Forget
The Black God's kingdom is a place to forget. Lord Alan of Trebond finds that he cannot forget quickly enough. Coming here, he learned things he never wanted to know. He learned that his son was brave enough to do the thing he could never do himself. He learned that his daughter is more like her mother than he ever imagined. If he wishes that he lives, still, it is only because he wants to forget these things that he never knew in life. If the dead could cry…
When he is not thinking about his children, he is thinking about his wife. He isn't able to find her here, no matter how hard he looks. The Peaceful Realms are endless. Nor is he able to forget her, and if he cannot find her, forgetting her would be second-best.
He walks this dark and never-ending land and tries not to remember, but he can do nothing to stop himself. Thom. His only son. Who found the courage to do what he could not: to escape the military life, to study as Lord Alan had always wanted to study, to make his life his own, without allowing for the constant push and pull of others' desires. Alanna, who brings change with her as much as her mother had did, although where his daughter brings change with much flash and flare, his wife did it quietly, escaping notice.
Lady Eleanor. The woman he married. The woman he loves. The woman who died, on the day she bore his children. Lady Eleanor: calm and beautiful and perfect and everything he could ever ask for, and lost. Lost, now that he has finally come to join her.
"Are you at peace?" the Black God asks him.
He looks at the dark figure and says nothing.
"Are you unhappy here?" the Black God asks him.
"I am… sorry," he replies. It is the only thing he can think of to say. The Black God nods: a slow, majestic motion that is sorrowful in itself. And then the Black God is gone, and in his place…
Alan does not recognize her at first, for she does not look like herself. She wears black, and there is none of the old humor in her expression, none of the spark in her eyes. But then, she is dead, and has been for long years. Eleanor. Found, at long last. And Lord Alan finds that he can cry, after all.