~Hope

“Hope.” Since I first crossed the desert, I’ve rarely ever heard my name spoken aloud, and never overflowing with such deep emotion. My name somehow conveying a desperate relief, a sigh of prayers answered, and of hope fulfilled.

Fates arms pull me up from the table where I lay, and she squeezes me so tight that it’s hard to breath, but some part of me doesn’t mind. Some part of me hopes that she’ll never let go, that this warmth will never again give way to cold.

Of course, my sensible soul can’t let my unruly heart take command. I pry her grip loose after a reasonable time has passed.

“There was poison in the tea.” Fate explains, though I honestly can’t find it in me to care for the details. Not while the voice from my dream still echoes in my mind, calling me back to life. The echoes from long ago demand that I live, but what is there to live for? What reason is there to keep going on?

“Why…?” I ask, practically pleading with life itself to answer for fates cruelty. The gods who watch over us are too busy with their own drama to care for our despair down here.

“Well… I…” Fate freezes up as she mistakes my question for something else, she shakes herself free and forces out an answer. “They wanted to dance without pain. They wanted to enjoy themselves for one night. The poison was to take the pains away, so that they can dance, and sing, and live. They took the poison so that they could live…”

Her smile, while broad and bright has never before seemed so fragile. The frail memories from my dream, remembrances from darker times, are all washed away as I rise from where I lay and try to hold her smile together.

She whimpers, or makes a sound almost like it, but by the time we separate she’s rediscovered the mask that slipped, and again she’s happy as ever before, seeing life and joy in this world that is beyond my own sight.

“That’s good. You’ve made it.” The spirit says, smiling at me with her gaunt face. Her voice is weak, cracking like the ice that forms her, as water spills through the gaps between. There’s not much more of her left to lose.

“Are you…?” I try to ask, my stomach turning. I already know the answer, but it pains me to see her like this. Worse is the burning jealousy at that frail, yet brave smile.

“I’m okay.” She replies, calm, collected, and ready to face the future that she’s decided on.

“We should… there’s a… a funeral.” Fate says, her mask slipping yet again, but she shakes her head violently before forcing a smile. “We should go too. I…”

“I’d like that.” The spirit says. “They told me about funerals, and how we would be remembered. I so want to see it.”

It’s difficult to find any words to describe the situation, and impossible to find words that could comfortably break the silence that’s fallen over this town since rising morning. There’re tears and there’s weeping, but very few are surprised by the nights events.

They knew what their elders had planned, and yet they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop them.

The townsfolk diligently go about cleaning the tavern of their deceased. Apparently, each person left behind a message with regards to their desired burial, something they planned to make it all easier for their families.

“Are you sure that you’re okay to walk?” Fate asks yet again, her voice tight with concern as she sticks to my side like butter on warm bread.

“I’m fine.” I repeat once more. Words that I’ve not had occasion to say over the many years since that fateful desert crossing.

It’s discomforting how easy it is to forget what it was like to be alone now that I’m not, and one traitorous part of me wants to forget altogether the quest of mine. It would have me focus on this playfully warm happiness by my side instead; to choose life over death.

I quiet the traitorous aspect of myself as well as I can, but scattering sparks carry the seeds of more flames, and as much as I stifle the spread, I cannot stop it. Not entirely.

The spirit is still with us, following to the funeral pyre, but she’s wisp thin and her future lifespan now must count in hours if not minutes. The snowstorm that followed in her tracks every night is now faded, and only the gentle fall of pure white snow flakes remains.

They drift around us, slow and lazy, as the last of the dead are gathered into the home just a bit outside of town. They’ve been put into the basement, and the house filled with tinder and firewood.

A house, a place of life and warmth, sacrificed to become a home for the deceased. No longer will its rooms need to be warmed by the fireplace, no longer will it’s roof need to stand against the rain, and no longer will the walls need to fight against the wind.

“We prepared ourselves over the last few years for the end of the world.” Jake says, standing before the house turned pyre, a lit torch burning in his hand. “We did all we could to make the most out of this last year, and we made lists of everything that we wanted to do.

“We aren’t going to live forever, but we can still live our best.” He pauses. “My old man hasn’t had as much energy in years as he’s had in the last few days. His smiles were bright last night and his happiness was frozen on his face this morning.

“They lived their best, and they left us to choose for ourselves how we’ll do the same. A message, intended or not. That we don’t need to live as we have before, we don’t need to worry as we have before. We can choose our own future, even now.”

Jake pulls Missy close as he finishes up. “I will make the most of this imperfect world before I meet them again. This goodbye is only for a little while. We’ll all be together again in the hearts of the gods.” He lowers the torch into a pile of kindling and the fire quickly spreads.

One by one the rest of the town steps up to say their piece adding fuel to the fire as they step down.

The spirit, barely even a shimmering ghost of who she was, stands before the fire, attracting every eye. The light of the flames shimmer in beautiful colours, shining through her. The soft snowfall does nothing to subdue the blaze, and her chilling aura fades to nothing.

“It was fun.” She says, skipping closer to the burning pyre. “Being human for a day.”

“If you return to the mountains...” Fate tries to suggest but the spirit rejects the thought before it’s even fully said.

“I’ve smiled and danced. I’ve cried and grieved. There’s one more thing that I want to try, one more human experience I want to try.” She says stepping so close to the fire that the ice making up her body wars against the heat. The fire is winning.

