Prologue
"I have loved you past present and future, and I will love you even when time consumes us all, and there is nothing left but the ashes of what could have been"
She is running from his voice, through the branches that snap under her feet, crackling like fire as they consume the silence, feeding on the gentle wind her scurrying feet leave behind.
"Believe me, I am all around you, I need you like you need the air…"
Her vision is fast, taking in the tree bark as she avoids their tall shadows, her chest rising and falling heavily as she greedily gulps the air, pushing on and on, not remembering why she is running, only knowing, there is some thing out there amongst the bleak winter morning and the dew that breathes on the ground.
"… and I am the air you need"
The voice is nearer this time, beside her ear, it causes warmth to collect, whisking her hair over her shoulder. She stops, paralysed, her arms don't move, her legs ignore her commands to keep going, to follow the bird song that is cast from the faraway Green finches.
"Don't fight, what you know is not meant to be fought", a voice whispers softly caressing her mind, jumbling the broken thoughts that keep trying to reconnect in to pieces to make a whole again.
Arms are slithering around her like ivy, holding her in place, but her paralysed limbs don't fight, as her breathing quickens and her eyes become wide and childlike with fear.
"Sarah" the voice hisses.
The pieces begin to reconnect, she remembers why she was running, she remembers every thing that has happened, and she remembers the loss, the war, the friendship, the look in his eyes when she turned away.
She remembers how she hurt him.
Pain branches through her body, her veins are numb, her dress dirtied and her hair floating in an alien cloud around her ghostly face, but she doesn't feel the scratches from the trees on her legs and arms.
She feels only grief, and loss, and anger, and ancient love.
As the stranger whispered her name, she screamed, in agony, writhing in torture, her paralysed limbs moving of their own accord as she screamed out in rage to the Gods above her, screaming for every thing they had taken, every thing fate had shown her to be.
"Sarah…."