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[meteorrains]

[It seemed as if the world was spinning impossibly fast, twirling rapidly around it's axis in such a way that made time seem to move much quicker than average. Somehow, without truly realizing it as he had lived it, the entirely day had passed within the blink of an eye. Party after party, all which absolutely required his attendance. Each with a multitude of people who had not seen in years, all welcoming him home, all congratulating him on leading their army to victory. All praising him for managing to make it through a nasty war which had claimed many lives unscathed.

Learning that he was being gifted his own household located in the city as a present from his father had come just as dinner was about to begin, everyone raising a glass and cheering as the news was announced. He had nodded in acceptance, had thanked his father profusely for this grace and generosity, had listened to endless speeches of how lucky he was to have such a noble and wealthy family.

All he wanted in the entire world was a soft place to lay his head, to sleep knowing that peace had fallen over the land, that despite the previous years of suffering, he was finally safe.

Slipping his shoes off, he placed them upon the mat directly inside the door, closing it behind him and moving further into the house his father had chosen. It was well decorated, tasteful and bright, perfect for someone who would soon be searching for a wife. His chamber was easy enough to locate, the door slide back into place carefully. Each garment was peeled from his body slowly, until nothing the pants remained. Something cracked along his spine as he moved, muscled sore and stiff and for once, he wished he had stayed at his fathers estate. At least there he would be able to take a warm bath, or have one of his fathers servants message the area for him.

Sighing softly, he lifted a hand to rub gently at his neck, stretching slightly, before resuming the motion, trying to ease away the ache.]

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[meteorrains]

[A shrine.

A shrine would give them a warm place to rest, a place tucked away from the icy chill of the winter wind. Away from the pain of remembrance, or ash ans soot and dirt.

But how could they build a shrine when there were no bones? When there was nothing to place within it except the memories of one singular person? Did he even recall enough to be worthy of such a thing? Would he be able to some how, some way, draw up each of the names of those who had been lost so that they could be honored? Now, after so long, he could often only remember the barest hint of their faces, blurred and marred by fire and heat.

Everything within him wanted to protest, wanted to reply with biting words that would allow her to see her folly. But she did not know. She may have thought she knew, may have thought she had learned enough from the stories and tales of others, but she would never truly understand. How could she possibly?

It wasn't her fault, and so she did not deserve his anger, his bitterness, his anguish and loss. She had stood there waiting, feet covered up to the ankles in the same icy waters as he had, suffering in silence, all to pay penance for the loss of those she had never even known.

And so he only lowers his head once, a soft sort of nod that's an unspoken agreement to her suggestion.] See that it is done. [It is not a command - never a command, not with her. Nor an order. But he knows that they share the same vision, their hearts and minds intertwined so perfectly that she is the only one who he can trust with such an important task.] It should be simple, small, and the stone a brilliant white. With a fire that is never allowed to go out, so that those who look upon it will remember, and will not fall to the same fate.

[It's only once he has finished speaking that it feels as if the dense fog that had surrounded him since the very moment he had set foot within the village lifted, ghost seemingly satisfied with his offering leaving him in weary peace. And it's only then that he finally turns to her fully, feet barely able to move after standing upon them for so long, stiff and cold and blue. But he moves across the slippery bed with the practiced ease of someone who has visited those rocks before, of someone who once knew them intimately.

It's only once he reaches her that he offers her his hand, intent on helping her back to the shore line, not realizing that she too had moved with the same practiced grace.] Come, let us eat together.

[lostheart]

[She will have to guard his sleep tonight, put up wards around his room. Ghosts are hungry things, when they are lost and the ones that lived here must be so very ravenous after so many years with no acknowledgement. She would not be surprised to hear that the village built on ash has more than its share of hungry whispers in the night and unsound mortal sleepers. The shrine will help, give them shelter, give them a place to go, give them the food and remembrance their lost souls need. She would not have asked him for it, a cut off ghost herself - but

but it is more than she has ever done and it will give him peace as well as them. She remembers the names. Each and every one, burned across her soul like a hot brand on a traitor's skin. She will make the list for the priests to call in each night. Give the dead back their names and perhaps his gift will give them the release they need to start the Wheel and be reborn into life again.

Perhaps her parents will forget enough and forgive...

