How long has it been, my love? Since we sat here? Since we lay here.
Fleeting recollections - the briefest touch of a hand, gentle fingers pressing softly against his shoulder. A glance; a sigh. And the lips... those wonderfully smooth, soft lips tentatively brushing against his own - and then a fire, a fire so bright and strong it tangled their limbs and mouths and held them tightly together, locked against each other but finally free...
Now, Dannyl's withered, gnarled fingers picked up a tiny sliver of the ancient ruins. Armje…
The aged magician sighed, staring up at the sky. It was a beautiful day in the very height of summer. The shadows were slowly moving across the blindingly green grass but they were still short, and the sun beat mercilessly against Dannyl's back. A trickle of sweat ran along one of the numerous creases of his face, tracing the glistening path of the unnoticed tears which were welling up.
It was only when he cried than Dannyl seemed to be alive at all. He was old, very old. Skin still slightly browned from the years spent in Sachaka, the colour had lost all its strength and broken veins spread out like trees from either side of his nose. What was left of his hair was coarse, unkempt, and whiter than midwinter snow - and while it was somewhat lacking in thickness on his head it was unceremoniously clumped together over his eyes, more than a few stray strands leaping out into the air as though he had been violently shocked. His jowls sagged into his neck, rippling against itself over the collar of his faded purple robes. He didn't have to wear them anymore but so much of his identity was wrapped up in what they represented that he couldn't...
He just couldn't.
But it wasn't his age, or his greying skin, his unruly hair or anything else of the sort which gave away just how close he was to leaving the world behind. His eyes, once so animated and alert, now did nothing other than listlessly blink. Dannyl had done quite enough thinking to last a lifetime - several, in fact - and there was nothing to think about anymore. Nothing he wanted to think about. So, as is perhaps sensible, he did his best not to. And he seemed to be doing well enough without it. He didn't have to think about the fact that he found it increasingly difficult to walk, that he couldn't maintain a globe light for more than a few minutes without exhausting himself. That his body was slowly running down, that his muscles ached and his joints creaked, that his bowels were never fully operational anymore, that everybody he held dear was...
He had never been one to make friends. Acquaintances, yes. But not friends. He had a few, and he had managed to outlive them all, even those thirty years his junior. Sonea was the last, technically no more than a year ago, but she'd been waiting at the gates for much longer than that. Rothen and Lorkin had gone within weeks of one another, many years ago, at opposite ends of the Allied Lands - Rothen peacefully succumbing to his end at Sonea's hands, Lorkin in a characteristically well-meant but foolishly undertaken feat in the far reaches of the newly-explored world. And then, even before them, there had been...
He knew he was crying, now.
Nearly a century, my love. It feels like millennia.
A cool breeze stung his wet eyes. He turned his head against it, and found himself gazing directly at the spot where, nearly a century ago, he had woken up to find... him. He had rescued Dannyl from the Cavern of Ultimate Punishment, pulling him out into safety - and then, somehow, had rescued Dannyl from himself.
Dannyl's fingers dug deep into the soft, gritty earth as the pain overcame him. He welcomed it. My last chance to feel. And oh, what a feeling it was... he had never felt anything so extraordinary in and of the long, long years as what he felt for... for Tayend. A vice gripped his stomach, twisting against his heart and contorting his soul into vile, beautiful forms. It was excruciating, exhilarating, breathtaking, hideous and wonderful and it flooded through him and beyond, the enormity of it leaking into the air and wrapping Dannyl in its fragrant, pungent, cold-fire essence. It seeped into his ears, his throat, his gut and his very self until he couldn't breathe from it, until every tremor, every tiniest flicker of movement screamed his name over and over and over again - Tayend! Tayend! Tayend!
Dannyl slumped against himself, far past the point of no return. Slowly, an ethereal chill spread from his toes to his fingertips and he lost himself inside it. Numb, he was unaware that had he stood, that had he exerted the last shred of his will to open the door to the Cavern and that he was standing inside until the inside of his eyelids glowed red with light and then-
A second. A crystal clear second as his last breath fell from his lips.
Tayend...