08-15-2016, 08:35 PM
fall on your knees…oh hear the angel voices
Time is a foreign concept to the lonely man. The days pass they way of the seasons; slow, painfully slow. Sunrises fade into sunsets as the days become nothing more than a haze. Mast was there, lost in that odd limbo. He breathed because his body demanded air be in his lungs; he ate because his body demanded food be in his belly. But he did not live, no. He was little more than a ghost to the world now, drifting through the hours in painful loneliness. Gone were the titles and the lover; even his children had disappeared. He had every reason to be dead, but his body was stubborn.
He was not as weak in spirit as his fathers before him.
He had languished in the Valley for some many years, wounded. His heart as broken as his body, he had no reason to leave the confines of the shadows. At some point his daughter took over the throne there, but it gave him no pleasure to see her cavorting with the forces he had once fought so hard to stamp down. She bore him grandchildren, but again, he couldn’t bring himself to care. It was likely the children were just pawns in whatever perverse game she was playing. But one day, one day when his eyes opened, the shadows became too much. Like a man waking from a coma, he came to his senses with a start, eyes wide and breaths coming in short gasps. He had to leave this place, this den of iniquity that was robbing him of his former self.
His furious gallop carried him to the Meadow, sweat plastering his inky black mane to his thin neck. As the sun hit his face he felt renewed, like he was breaking the surface of the water and taking a much needed breath. He had no destination in mind, but his feet seemed hell bent on carrying him as fast as they could. The trees blew by as a greenish blur; he only needed to run, to feel. To prove to himself that he wasn’t a living dead man stuck in limbo, but a stallion of flesh and blood, a once king and sire of queens. But the scent of lilac and honeysuckle was enough to stop him in his tracks. Her. There was no doubt, and he whirled around, his brown eyes wide and frantically searching. Finally he saw her, and that was all he needed. His salvation, his reason to continue. He had no words for her, not yet, but he could not close the gap between them fast enough. As soon as he was close enough, the taste of her was on his mouth. He lipped at her throat, at her mane, at the top of her poll. Finally, and lastly, his mouth found her jaw and there is where he lingered, the tears streaming unfettered down his face. “Camelia…” he choked, unable to fully articulate the words with the sob in his throat and his lips on her face, but trying all the same. She would understand; she always did.
M A S T
long lay the world, in sin error pining