Writings and Stories

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

The Mountain and the Well
----

The craggy path was patched with snow, absent of coherent rhyme or reason. The path slick from congregating moisture. Gasping I slipped, my hands slapping painfully onto stone. The cold start jolted from my palms and into the bones of my arms. Breathing without end I looked at a patch of snow. Undisturbed at this altitude of the pass for we were the only travelers of this way. With the stiffness of an automaton my palm became a meteor of flesh that impacted the white surface.

Arms slipped under and about me. Locks of blue hair waved and swished about us, ferried by the mountain's wind.

"Are you okay?" There was no white cloud that puffed out and away from her lips. Cold had no effect on her.

"Yes."

"You know we don't think any lesser of you if you stumble sometimes."

"I know," I smiled and allowed Esdeath to help me back to my feet. Hooves clipped and clopped up to my left flank and instinctively my arm embraced Nightmare. Fingers found purple hair. Even in this darkness the night sky still lived in her mane.

Lupusregina hummed quietly from the back alongside Zero Two. Her inflection merging with the harsh wind but only her voice remained after. Reassuring and absolute. More serene than jovial.

We went up the path further. My legs weary but the ever presence of them bolstered my muscles. My soul. My heart pumping the heating blood throughout my person. The sky was dark, no patterns nor trails of timeless stars. But there apparent absence was something that did not trouble me. To my left were the stars of the night. We walked on for awhile. Hooves and boots and shoes creating a song that the mountain wordlessly listened to.

Reaching the apex we were greeted by a well. It jutted from the smooth surface completely free of erosion. Forged from the very body of the mountain itself. Unknown maker and unknowing time.

Letting go of Nightmare we approached it and were surprised to find it filled to the brim with crystalline water. It rippled with the wind. The blackness at its end stiller than statues atop a castle's battlements.

"How far down do you think it goes?"

"Dunno," Zero Two shrugged and her hands cupped the water with the care comparable to how one carries china teacups. Smiling she gulped it down. Each of us followed suit, Nightmare and myself simply lowering our lips to it. The chill was refreshing.

Beams of moon light broke through the formless abyss of clouds and as I lifted my head the water shone white. Our reflections distorting in the liquid and the limitless darkness at its bottom blotted out by us and the piercing lance of the moon's brilliance.

Reaching over, Lupusregina thumbed away two stray droplets on my beard. The werewolf smiling as she always did. My gaze returned to the now stilled water and we all looked back. Zero Two swiped a finger through it and we turned our attention onward.

There was a path leading down and eventually out of the mountain. None of us looked back at the well. The moon illuminated the future we would walk in certain areas. I did not have to look at my loves and companions to know they too looked on with no hesitation or fear. It was expansive, bright and dark but we would get where we needed to go. Together.

"Let's go."

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

Heart
----

Crickets chirped from the blue shadows and a warm spring wind stirred the trees and bushes. It was a pleasant warm breeze, one ready to blossom into a summer wind as the flower begins to bud at warmth's behest.

"Ahhhh...I just love relaxing in the forest like this," Lupusregina proclaimed leisurely, on her back and arms crossed over another to prop her head up. Bathed in darkness her eyes glowed like candles of amber and her smile gifted me with a sensation of ease and peace.

"I can conceive of as to why but may I inquire as to why you insisted I come with you?"

"Because it'll be good for you."

"Yeah?"

"You needed to get out of the house."

I made no effort at refuting this blase statement. It was concrete truth. Nothing apart from us moved now. Only our quiet breathing and the ancient cricket songs.

"Don't worry. Nothing's gonna get us out here."

"I know," I replied, smiling lightly for a moment. From my peripheral I saw her shift her body into a new position and beckoned me to join her. As I slid down she held up a palm, smooth and exotic brown and she promptly gestured for me to turn around. Stifling my laughter she giggled as I turned by back to her.

"Why?"

"Because you like being the little spoon," she punctuated the end of the word "spoon" by taking hold of me and with loving firmness pressed me against her. Her breasts against my back and nuzzling into my hair and a tongue wolfishly licked my temple once. "It suits you sweetie." Her hips against mine and the energy of our union transformed the stillness of nature into peace. Playfully she bit my ear, her breath stimulating my flesh and her hands traversed down my chest and to my belly, squeezing me in a gesture of honey sweet affection. My hand found her leg. Momentarily resting on the toned appendage and enjoying the soft cloth of her dress.

"You really are like a teddy bear ya know?" Lupusregina murmured. My hands positioned themselves over hers, lacing fingers. Neither of us would let go.

