Short Story - Soul
The soul drifted, lost in the vortex. It knew only absence and loss. It felt no pain because it lacked any form, but it yearned, oh how it yearned. It yearned for sensation and for the connection it knew on an instinctual level was possible. It was so cold, and so alone, it didn't understand how it had come to this place nor how to escape it. Time was its enemy here, it knew. It just didn't know how to fight or why the war was even taking place.
Hope; she could not understand why she kept on allowing it into her life. Had she not suffered enough? Didn't she already know what happened every time she gave into it? She’d been crushed so many times. Everything she had ever wanted, everything she had ever needed, she'd lost. Why did she still allow herself to hope?
Dimness was not a revile for him. He would never entirely comprehend why individuals felt that it was. The murkiness was protected, it was reasonable and it never blinded. The obscurity was his reality and his companion. It was his steady partner when all else had abandoned him. He comprehended the dimness. He had felt it's sweet stroke as long as he can remember and he tuned in to it's tune now. It addressed him of night lilies and fireflies, of moon-washed glades and the aroma of ice secured pine woods. He grinned as he set out, single yet never alone.
Her skin was sun kissed and her hair dyed by the light. All her life she'd been told she was .that some way or another she'd been honored, yet she'd never trusted them. She knew she was not supported by the Gods, as her sisters had been. She had never discovered her association as she'd been told she would. She was beginning to think about whether she required it. She didn't appear to feel what the others had portrayed. She wasn't unfilled like them. All things considered, she needed to finish her trial or else she would be tossed from her clan. With her staff in one hand and her provisions in the other she set out into the wilds to chase. What she brought back would shape whatever remains of her life.
She shuddered as she felt the cold enter her. She had prayed the way she'd been instructed to by the priest. He'd told her that hope was never something to be quashed and that she should pray for the guidance her previous life had lacked. Now she was wondering if she'd made a mistake. The cold was filling her up, it was spreading through her like mist and it was…so thankful. It was so grateful as it wrapped around her and flowed through her. It caressed her mind and it’s icy fingers stroked the soul she'd thought was long ago lost. She fell to her knees as her God began to work within her.
He viewed from the shadows as the young lady walked through his dimness. She was unafraid and strolled with an elegance he'd never observed. He took after as she advanced toward the little stream just he had ever found. The night creatures of the backwoods hinted at no alert as she bowed and drank, scooping modest bunches of the new, clean water into her delicate lips. He moved quietly to look as she refilled a carafe and started to set up a little fire. As she lit the fuel the mists that had beforehand hindered the light of the moon moved, tossing silver upon his reality. The woman turned upward from her camp and met his eye. The warm gleam of the fire flashing and making the shadows around her move in the moon's look. She grinned and he knew he was lost.
