Take It #4

If it were night, day would eventually break. If it were a dream, morning would soon stir her from sleep.

 It was neither night nor a dream. The darkness was thick, almost physical, and it bore down on her like a cross. it enveloped her and burrowed inside with its obsidian claws. She had read somewhere that a joy shared is doubled, and a sorrow, halved. But the pain was hers and she was selfish.

She longed for reprieve. She couldn't understand how a small heart could feel so unbearably heavy in her core. How it could love gravity so. Love. The crusty mold that taints corrupts peace.

So very tired. She closed her inward eye and lay her pen down on the paper on which it had been venting. She had prayed for peace before she wrote, but it seemed the gods deemed her worthy only of temporary and conditional catharsis...

Take It #3

The first steps were the most arduous, especially because she wasn't sure where she was going. But she knew it had to be forward. She didn't know if the direction was dictated by the need to face what was before her, or to detach herself from what she left behind. Whether she was moving towards something or away from another. A denial--- and the answer does not come without a price.

Forward. Tentatively, but with as much conviction as she had in her. It was not enough. She committed the grave mistake of looking back, and her resolve crumbled.

She ran, back to the darkness from where she came. She could not see him, but faith told her he was waiting.

But what is faith but our need buoyed by hope?

She fell back and now was fallen.

Take It #2

Though not against her better judgment but reluctantly nevertheless, she released herself from his embrace. At once, the darkness engulfed her.

She faced the night in a stance of sciamachy, her face a mask of courage she didn't quite feel. All around voices assailed her--- sensate impressions more than conscious thought--- screaming grief, sorrow, blood and tears.

She stood rooted to the ground she knew was there only because she wasn't free falling. The figure behind her offered relief which she could understand; even love, though this she could not. A temptation that would have been difficult to resist had she not been the stubborn fool that she was.

There were things that she had to do, and do alone. Should the outcome cause her pain, she was sure, at least, that she would forgive herself. No one else would be so magnanimous.