Mia
White on white
In a blizzard, fighting onward
She tries again and again
To break past the wind
He is always on the other side, waiting
The winds stir up snowdrifts around her into questions.
Why were you gone, so long?
Where have you been?
Did you know you left me to care for them all alone?
Why did you go?
He never answers
But stands before the lighthouse, eyes on the horizon
He is a sage, the lighthouse-keeper, the guardian
But has abandoned duty for the unknown
She wishes she could forget
Her resentment
For three long years
Of trying to fill a role that wasn't meant to be hers yet,
Acting for three
Guardian, Healer, Teacher
The little ones look up to her, and she hasn't the heart to tell them this isn't her job.
It is three
Cold
Bitter
Years
Before she trudges forward through the endless storm of white
Three years before she reaches him
He seems as she remembered
The sage
The wise cousin
Her father's apprentice, so curious
The boy who hid away in the lighthouse
With old scrolls for hours on end
Is still here
Hiding
But she touches his hand and it shatters into mirrors of ice and lies.
His captors are no captors
His enemies are but phantoms
Assumed in her kindness
Her foolishness, in truth
The snowbank is treacherous and gives out beneath her as
Her cousin is revealed
A twirling skeleton of snowflakes and nothing more
Fragments of her memory melt in her hands
There were two left of their dwindling clan
And now there is one
She sees him as he stands now
Atop the aerie
Still hiding
Behind the forbidden glow he brought about
She sees her own gloved hands
Her healer's garb
The last one standing
He has even adopted the enemy's clothes, just a little bit
Even his tunic betrays her
Returning to her own
She envisions
A change of color
Ivory gloves, crimson-stained gloves
Does it even matter?