“I wonder if Sanguine and Cerulean will permit me to live in their hearts with you all?” She steps through the threshold into the burning home. There’s a skip in her step as she dances to an unsung tune. Her shimmering form is touched by the flames that move to dance alongside her, and in the warm light sparkling ice turns to water, which turns to steam joining smoke as it rises up towards Cerulean high in the sky above us.

The smoke billows out, swaying in the gentle wind, as the last of the snow drifts down around us, the small glittering flakes melting in the air as they fall.

I don’t know from where it starts, but a voice rises. A deep, throaty hum.

It’s not quite a song, but something much more raw. A hollow, call to the dead. A sorrowful cry that resonates with the fires own roar. Others cry, weep and scream, some in despair and others in rage at the fates that would steal their loved ones from them.

Others still are silent, thoughtful. Like me, they see the spirits last dance as a beautiful one, and they too wish that they had the courage to dance by her side just the once.

~Fate

The villagers let out their pains in sorrowful song, but they move on quickly. There is much life to be had before death comes for us, and here in this tavern the chill is quickly dissipated as someone throws wood into the fire.

Flames dance with a quick and flicking motion, reminding me of the spirit. I don’t know the nature of spirits, but I’m sure that she’s not truly gone. Maybe she’s just become a spirit of flames now instead, dancing at our sides even now.

“Thank you all for coming.” Jake says, Missy at his side seems a little despondent, deep in thought, and from the white-knuckle grip on her skirt I can only imagine that it’s something important bothering her. “What better way for us to mourn our elders, than to keep living.

“I want to hear your lists, the things that you’ve still got to do before we meet with those old bags who rushed on ahead of us. Shove it in wrinkled old faces that they missed out on the best parts of this year. So, what do you want to do?”

“I want the best springs end festival ever!” A young woman cries, leaping to her feet. “And damnit I want to find a man to love while there’s still spring flowers blooming!”

“I want to see the ocean!” A young kid says, a girl of perhaps twelve.

“Well, the pass is clear, we’ll manage a trip then.” Her mother says, leaning down to hug her daughter, lifting her up and turning to the rest of the group that’s grown loud with their own thoughts and ideas.

Drinks are poured and the ideas are growing more and more ridiculous. Not satisfied with their brief meeting with the dying mountain spirit, some want to go out and find other spirits and other kin of the fae. Others still want to climb mountains, or cross the oceans, or the great desert.

Most of it is the drink talking, and they start competing with one another for the most ridiculous of plans. None seem to take it very seriously as they pick apart each idea with laughter. These are the people who stayed.

When others went to the capital, or the forest, or the desert, or the mountains, chasing romance or stories of heroes and glory, they stayed home satisfied with the lives they could enjoy here with the neighbours and family that they already know and love. The people here are happy to keep living as they have, and I want a future where they forever can.

How?

Well, I suppose I’ll have to hope for fate to guide me to some miraculous magic that’ll save the day. A city girl, who was never even a good merchant, isn’t going to make the magic that saves the world, or create some grand fort that can survive the Lover’s embrace.

Still, the world won’t end. It can’t. It hurts too much to even consider.

I don’t want it to.

I refuse.

Everything will be fine, we’ll have a happy ending.

No, better, there’ll be no ending at all.

“Excuse me.” Missy says, standing tall at the bar bench, but leaning back on it heavily as she clutches her lover’s hand in a trembling fist. “I have something I want to do before the end.

“I don’t know if it’s right. I don’t know if it’s good, but… I’ll do it anyway. I’ll be selfish.” She says before tearing her eyes from her feet and looking up to look upon the crowd that faces her.

“I want to…” She shakes her head, her hair flicking back and forth wildly as she gathers her fortitude. “I am going to be a mother.

“I’m going to see my son, or my daughter born. Sometime in the late summer, or early autumn. They’re going to be beautiful, and healthy, and… and… Spring, is a good name. I’ll teach her to talk, she’ll call me Mama, and Jake she’ll call Papa. She’ll keep us up at night, but before long she’ll be crawling about on her own… then walking.

“She’ll lose her first tooth, and we’ll offer it to the fairies. I’ll teach her all about the gods and goddesses and she’ll laugh and play with the other kids, even get into fights sometimes. I’ll braid her hair and teach her everything she needs to know.

“She’ll… fall in love for the first time.” Tears streak down Missy’s face and I look away, but I can’t escape her loud voice on the verge of breaking, words keep flowing out in a rush.

“We’ll talk about boys, about how stupid they all are. She’ll rebel and yell at me for something stupid, then come back and apologise, and then before I know it, she’ll be all grown up. She’ll have a husband, and a baby of her own… and then… and then…”

Her words stall and all the emotions she’s holding down break through the dam wall that she’s constructed in her heart. The village comes together to offer her kind words, but I know none of it reaches her.

She doesn’t believe any of what she’s just said.

She knows that it’s a lie.

Hope pulls me up by the arm, and leads me out of the room, refusing to look towards Missy.

Out in the calm streets, there’s not even a hint of wind. The weather is calm, and the skies are blue. Wonderful weather for travel.

“So, where to next?” Hope says, a step ahead of me such that I can’t see her face. “This quest of yours to save the world, what comes next?”