She only bows her head to his words though, acknowledgment that what he asks will be done and done by her hand, in her design, to his specifications. The fire is a sweet touch. Though they died by it, so much of peasant life revolved around the hearth fire. It would comfort them to have one again.

Her eyes lifted, saw his offered hand and her own slipped into it, slim fingers curling, cold as ice. Here, in this place, in this time, she wondered, again, if she had really survived when everyone else had died. Or if she was only a ghost cut loose and unaware she was dead.

She would not sleep tonight.

Better to not take the risk.

But she stepped forward when he did, feet sure on the rocks, hem of her dress held out of the water with her other hand. Ghost or not, she had no where to go but forward and her lord needed warmth and life and food to drive away the soul cold of his vigil. She had always known he was different. More. From the time they were children. No matter what the wars had done to him - he still was.

And she was grateful.

And yet, like a loose thread on a silk coat, she could not help but pluck, just a little, because different or not - ]

Why this village, my lord?

[meteorrains]

[It was not an unexpected question, yet it was one that seemed to force time to stand still when it was finally brought forth. Why this village, out of all the other's that had suffered the same fate? Or had suffered far more, far worse, had been left with nothing and no one who remembered their true names? Why in this village had he stood silent vigil for hours upon hours, until the sun had sunk low into the valley beyond and the air had taken on it's icy chill?

Was there any possible way to answer such a question without some semblance of the truth? Would it be possible to force out a lie when his entire being was screaming at him to finally allow it to be heard? How long had his mother and his father forced him to forget, to not mention it by name, to not mention them, to not think of their faces, to not picture them within his mind and dreams.

To not look back on that little girl with whom he used to sit for hours in blissful silence, who smelled like sun and rain and happiness?

Only once they reached the shoreline did he begin to form any sort of answer, to contemplate each and every story he had ever told about his origins, how they all weaved together, how each one contained some piece of truth. If anyone had ever bothered to put all of them side by side, light would finally be shown upon the darkest of secrets.

And yet he could not bring himself to tell her the same lie, to use one that had already been given, or to come up with some new ordinary tale. He had once visited as a young boy. He'd had a friend who once lived here. His father had business to attend to and would often bring him with.

Fingers squeeze the ones they held gently, carefully, before slipping away, taking a calculated step to the side, putting a sense of distance between them as his eyes peered out over the bustling village, once more full of life and laughter and joy.

It felt so wrong.]

I was born here. [It sounds so simple, so plain, like the beginning of a tale that will lead to nothing.] My father was once the lord of this land, although he is content to forget it's existence. I - myself and my mother were witness to the fire that destroyed it. We were lucky to have lived near this river, and that my mother was quick thinking and brave. I do not think we would have survived if it had not been for her.

[lostheart]

[She did not press her question, once it had been hung, suspended between them in the cold evening air. She would not ask it again either. Whether his silence was refusal or simply a gathering of his thoughts, it was his right. As it had not been hers to ask. Not because she was his geisha - but because she was one of his ghosts.

He did answer though, after that brief squeeze to her fingers, answer as much in the respectful space he put between them as in his words.

She was not sure what she'd expected to hear.

A lie.

A truth.

A denial.

A dismissal.

He gave her a truth.

And her heart, selfishly, fell. She caught it before it could fall far. Chided it back into place for being so foolish, so childish, as to think he would ever remember a little barefoot nobody child out of the dark ash of the past. Of course he would remember the fear and the terror and his mother and the day of death much brighter and sharper. She supposed she did as well and one hand rose, pale, to press light against the center of her chest. Old ache, old scar. Her eyes lifted as well, looked at the village as well. Reminded herself she was here for him, not for her own old dreams.]

It must have been a very dark night for you. Childhood does not forget terror as quickly as we wish it would as adults.

[meteorrains]

[He hadn't forgotten.

Hadn't forgotten her face nor her name. Hadn't forgotten her laughter nor the sound of her voice. The way she looked when she smiled, as if the sun shone through her instead of upon her. It had been nothing more than a silly childhood crush then, something that could never turn into anything. She was a barefoot nobody child who had been born to dirty nothing parents. That was her lot in this life and it was his to be more, to rise above and act as if it all, as if they all, meant nothing.

But they had.

