}~Prologue~{

Dost not the wind whip through the branches in a most terrible fervor, on this day of gray?

Sparse trees inhabit the open space, glittering with snow, loveliness; everything reminds me of her.

This dreamscape, this world apart from my own, our own

Frightens away the ghosts hidden in my memory

Naught to bleeding away, gone awry,

The fateful thirteenth hour such a short millenium ago.

Cascades of ebony tremble o'er each muscle fiber existent in my cursed being,

Emerald diamonds spark within my blood

Forcing my heart to constrict, and my eyes to tear

With the bluest of salt water-droplets-

Stinging this most deceptive of faces

Which had eternally cursed me with troubles.

The ivory skin has pulled taut o'er my bloody flesh,

Singeing the person but not the man

In my grave, I shall sing her praises

But not before I kiss her lips

Formed from the purest of rose-petals,

Dripping with the sweetest of honeys.

Ah, but if I could only remember

The times when I dreamt of her countenance

Day upon night, night upon day

When the skies had turned to amber-gold

And the stars were filled with weeping;

Their echoes reverberated across time and space- the end of their tears I could not trace.

No crystal sphere could e'er replace

The livid light of her gentle face.

My sweetest Sarah rests upon

The dead of night, the dusk and dawn

No longer shall I walk alone

Once I meet her gaze upon my throne.

Beauty defined in the most simple of women

Yet, the most defiant and resolved.

I could not imagine her otherwise,

Though my blood matches her pulse

In our tempests of few and far between,

But once they come, oh, how her tears gleam.

I am cold, my blood wears thin

Beneath this most useless of skins.

But, ah, I see her far ahead-

My lady faire, garbed in deep red.

How much longer must I walk

Until there is no room to talk?

Until our bones mesh together like velvet,

Crushed into the ground like sand

The hourglass shall never turn,

And no clock shall ever chime again

For whence she comes, for whence she came,

The time that's there doth ruin my game.

Her body filled with warmth, her blood

Could quench my thirst forevermore.

The eyes that peer into my soul

Undo me past the point of no repentance, no regret

-Her soft skin, like milk poured o'er this purest snow

Could hereafter fill my senses with weeping.

How does such beauty find its way to a man,

Granted I be no man at all?

How could the fates discover such spirit

In the ways in which I most wish to fall?

How could she even dare to see

This most horrid side of me?

-Here she comes, treading lightly

Down the path illumined brightly

By the warmest of seasoned suns

-She knows it to be me; she runs.

My Sarah, love, your gentle truth

Could bring me fevers from my youth.

She pauses from six feet apart

(Can she not see my bleeding heart?)

Cheeks flushed soft, most appealing

And her breath comes hard but lovely.

Eyes glistening with sheer life

And in my anguish, I moan inside.

Into my arms she makes her way,

I know not why or how

But she loves me, and I suppose

I can be selfish now.

Our lips collide into the stream

Of flowing beauty evergreen

-And, until the day I die,

Nevermore will I dare to sigh

Unless it be in the throes of "yes"

Or from sweet contentedness

From her heart intertwined with mine

In the most sacred, blessed sense.

My Sarah love, my Queen, my Pet,

You have been most Heaven-sent.

The drifts of snow may flutter past,

But we feel no chill

For affection warms the heart most dear;

And here we stand, strong in mind and will.

~This be the day firstborn

Of the account of Winterthorn~