Star of Silvaria: XI: Prime
Dimly through the dawning darkness, I could hear the sing-song of the river Melavoir running on through the shadows cast by the moon. It was as chilled and pale as the feeling that had settled permanently into my insides. A surprised flapping of feathers and startled chitter cut through the song as a lone blackbird fled for another perch in a beech-tree, somewhere below the wall where the garden-streams cascaded after winding down from the crag of the mountain-swan’s head.
Thirty days. Thirty days like thirty years of waiting.
My eyes tried to find the bird in the shadows.
Poised to leave, those thirty days had run in what seemed as one tired glacier inching towards a sea without a sunset. Every day had been the same as the one before – more waking hours than I’d ever thought human, ransomed slightly by the early Masses and offices that Gabriel kept me mentally preoccupied with. Round the clock running in mind and limb, hardly a breath to take, and pouring, pounding adrenaline, until my limbs learned to take the ache, even if my heart did not.