It was something about her I loved. To express such thoughts and actions with such an air of matter of fact casualness at the truth of it all.

The wind returned as the world decided to breathe again.

"A multipurpose teddy bear," I teased, stroking her forearm.

"Well tonight my teddy bear gets cuddles."

"And kisses?"

"Hmmmm," she deliberated, fingers drumming on my stomach as she deduced her answer. "Alright, just one before we fall asleep."

Moving into a more optimum position I found her face hovering over mine. Eyes gleaming like twin supernovas and her tongue flicked across my lips and a nail journeyed the length of my jaw, delaying itself for a moment to play with the hair of my beard.

Our lips locked in a slow kiss, her tongue taking the fittingly dominant role. The sweetness and warmth of her familiar in the most wonderful of ways. We had yet to be together for a full year but we felt as though we'd known one another in a manner that transcended forever. So perfectly did our existences meld it was equatable to something that has predated us. Always there but waiting for the correct place in time to find each other.

Withdrawing from me she breathed out, expressing her happy satisfaction without worry. Not that she made any attempt to hide it. She lifted her head to the branches and the sky a sea's worth above the branches. Lips still enticingly wetted from the kiss to such a degree I could not resist the call to touch them, feather like were my fingers. Trailing along them and down her chin. She giggled and our bodies were again as they were before.

"Goodnight Lupu, I love you," my eyelids could no longer stave off sleep.

"Goodnight sweetie, I love you too," she cooed.

In a heat spark of inspiration she used a claw to carve a heart in the bark of the tree. Careful and precise as a sculptor first shaping stone.

There were many worlds, times and places and eyes and minds to compass it all but there would be only one place like this. Like starlight gracing the wide eyes of life our journey had taken us here and the events would be remembered by the bark and the trees and the grass and ground. The heart would be forever.

And so we slept peacefully.

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

Five Years, Forever, Future
----

Nightmare Rarity's hooves traversed across the stone surface of the bridge with regal precision. The kind that stemmed from countless years of life. Not a single wasted movement, not a muscle or limb moved more than it had to. My hand rested on a shoulder, the appendage instinctively seeking her out. Fur black as a radiant space.

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to get a gift for you this year."

"I think the pleasure of my lover's company shall suffice." She respond with wit, eying me from her peripheral with a sharp toothed smile. A smile so big I could see the corners of her eyes crinkle.

I smiled back at her, comfortably.

"Five years."

"Five years," she echoed in a serene sense of beauteous wonder and satisfaction. "The first five years of eternity."

I ran my hand up and down her back as we crossed the patch of grass that stopped at the lip of the bridge itself and we came upon a cliff.

"What sort of bridge ends in a cliff?"

Nightmare shrugged. Not in a manner that suggested the absence of an answer, but as a revelation in the absence of meaning the answer had. We looked out over the expanse of lake water below that stretched out from the monolith rocks reaching up beneath the cliff's brief end.

The water stretched onwards to the land beyond. Treetops protruding from a gray blanket of indifferent fog that had seeped through the forest. Stakes in the earth waving leafy flags to declare their existence.

"So, what shall we do now?"

"You trust my judgment?" I knew the answer before the thought even finished shooting from my brain to my lips.

"Of course," I watched her speak those words before she kissed me. A quick, strong kiss. The wind blew her purple mane about me and sheltered us from the world. My hands cupped her face, thumb running over her lips as she pulled away. Her bright tongue swiped over them and flicked its way over the skin of my thumb.

"We fly."

Again she smiled. No indication nor word was required for me to mount up on her back, knees clenching with sufficient enough strength as my arms found purchase around her chest. I wondered if she could feel my heart beating from my chest and to her back. I felt hers.

"Hold on."

In one profound leap we arched through the undisturbed air like a conjoined pair of pitched stones. The hair of her tail trailing behind her akin to a comet that held within it a shifting galaxy. The water closer and closer before in a single shifting burst we soared straight. Black hooves skimmed the surface and water misted about in dancing slashes of white. I could not stop smiling. She laughed.

We journeyed upward higher and higher. Stars in our wake. Some of them became one with the water. Horn first we pierced the fog. A supernova of sapphire expanding all throughout its form and faceless mass, stretching on in seconds of eternity in the forest as the fog died.

Neither of us looked down after that. My face nestled against her neck. The warmth. The absolute reality of her. In turn she felt me.

"The first five years of eternity." Our lives had met and neither of us had been the same since. It could be no other way.

