The weight of restlessness sits upon the chests of many - though very few allow that low vibration to drive themselves to the depths of evil. What of restlessness is evil? Perhaps it is the simple fact that those that live with such perpetual drive might never sit still, always drifting, drifting . . . wakes and wakes of confusion and chaos left behind them. Those that allow themselves to fall into such states of selfishness are often the most loved, most sought after, admired, even uplifted. Their waxing and waning whimsy charms the crowns off of kings and turns the might of men into the chittering of mice. Masters of masks, those restless few.

Perhaps he is not evil, the shadow wielder. Certainly he has harbored evil, even given it life in the forms of sons and daughters. No . . . no, he is not evil. Lacking of discipline, maybe. Maybe lost to the weight of his own quiet sadness. Always burying something . . . something he cannot quite name - always finding new depths within him.

An openness once existed in Litotes. He remembers who that man was, he thinks. At least he remembers in the way one remembers a version of themselves they both long for and regard with derision. So that is to say, he hardly remembers at all. He tries to dredge that young man up now. The hardly magic-touched lion he had once been used to swell with such hope and life he would often come to bursting. It is that bursting that led him astray; and it is that bursting that keeps him from remembering his once snowflake-less reflection. He had to find a different version of himself through the years - loss of love, imprisonment, children, a crown, a wasteland -

Well, now he is simply lost.

And that rushing of the autumn-cold river before him is not nearly as loud as the desperate river constantly raging through him.