Andarin: The Mountains: When the world stops for snow; --

“ For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die. ”

-- Oscar Wilde

It’s strange that it would be here. like this.

I didn’t come to see Hypatia, or to punish her criminally stupid followers.

It’s easy to find her. A siren song, if you will, a lure of pain and pleasure and hate and love…

We all go down, yes; and we all burn.

Where are we going?

Home.

At first it hurt: she explained it. The light carved new lines through her body, passageways through which it could run and comingle with her body and mind and will.

What she didn’t say was that she was the first to ever feel that pain.

Firelight casts shadows in her face.

It’s like a strange new world behind it, in front of it, twined with it. Like something she didn’t quite know existed. Like hearing or seeing for a deaf or blind man – not a little terrifying, exciting, beautiful, terrible, all kinds of things bundled into a tight knot of tension in the pit of her stomach.

Yet…

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, love.

She could believe that.

I understand now, she wonders thoughtfully. Light shifts; all lights, all brightness, all softness.

All heat.

Do you understand what you have to do?

A pause. A thought ran through her mind, sputtered, died. Bad omens, perhaps, but she had never been superstitious. Her mother spoke of dark days; but, knowing her mother, it was probably by design.

Design.

Imagine that.

The design of dark, dark days to come – a day of shadows, as to speak.

Good thing she is one of them, no?

Tread softly.

I will. Oh, mother, I will.

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