The man kicks a pebble down the cobbled street of the market. His frigid, vivid but ancient blue eyes cast their glance over the selling vendors and the eager customers. It had been days, but the hollow and ever growing sadness was becoming all consuming. Like the ringing of a loud and off-key instrument, or a pan clattering in an empty room, it cannot be escaped. He remained so delved into his thoughts that when the woman who sells flowers approaches him, asking if he wants hydrangeas or daffodils, he cryptically responds with harrowing words, “She’s dead.”
He had kept walking after the friendly face shifted to a sudden misery . A depression that commonly accompanies those words. An evident, dark robed figure has once again made an appearance while remaining unseen, and every time it does it stops the world. Not just for him, but for everyone. He mirrors it in his choice of attire, his thoughts and behavior towards life, and his acceptance of what will come to everyone.
It meant nothing. I never meant anything. They had made themselves close to one another no more than five or six times over the years that they had been peers. Friends?
Friends.
He stops at the door as the overcast sky sternly sets itself as his background, as fitting as a shanty sung by a corsair. The world stops every now and then, and a wise man once said that you won’t truly miss something until you are unable to have it again. His fingers have yet to grasp the door handle, hesitating. This moment, as it arrives quickly, would be one that changes the course of him. A long time ago he allowed himself to open up to someone, and they helped him achieve what he became. He failed them. He always failed them. The certainty of mortality lingers over his shoulders as his fingers loom upon the door. One step into the craft hall and he would be presented with a choice. Fulfill who he promised to be to everyone, or fail again. There’s no going back now.
His fingers clutch the handle. Briefly within the sea of glacial ice that comprises his eyes, there's a glint of a grayish green flicker. Aellana had a small jade fragment that her mother had given her. Like his hope for her now passed existence, the stone is lost in that cold sea. Still, its impact is everlasting, something to remember her by. Who’s to say who acquired it? But it is certain, as certain as the angel of death itself that follows him. In an act of blank and subtle defiance, he says it aloud, as if speaking to a long known friend:
“This will keep me from being forgotten.”
A cold feeling envelops his shoulder, causing a creeping dread over him that this will end, and he won’t be around to see it. It won’t matter. He lowers his head and enters the craft hall, approaching the man that would give him what he seeked. He endures pleasantries in an annoyed manner, then passes the required coin to the antiquity peddler, and receives an amulet on a gold chain in its place. A perfectly circular cut sapphire of the utmost brilliance is set into the pendant precisely. From there he concludes the business, and finds himself a street corner to admire the object, looking deep into the blue gem and whispering to no one but the reaper that awaits him, or perhaps just himself, “It won’t be me. I’m alright with that. I just want…”
He trails off. His eyes look to the sky ponderously. There they stay for a moment, dizzying his perspective as they gaze into the abyss of endless clouds. Caught between a frown and a smile, he lets out a heavy exhale, “I want to be remembered for a little longer than I am alive.”
He nearly pleads these words to the specter over his shoulder, both fond of it in its theoretical existence, and terrified.
Afraid.
