From my first unpublished novel "Altairis"

Beginning...


When you’d left, the trees shifted their path and the leaves began to gather. The streams froze over, the grass withered, like my heart which is now beating a slow pulse -- frigid and isolated from time.

Memories of you pierce my thoughts, like a sharp double edged sword, pricking me like a row of thorny rose bushes…how long would I have to endure the pain?

I take in a deep slow breath of the autumn’s air, breezing through the forest with the coldness under my feet. The welled up tears in my eyes are too heavy to fall, my face is solid and tortured. I am beginning to envy the dead, because they at least, are able to sleep.

This is what life is like without you.

The day is winding down. The sky is going from a warm burnt orange fire to a soft grayish purple hue. However my face, my eyes, my mouth are still stone cold. My lips are a pale bluish tint and my eyes onyx. There is clearly a contradiction here. I look down to catch a single petal drifting along…but my icy fingers have destroyed its delicateness. My piercing stare striking away at the creatures in the valley, they are fearful in their approach.

I can see… I am lethal to what’s around me and dangerous to the unprotected. I am utterly alone – because in this condition I am harmful, poisonous.

This is what I’ve become.