She had.

She was the one who had had looked for the most, the one who he had always asked and requested about. Once, someone said they thought they had heard the name, recalled it from somewhere, but couldn't seem to remember how.

Another dead end.]

No, I suppose it doesn't. [Or as quickly as his mother and father would have liked for it to. They had been the ones constantly pushing him to forget, to let go, to stop searching. Yet he could never find it within him to stop.] There is one name that I have always remembered above above the rest. A girl who lived at the other end of the road, near the forest. I had hoped that perhaps she too would have found a way to escape, but no one I have ever asked has been able to tell me anything about her.

[lostheart]

[She had expected to hear more about that night - or nothing more at all. Prepared to be whatever he seemed to need her to be to coax him away from the last cold of the river and his long day's vigil. What she had not been ready - or prepared for - was

it took her a moment. One of those eternally long moments, between the sound of ice cracking under your feet and the actual realization of what it means, when the hair rises on the back of your neck and your heart skips forward too fast before your mind tells you why. Just one of them but it seemed to last forever, somewhere between the words 'a girl' and 'I had hoped'. She frozen entirely, went as still as a deer in the woods when it hears the snap of a branch under a hunter's boot and her heart kicked up, fluttering against the side of her pale throat as any deer's would. What she had hoped to hear only seconds ago was suddenly a terrible thing.

He had remembered her.

He remembered her still.

He had sought after her, somewhere in all these lost years.

A great wave of something, dark and wailing and lost, rose up inside her chest. He had remembered her. As she had remembered, all these years, him. And he with so much less reason than her to remember. The flurry of it, leaves in a wind, spun through her, almost - happy. Happy as she'd been as a child and forgotten since. Except then the wind turned cold and she remember - it did not matter. Nothing changed. Noting but that her place below him sank to dirt level if she was the girl he remembered, peasant and no one from a dirt village of no ones. Not the shining height of the Willow District and his match in all but social authority. Her hand crept up from the hidden scar to the necklace at her throat with its twin dragons and she was glad her cake paint white makeup hid her face's loss of color so well.

Of course she knew what she should tell him. Leave the ghosts in the past. Let the dead girl lie in peace. Even if she had lived she would have nothing to give you but ash from her mouth and cold hands. No man should be bound to a memory from so many years ago.

And yet she had carried his memory without hope or chance of fulfillment for just as many years. And now look at where she stood. Her eyes lifted to look at him, black pools, empty and dark as the frozen river they had just stepped from.]

What would you do? What would you ever do if you found her now, so many lost years later with the world between you?

[meteorrains]

[What would you do?

Throughout all of those lost years, filled with pain and grief and war, he had always believed that he knew precisely what he would do if he were ever to find her again. That her beginnings did not - would not matter, that she were so far beneath him it was a wonder he could even see her from his lofty status. Even the dirt from which she had arisen held it's own value, if only one took the time to look, for from it grew beauty and wonder.

But then he had been nothing more than a low ranking soldier and being the son of a noble did little to earn him advancement or better treatment, and it did not matter who he would have taken as his bride.

Until he had earned his place and his title and had won each battle in which he engaged, until he became worthy of respect and the honor which accompanied his name. Until he returned a hero of war, celebrated and decorated and now landed and titled by the man who would sooner have him forget his past then embrace and remember it.

What could she be to him now? What would be fitting for him to bestow upon her? A place within his household? The gift of being his maid and servicing a kind and benevolent master without ever truly being free?

Once upon a time he had dreamed of making her his equal, of giving her his name and the position and power that came along with it.

Now too many years stood between them, the entire world as well as class and station. Would she understand how he had changed? How fighting another man's war had molded him into someone he barely recognized? How he was no longer that gentle, soft spoken little boy?

The woman who fate had meant to be at his side currently stood there, his equal, his twin dragon, his most trusted confident and adviser. His life had been woven as it had for a reason, difficult as it was to always remember and accept.

Gaze lowering as his mind worked, thoughts flickering through at lightning pace, trying desperately to formulate the proper answer, despite not truly knowing the honest one himself.]

I am not sure. [It's soft, barely above a whisper.] Once, I had thought that if I should find her, I would take her as my wife, if she would have me. But now I am no longer certain. I already have all that I could need in you.