Author's Note: This story is in its very first form and is subject to changes, thanks to a good beta-ing once it's done. But it seems I just can't keep it away in the meantime, so enjoy! Also please review - it makes me write faster ;)
The Mark of Ishara
Prologue
Dawn was approaching, a predator creeping up on the world over the horizon. It bathed the landscape in the first of two burnished hues and with it came a sudden warmth to the air, the early breath of a new day. Before long the suns would rise, following their oscillating pattern across the sky like old lovers, clandestine and secretive until they parted ways. Their shadows would mark the passing of the day, giving way to dusk and eventually to dawn again, but never to wholly to the night. With suns that never truly set, darkness only ever came to the small strip of sky that ran the centre of the horizons, an open wound where now and again a star or two would fall.
If there had been birds that morning they would have twittered a welcome to the ascent of the day. They would have fluttered and danced in the sky,painting the clouds with their wings. But there were no birds, ,just as there were no clouds to hail the lazy moon as her perfect form looked down kindly on all things. There was just a man, sitting at the mouth of a cave.
He was so still and silent that were it not for the sharpness of his eyes he might have been mistakes for part of the landscape around him. Early morning dew had started to settle over the grass, and it clung to this clothes as though fascinated by the new arrival.
The silence that enveloped him could not be said to have belonged to him; though his body was still, his eyes were aflame, and he sat in the world as though just apart from it – like he was touching a reality that was not his.
But he was a time lord, so all realities were his. He was not their master, just as parents are not the masters of their children; he could protect and guide, but he could not alter or command.
The fire that burned in his eyes held a terrible story, but most could not bear to listen long enough to get to the end of it. Stories are for mirth, for humour – for lessons, for love, for adventure. Even tragedies have some happiness which gives them merit. But the story in his eyes, kept alive by the cinders of his hearts, was not a story anyone wanted to hear. It brought no joy, no harmony. And so the time lord kept it inside of himself like a secret that would break the world.
All stories have a beginning and all stories have an end. In the whisper of dawn, somewhere far away from anywhere you have ever heard of, the time lord thought about his story. He thought about its end, and when it might claim him. He thought about everything he had learnt, and that which he had yet to learn. He thought about what it was to hold a story in one's heart, to keep it secret and safe until it was finally time to let it go. He thought about everything he had witnessed that had brought him here. He thought about her.
And, in the silence of the morning as fresh tears quelled his raging fire, he smiled into the mountains and wept.