A/N: As I am suffering Writer's Block, the bane of any author, I, by the urging of my beta reader, have written something outside of the norm to stimulate me. A closer look into the psyche of our dear Bartheleus, this one-shot piece was too out of place for me to publish in The Northrend Chronicles and so now I present it to you separately. Enjoy :) [Best read after Chapter 58 of The Northrend Chronicles to make the most sense]
I was moved from pocket to pocket, tunic to shirt, place to place. Since my inception I have been handled with care, tenderly placed and delicately gazed upon, the depth of the weight of the emotions poured into each act inexpressible by the man stroking my body so softly.
He is a lonely man, years of burden and depraved worth weighing him down as a tide against the rock. His worldly experiences are too many and unavoidable. A young boy nestles inside of him, a scrawny, beaten and desperate boy too starved of kindness, too naked and vulnerable for this world to protect. His skin thickened to armour, his starvation evolved into cunning. Illnesses could not break him, nor could the sweat on his brow. As water did he weave in and out, adapting to whichever container his new employer would confine him to. Fluid and without true substance, unable to be held he grew up. You cannot drown a man who is as thus, for he will drown you first.
There are whispered words, ghostly caresses, gentle urgings and swift barters. Aged and learnéd, tall he stood. Back straight that is so often abused, eyes sharp that so often wept. The world that treated him as invisible, made him but a ghost to wander with steps more fluent than a shadow.
Darker and darker did his world become. Dire and more dire were his thoughts. Bored, abstracted and unwilling, this man lost himself to that which he had cloaked in. That shade and shelter once harbouring him now consumed him, its endless maw swallowing the limp body until only a raw consciousness remained.
He felt everything and nothing.
And then his light came to his world. Blinded with awe and fear did he run, did he lash out to extinguish for who could withstand such a brightness? A flaming hand did reach for him and flinching he thrust it away smothering a small part. The fire- oh it had burned. It had torn through that heavy veil overweighing on him and it had scorched. The burn, it shone. Breaking through a scratch in his dreadful garb the light grew and panic was upon him. Determined and rabid he had found the hand again, the one to hurt him, to shock him. In a thought that was not his own did he smother the light, willing it to leave him be, to rot, to canker and crumble. This shroud, this heavy bane that he had succumbed to was his demise and haven. It was safe and inevitable, the flaming hand was not.
And yet it still reached for him.
Scratched, torn, battered and bruised, a light barely flickering in his starless cosmos held on to him and said that he was saved now.
Accepting defeat, the veil was torn free. A naked, bleeding man left in its wake, raw and without protection, standing before the one who had raised him from desolation.
He was embraced without judgement.
His darkness was dispelled, horrors lessened and future brightened. The star held him fast and tight, a hand in his hair and the other spread wide across his broken back. He was not to be let go. Epiphany and euphoria spread through the fingertips, celestial and everlasting this light was as it filled his veins and exploded in his chest.
Freedom was truly his and this being was to be worshipped. Humbly he accepted the gift and the gift was made with promise.
A promise to protect.
A promise to forgive.
A promise to rebuild.
A promise to accept.
That promise is me. The promise is I, moved from pocket to pocket, tunic to shirt and place to place. From hand to lips I pass, listening to the secrets whispered and regrets had. Silently I listen and with presence I do pardon.
Built from that deemed not worthy, I am the promise to rebirth, to life after death. I am the promise of that which can be repented. I am the promise of unconditional understanding. I am the promise of hope.
And I am but a simple cloth floret.