11-17-2021, 03:55 PM
Nihlus' joints ached and cracked as he stretched that morning. They, more often than not, keep him here these days -- they being his aging joints, here being the island Heim off the shores of Ischia, the island which he has now called home for close to a decade. Three children grew up here in the warm embrace of family and have since embarked on adventures of their own, elsewhere and beyond even the wildest of Nih's guesses.
Had you asked him in his youth if he could feel the ache of missing someone in his breast as the skies feel the weight of gravity restraining them from the void of space, he would have scoffed, at best. Mocked you, at worst. As far as relations went during that time in his life, he did away with such trivial thing as mothers, faux-fathers, or siblings. In their place stood the cold and vast iciness of the unforgiveable Tundra. The brotherhood that came with could come or go for all the Nihlus cared -- in the beginning, anyway.
But his youth had fled him, slowly at first and now at a pace which frightened him daily. The fear worsened during the periods of Brennen's absences, expected absences which they communicate about to the best of their abilities, to be sure, but absences nonetheless. And today happened to be a morning of absence. With no children to keep him company nor a partner to love him into feeling young again, Nihlus faced the feelings deep in his chest which he ignored as a youth and which have therefore grown nigh-unconquerable in their greatness.
Before he even began his morning meal, Nihlus began to cry. The tears slipped from his glowing blue eyes and fell unto the shade-cooled sands of Heim's heart.
Will I live to see my grandchildren? Will I live to see my partner? What will happen when I am gone? Will I be forgotten by those who claimed to love me, will my name be erased from the consciousness of the living? How can I live knowing that I will die, knowing that my powers will not be able to help me from that place which I survived once, that grey and desolate beach of the afterlife? Who will greet me there except the other pitiful mortals? Who --
A sudden wave of something disrupted the rambling of his mind. A sensation that passed through each particle of his being with a gentle urgency, like a hand lifted to awaken with great care. Nihlus inhaled, sharp and alive as he it had not been before.
"Brennen!" He called, disoriented but with a heart sailing far above the tumultuous waves of existentialism below. Brennen had materialized somewhere on Beqanna, had returned, and had sent out -- whether intentionally or incidentally -- a pulse of his magical vitality.
And so, running full-tilt toward the beach with his aching joints long forgotten, Nihlus calls with the high-spiritedness of any love-struck yearling:
"Brennen!"
Had you asked him in his youth if he could feel the ache of missing someone in his breast as the skies feel the weight of gravity restraining them from the void of space, he would have scoffed, at best. Mocked you, at worst. As far as relations went during that time in his life, he did away with such trivial thing as mothers, faux-fathers, or siblings. In their place stood the cold and vast iciness of the unforgiveable Tundra. The brotherhood that came with could come or go for all the Nihlus cared -- in the beginning, anyway.
But his youth had fled him, slowly at first and now at a pace which frightened him daily. The fear worsened during the periods of Brennen's absences, expected absences which they communicate about to the best of their abilities, to be sure, but absences nonetheless. And today happened to be a morning of absence. With no children to keep him company nor a partner to love him into feeling young again, Nihlus faced the feelings deep in his chest which he ignored as a youth and which have therefore grown nigh-unconquerable in their greatness.
Before he even began his morning meal, Nihlus began to cry. The tears slipped from his glowing blue eyes and fell unto the shade-cooled sands of Heim's heart.
Will I live to see my grandchildren? Will I live to see my partner? What will happen when I am gone? Will I be forgotten by those who claimed to love me, will my name be erased from the consciousness of the living? How can I live knowing that I will die, knowing that my powers will not be able to help me from that place which I survived once, that grey and desolate beach of the afterlife? Who will greet me there except the other pitiful mortals? Who --
A sudden wave of something disrupted the rambling of his mind. A sensation that passed through each particle of his being with a gentle urgency, like a hand lifted to awaken with great care. Nihlus inhaled, sharp and alive as he it had not been before.
"Brennen!" He called, disoriented but with a heart sailing far above the tumultuous waves of existentialism below. Brennen had materialized somewhere on Beqanna, had returned, and had sent out -- whether intentionally or incidentally -- a pulse of his magical vitality.
And so, running full-tilt toward the beach with his aching joints long forgotten, Nihlus calls with the high-spiritedness of any love-struck yearling:
"Brennen!"