Written in Stone

[PhoenixE]

This story is based on characters and situations owned by the original author/writers, publishers and distributors. No copyright infringement is intended or to be infered.

 

"We'll be there in just a minute, okay? Okay, sweetie?"

 

One second spanning the rest of my existence my innocence, my trust sealed beneath the capstone of fate.

 

They promised. They lied.

 

Too young to comprehend this hard truth, to forgive the inadvertent cruelty of the oath-breakers. They sleep forever in the sepulchre of their futile good intentions, the stone my only solace and source of answers.

 

Life goes on and so did I. Struggling to survive, to understand, I came to the second stone. A mute, mocking monument speaking only to me. My future damnation proscribed within an ancient riddle and a ring.

 

Daring me to solve it, to tread the siren path of wonder paved with tears to another world, and her.

 

"I love you, Danyel."

 

Another instant, equally horrible in its hopelessness the quest turns to ashes. For one precious, tremulous instant she tastes true freedom, says those words, like knives shearing soul deep, before she passes from me. More loss, more lies, the ones the ring whispered to me, the ones I told her.

 

Oath-breaker. I have become what the child accused.

 

I lied to her, didn't save her. I couldn't keep her from her fate, or escape the cold, consuming truth in its heartless, devouring judgment.

 

She forgives me with her last breath, but shouldn't. Tries to breathe her love into my heart when she should sear it with her contempt. I am not worth the price she paid so I might continue.

 

Life goes on, and so must I, without the one I did all of it for. Why, what's the point if all the circle brings me to is my own emotional immolation?

 

"Hi....hey... "

 

A single, triumphant moment changing everything. Before my joyous eyes life is affirmed, hope fulfilled, faith confirmed, death's certainty cheated. The proof, blazing in eyes so dear, dark fire sparking anew my almost extinguished conviction there is a point to believing.

 

To loving.

 

The wheel turns, spoked with suffering but this does not completely define it. Nor is loss its ultimate truth or lesson. Not everything it has brought me to has been a lie or unworthy of what was sacrificed to sustain it.

 

Any more than I am.

 

The circle has come back to him. I take his hand, looking deep into the mirror of my soul and I see. What I’ve been seeking, it’s not out there in the stars, not locked in the granite enigma blighting my past, not entombed in sand on a distant world where I thought I buried my heart forever.

 

It's standing right in front of me, with sparkling brown eyes and a s***-eating grin.

Life goes on. So will we.

 

Together.