The yellow flame flickered its gentle light over the many sheets of rough and weathered parchment, illuminating ancient documents cluttered with tiny black lettering. The penmanship was elegant and bold, but crammed into such small font.
Erik swirled the red feathered quill across the wrinkled manuscript, gracefully spilling the ebony colored ink onto the surface.
There was a harsh rap at the wooden door. Erik sighed, and set his ruby peacock's feather back into the inkwell.
As he opened the door, cold winter wind rushed into the room, almost choking the tiny candle. The gathering of old documents fluttered, as if they wished to take flight on the icy wind and out the door.
A woman wrapped in black shawls stood huddled in the narrow doorway, her pallid face obscured by black veils.
"Father Hawthorne," she said softly. "It has happened….again."
Erik enveloped the woman into his strong arms, bringing her into the warmth of the room, shutting the door behind him.
He led her to a mahogany chair, and as she sat, he resumed his position behind the stilted ebony desk.
"Mystere, promise me you'll utter nothing but the truth. On god's word."
Mystere placed a spidery hand on the leather bound book. "I promise, Father."
She lifted her silk black hoods from her face, long charcoal locks falling into her lap. Erik stared, his sculpted cheeks flushing slightly at the voluptuous beauty of this young woman.
"It felt as though it were summer again," she murmured. "The moon felt like the bronze sun, and the snow felt like warm, salty sand."
Erik nodded, running his hands over his thick black hair, tied back with a red ribbon. He snatched up his scarlet quill once again and began to write furiously.
"I saw a man. A man with bloodshot eyes. He had white hair, but yet he was so young…" she paused, tracing the tip of her long nail in a particularly deep gouge on the table's damaged surface.
"And he was not alone. There were others with him, all of them possessing the same mark."
Erik's quill scrawled across the yellowed parchment. "Same mark…" he murmured.
"The rest of them had hair as black as the midnight sky. He seemed to stand out from the rest of them, the white haired one."
Erik stopped his arduous writing for a moment. "Were you standing with them?"
Mystere shook her head. "We were distant, but I could still feel the cold wolves howling. The cathedral was barely lit, and some of them crouched in the rafters."
Erik nodded, setting the crimson quill back into its glass inkwell. "I will think on this. And since the twelfth hour is nearing," he glanced quickly at the clock, "You'd best be making your way home, Mystere."
Mystere nodded, pulling her dark veils over her head once more. She meekly walked to the door, followed by Erik, who nimbly grabbed his long black cloak from the small brass hook on the wall.
Just after Erik drew the dark cloak around his shoulders, Mystere turned to him. "Thank you, Father Hawthorne." She whispered. Mystere softly kissed him on the cheek, then turned and pushed out the door and into the bitterness of the snowy night.
Erik stood in the doorway, entranced by the kiss he had just received. But as he shut the cathedral door behind him, the cold wind hammered against him, bringing back callous thoughts of Mystere's woes.
Damn, he thought bitterly when he remembered that he had forgotten his horse. And on the night where I need him the most.
Erik longed to stay inside the warm cathedral, but his fears turned him against it. The cathedral is empty on nights like these…yet filled with an unmistakable darkness…
Erik trudged along the snowy path, head ducked down to avoid the steady wind. Snowflakes sparkled in Erik's dark hair, like stars nestled in the night sky. He soon entered the woods, where the bare skeletal trees did their best to shelter the poor priest on his journey homewards.
Branches clawed at him and tore at his cloak like cat claws. The wind howled as the chalky moon shone through the thorny backwoods, pushing the shivering priest along.
Erik soon came to a fork in the road. The path was obscured by the pilings of white powder and perhaps would have forsaken a traveler who wasn't familiar with those woods, but Erik had walked the path countless times and easily found his way.
Erik's left foot suddenly crushed something. He abruptly stopped, feeling the slight difference between the crunch of the frozen dead grass underneath and the crackle of fluffy snow.
He ignored it, but when his foot came down and felt it yet again, Erik kneeled in the snow. He dug his bare fingers around until he felt it. "What in the world…" Erik murmured. It looked like an arm.
Suddenly, the arm moved. It shivered. Erik yelped, and began to dig as quickly as he could, snow flying like white paint splashed against the ebony sky.
Erik soon had unburied as much snow as he could. His fingers were stiff and numb, but he ignored the needle like pain. He looked upon the child.
The girl lay in the snow, looking as though she were merely sleeping. Her skin was so pale that Erik could see light blue veins running cold blood throughout her body. Her white toes and fingers were webbed, and they curled around the snow as if it were a soft colorless quilt.
And her long, wavy hair lit Erik's eyes. Streaks of fire in the snow. A fiery orange red, like the rising sun.
She wore nothing, and Erik's heart thudded hard in his strong chest, the cold air drifting and falling in his throat. Who could have left such a beautiful child out in the cold?
Erik lifted the frozen girl into his arms, and ran the rest of the way home. Darkness shrouded his way, but he pushed past it, the girl's hair obliterating it with its blood red burn.
Breathe my breath of life I give to you.