.::Snow::.
Written 1.2.2008
Featuring Creed and Anatar
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The air has never been so thick. I can almost breathe it, but somewhere inside my lungs it goes still. Everything has gone still but the snow. It seems like that should stop, too—the unpredictable, insubstantial flakes of sky that float lazily to earth—but it doesn't. It still falls slowly, lazily from the overcast heavens. It should break this tension; dissolve the air that's somehow become too thick to breathe. It's effortless.

I really don't know how long we've been standing here. There's about twenty feet between us. And a thousand miles. And a thousand years. It's bitter cold and the snow is melting in our hair, but that's the last thing we're thinking about. We think instead on other things... Gone things; irrevocable things.

There is no bittersweetness in this meeting. There is no hope of going back; no possibility of return to younger, more innocent years, when we would have done anything for each other. Neither one of us is disillusioned. We are each completely sure that we are right. We have none of the lingering doubt that opens a possibility of reform, no fears of our path. It's no longer a matter of a change of mind.

All that is left is the ache. My chest is hollow, and ringing with it. There will be no sweet memories after this. We will not remember each other fondly and think wistfully on the time when we were friends. This is irreversible. It aches.

And the snow is between us, like the pieces of our lives, that have been one life until this moment. We were characters in an unfolding drama. It was fragile and it was fragmented, but it was still the same path. Today the path fractured. One half will not survive the separation. The other half will wither, and never heal.

We won't fool ourselves now. We've been doing that for too long. Neither one of us can win; not today. One of us will fall. The other will lose half of himself, and in the end, who is to say which is the better victory?

I know that death would, at least, be more peaceful than the falling snow between us and the air that is trapped in my lungs, suspended in time.

We could regret this now, and we may regret it years from now. But we won't. We respect each other too much for that. We will take one thing from this meeting, and not broken memories or wistful yearnings of what might have been, but only the ache of it all. With time, that ache might fade, but one of us—the surviving one—won't let that happen. The ache is precious. It is symbolic. It is the continuance of a life, and we will nourish it like some living thing within ourselves.

And in the silence, with the snow between, we offer up these things like trophies to the victors. Death to one, and the ache of memory to the other. But which is truly the better prize?

We could stand here forever, I think, and never breathe. The snows moves for us, as though tracing the invisible patterns of our thoughts. If that is so, then now our thoughts are slow and soft, arching between us in graceful patterns of things we both share. This is the blood of the life that was really one life, and now will be fractured. This is the heartbeat, slow and alive like the drifting snow. Steady and resonant, unchanging, but able to skip; to falter, to die.

And now, the moments we wordlessly gave each other for this purpose are gone, like sand through an hourglass. We respectfully mourn their departure; the end of so many things. So very many, many things.

He raises his weapon, slow and obvious, and I unsheathe my own. What follows will be no desperate, frantic battle of overcharged emotions and heated words. This will be a slow, careful duel; a dance. He will read my mind and my body and I will read his, without emotions or sentimentality to cloud the cold air between us. Like our old master's long training exercises, there will be no faltering steps or clumsy mistakes. We will put on a show of breathtaking speed and strength and skill for the impassive snow, and then one of us will strike the blow of swelling music, a sharp crescendo falling away into a soft new movement.

And red and white will be together, as they so often are. There is only snow between us.

The time has come and we move to the premeditated pattern of our fight. A flash of golden hair and a whipping tail of darker locks... And shine blade, and spin snow! This is not a fight, this a finish. This is us—just the two of us—bowing to fate. Which way will it lead us?

His light sword falls onto my heavy one with all the force of a war-hammer, but it doesn't slide and skitter down the steel as we pull apart. Because the time for imperfection is gone, and every step of this dance has been decided already. Like my next swift blow, and his effortless parry. Like the way our feet move in the powder of snow on the fresh earth; like the way our breathing is even and untroubled. No pain. No doubt. No turmoil. Not anymore.

Surreal might have described it best. Our heartbeats, quieter, but more distinct than perhaps, they should have been. Our movements too swift and sure and lethal to be truly real. Our faces too cold and meaningful and accepting of everything. We had given this moment up to Destiny, and we watched unconcerned as he tossed our lives between his cold hands like a gambler's dice.

And then the cold hand was upon the table; the dice were free and falling. The two helpless things rolled and skittered clumsily across the wood, bruising and jarring each other. Why? They asked mournfully to Destiny's face, and the cruel thing only smiled....

The dice stopped. Blade in flesh. His or mine? Tearing through vital organs and warm skin. Why didn't he block it? He could have blocked it.

There came a sad smile that was a mockery of everything smiles are supposed to be. His, or mine? Everything had been so clear a moment ago. Warmth has a way of shaking you out of that. But why was I warm?

I looked down and knew at once that the bright redness spilling over my hands was not the heavy fabric of my scarlet cloak or the thick leather of my gloves. After all, it was warm. Warmer than the cold snow, and cold skin, and cold steel that had, until now, been the only habitants of this place.

Smile, Anatar.

And he did, as his hands on mine kept the blade from pushing farther into his stomach. Not that it could have gone much deeper—my hands on the hilt brushed his white tunic. No, not white anymore. Red. His spotless white shirt was flowering red now. He smiled. And it was a mockery of everything that smiles are supposed to be.

I lowered him down to the waiting snow as he went still, and it opened it's arms with a sigh, like it had been waiting for this moment. Where was time when you needed it?

I bent my head to his until our foreheads touched—cold on cold—and whispered a prayer that was devoid of words but full of meaning. He loosed a warbled breath that clouded the space between us, a final mist of fragile life in the cold, and then the air was clear.

There was only snow between us.