It is quite a joyous thing. To look forward to the future with happiness and even greater the knowledge that you will always be loved. The future is weaved in the present and the present is love and so shall the future be love. I heard her breathe. An airy declaration of contentment.

I had no need to speak my thoughts.

She knew.

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

The New World
----

The capital was in ruins. Primus Imperator, the personal weapon of the Emperor himself destroyed. Discarded like a cosmic toy no longer wanted. Mountainous it cast its shadow, but regardless it too was steadily being devoured by the ice and snow. It was cold and bodies were strewn everywhere. Pieces of them. Arms, legs, torsos and heads and organs and entrails splattered the ground. The blood around them a grotesquely dazzling Rorschach blot of red. My boots crunched in the snow, tendrils of blood stretching from them in a futile grip before snapping away in bloody footprints.

Spires of ice displayed impaled bodies and I gripped the sword I had found lying in the palace when all fell to the frenzy of a final battle. Buildings ransacked and pockmarked by the deeds of war. Others in total desolation. Hollow frames that held only fading memory of what was before. I continued walking. Past now vacant business, restaurants, bars and cafes and destroyed vendor stands. My boots crunched on broken glass. I spared it no notice beyond recognizing the sound. My eyes flitted to an impaled corpse, dripping blood solidified several feet above the ground. Morbidly reminiscent of stalactites.

My breath clouding in the chill and my beard forming traces of ice.

I knew that my general was out here. Somewhere. She had to be.

I stumbled back when a rebel soldier shot up from the ground. Eyes bulging in horrified and fruitless accusation, groping aimless at nothing for help. His throat cut so neat as if by a singular talon. So cold that his blood had begun to freeze to his exposed jugular and down his front. I lowered my defensive posture. In the blade's crystalline reflection I again bore witness to his last moments. Ghoulish in movement he lurched and loped away about twelve steps before plopping to his knees with brute finality. When his face met the snow's embrace I knew he would not rise and I did not look back.

Looking around the devastation held no meaningful impact on me. All I wanted to find was my Esdeath.

"Esdeath. Esdeath. Esdeath. Esdeath." The mantra of my heart and soul were in flawless synchronization. The wind whipped over the square. The water in the fountain had frozen solid and the foundation of the stone had cracked in several areas. From the interior a hand jutted out, fingers hooked and the manner with which the ice had frozen gave the impression he had claws made of the unrelenting element that ruled over the land.

Where was she?

"Esdeath!"

"Michael? Michael!"

Swiveling to her the sound of her voice with such speed my head felt a rush and my eyes held her in full. Her silky hair swayed with the wind, disheveled by the war. Uniform dashed with blood and dirtied by grime. She smiled. Sweetly.

Dropping the sword I sprinted to her and lept to her welcoming arms, doing my best to restrain tears and I shuddered a sob that expelled my once growing panic. My hands ran over her back, fingers gripped strands of blue hair. Her kisses lined my face and she squeezed me against her, my toes dangling over the stone.

"You're okay?" I peered into the face of my love, pale and beautiful. Even right now I could not resist putting my lips to hers. The warmth of her mouth startling when contrasted with the Empire's cold ruins.

Pulling away she laughed. "Of course I'm fine," she leaned into me, "tired. But alive."

"Night Raid?"

"Dead."

She looked back with a fierce, knowing smile. Victory was hers. By that extension, ours.

"Hey," with a feather touch she brushed away a tear. It dropped from her finger and froze while airborne to shatter on the stone into minuscule pieces. "Don't cry."

"I'm just...relieved your safe. I don't know what I'd do if-," she shushed me calmly, her fingers resting of my lips. I kissed them before they trailed down to tilt my gaze up into her ice blue eyes.

"I'm not going anywhere. We'll always be together Michael," she drew out the syllables of my name, delighting in it. "You belong to me," her cheeks becoming an endearing shade of pink, "just as I belong to you." Fingers stroked my beard and I leaned into her. Her nose in my hair breathing in my scent. My arms around her hips and I felt her hair brushing the backs of my hands.

"Where do we go now?"

"Anywhere."

We did not address the ruination around us. For that's what it was. Ruination. Dead remains of something old. In the distance Primus Imperator was a white and blue shadowy mountain. We looked ahead. The future held an absolution. Concrete and greater than any mountain. The road to get there was not entirely compassed by myself or Esdeath for that matter. But that was no reason to be afraid. The journey is part of our story and becomes a memory of the great whole.

She tapped my forehead, chuckling when I my focus recalibrated to the present. To her. She held my hand with a cheer that stood above the desolation. Smiling, genuinely. I smiled too.

"Let's go."

