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Alone.
The feeling of absolute despair. All love and hope: gone. Nowhere to be, nowhere to run.
Alone is what he felt. He trudged through the barren landscape; the empty buildings. None could be seen, none could be heard. He was absolutely stranded. The cold recesses of the world seemed to lean in on his quavering soul. They whispered of better times. Of a light gone out.
Alone.
Nothing mattered. The world was blank. He was blank. The gods above, the people closest to his heart, even the dead below. All gone.
"Alone," he whispered. "I am alone."
The tall pine tree loomed above him, mocking at his solitude. He stood on a hill. Strawberry fields littered the valley below and cabins dotted the earth. Everything was as it should have been. Except for the silence.
No longer came the striking clang of the forges, nor the light laughter of people that came and went. All was gone.
Yet a ray of light shone through the early morning mist. A beam so brilliant that it silenced the silence. It was the call of the one he loved.
She stood at the foot of a cabin. Her golden hair flowed with a radiance unparalleled by any mortal being. Her eyes, storm gray in the morning overcast, betrayed her thoughts. She felt alone as he had before. The same constricting fear that had strangled him now consumed her very being.
He stepped forward.
"I am here!"
His shout conveyed nothing of his true emotion. He was not alone. Where thoughts of darkness once prevailed, joy and relief flooded. The world gone but whole. His life shattered yet restored. And there, warmed by the rays of sunrise, stood his purpose. Nothing mattered but the lonely figure at the bottom of the steps.
Her head rose, the despair vanishing when she saw the source of the voice.
A smile, bright and full of life, danced across her face. She ran.
They met at the bottom of the hill and embraced each other; their delight at finding one another shone through them.
"It's okay. We're together again."
Who had said it, mattered very little. They were together, and not alone. They were whole again. The universe could have ceased to exist, but it would not have mattered. They were one.