a dying empire.

The barest trace of a love I once knew.