[Kaltes-Herzeleid]

Beautiful
----

I felt her thread her fingers through mine as we walked. It was warm, not the unbearable sort of heat that seems malicious in its omnipresence; but a gentle welcoming to the outer world. Zero Two beamed in happiness, chin raised momentarily to the sky and the distant green and white speckled mountains to the north. The grass was freshly cut and tender and out on the lake there were swans. Blissful in their slow journey across the surface in the sun.

"Are you okay, darling?" I loved it when she called me that. It fulfilled something deeper within. A depth I was aware of but, if I were to be humble, could not fully bequeath the face of description.

"Yeah," I glanced at her, my thumb swiped across the back of her pleasantly smooth skin. "Are you?"

"Of course."

The shade of the tree we stopped under whispered to us invisibly that this is where we're meant to stop and rest for the time being. Slowly we eased into the pristine bench, still new and unsullied by the vulgarity of those with no appreciation of the place others had taken time to mold for them to enjoy. Asking nothing in return but for them to be happy and create memories worth recalling someday to come.

She wore a white top with a light pink hoodie halfway zipped, shorts and a casual pair of sneakers. She was still stunning even in such everyday clothes. Around her neck was the winged necklace I'd given her for her birthday. A sunbeam glinted on it. I could make out the detail of every sacred feather.

Her eyes held love and deep, empathic resonance to me. It was true. I was okay. Scarred, but alive. She still scooted herself closer to me, hip touching mine and her head tilted as she bore her gaze upon me. Strands of pink fell to the angle her head moved in, silently falling into new places. I brushed a lock away from her throat.

"This place is beautiful," I said. And it undoubtedly was. The swans on the lake, the brilliance of the green grass and the gentle trees that conveyed a sensation of ancient friendliness connected with the land itself. A fountain stood in the center and from where we sat we could discern the eternal trickle of water. A great stone bird stood elevated, wings spread in a display and regal beak parted in a voiceless but serenely uplifting call.

"Mmhmm," she nodded, pleased with my comment but detecting there were more words. I felt her curiosity as though it were from the source of myself.

"Do you think it'll stay that way?"

"As long as we remember it that way, it'll stay beautiful darling."

Darling. The love intertwined with that precious name shone like a Goddess light on the threat of bleakness in my heart. It retreated. Cowering and slinking as it faded.

"The world...," my voice cut abruptly, like a pinched air tube. My eyes in shame flitted downward, past her legs and to the unmarred concrete.

"Darling."

I looked back to her. There was no scorn, no anger or even sadness. Understanding. Willing me to go on.

"I get tired of the world's ugliness sometimes, Zero Two. I get tired of the vulgarity, the obsession with shallow meaninglessness. The greedy and the exploitative. They have no sense of love or comprehension of the wonders existence has to offer. Not even an inclination that it exists. It's so...,"

"Sad?"

"Yes. Sad."

"Does that sadness come from a place of sympathy?"

"No. So why does it sadden me at times?"

I was not sure if that question was rhetorical or if I genuinely wanted an answer. Zero Two's fingers found my hair, flowing through strands and traversing to my shoulders. I lifted my arms to hold her hands in my own.

"You've talked about how...our love, our bond...our shared existence is more beautiful than anything this world could concoct. That that's what makes living truly extraordinary, right?"

"Yes," my mouth formed a small, but resolute smile. "I know that, and my belief in that will never change," I kissed both her hands and she smiled a honey sweet smile that nourished us both.

"I know, darling. I just thought you needed a bit of pep talk," she laughed lightly. I chuckled with her, my shoulders shaking.

"It's been awhile since you've laughed like that."

"I know."

"Maybe this place won't stay beautiful. Humans have a habit of twisting things ugly...but," she smiled again and looked at the bird fountain and the crystalline water that spouted from its beak, biting her lip for a moment and looking back to me, "people also made this place. Made it for people like us to enjoy. And we'll always have its memory. And...maybe somewhere out there it's waiting for us to find again."

"Like we did?"

"Yeah. Like we did."

Her thumb delicately brushed away a tear on my cheek and she kissed the minuscule wet trail it left. I gently grasped her face, hair like a silken cocoon that concealed us. Teal eyes gleaming with the timeless ethereal love that made this shared existence so wonderfully beautiful.

I kissed her, her sweet taste enveloping me as her serenity melded with the one that blossomed from the center of my heart to fill me and to join hers.

From the lake a pink and a white swan suddenly took to the air. Water dripping from their bodies, pearling in the air as they rejoined their shimmering main body. The swans danced joyously in the sky.