That point. That point where you are so weighed down with decision and need that you cannot do anything.
Once I created freely. My artwork. It was at times beauty flowing forth unhindered from ether to tangible, and at others as pulling stitches from a wound. It came forth as it came. Now need drives me to create, something, anything.
The page is blank, waiting. The metal is flat and unworked. I need to make, it is my first, and now my only love. Nothing.
An image to create forms behind my eyes. But I cannot bring myself to take even the first steps to make it. Perhaps it would not do the thought in my mind justice. Perhaps I am afraid of the tears if would cast me down to. Scour as I might, no other image comes to me.
Giving up, I collapse to my bed – soft, warm, welcoming, lonely.
If I thought that dreams would grant me freedom, I was wrong.
The images that haunt my creativity also haunt my dreams. I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise.
Blood-rage boils in my chest. Ships burning on the water, smoke rising to the heavens. The world is so dark beside the flames, it seems as though the very ice cold sea we had escaped had been set on fire. "Where is our brother? Father?" A scream in the night, my legs give way. What had I done.
I was sticky with blood. My hands, my clothes, my hair nearly matted with it. This was necessary. There was no other way. A head lay on the ground at my feet, I knew him. He was covered in more blood than I was. His eyes such a haunting mix of accusation and sightlessness. We had to. It should not have been so bloody, I meant it to go differently. But this was it now, time to carry it through. I pulled my head high and strode forward. There is work to be done, and how could any other be strong if their leader faltered?
My red dreams were interrupted by another.
My dog stirred against my leg. Shegus looked up at me with loving eyes. I stretched. Seeing I was awake, she leaped up and licked my face "hahaha oh girl, did you sleep well?" laughing I scratched her ears and neck. She was a wolfhound, a young one, and nearly as large already as I was. Shegus sprang away, there was another wolfhound here, this one black.
I watched them fondly as they played around the room. Jumping and teasing each other.
A door slammed open. "Which was it? Which one of them attacked our friend!" Anger seethed in his words, "Which left him bloody on the grass?"
Confused I looked up, whoever it was seemed only a dark shadow in the doorway. "We were sleeping?" The wolfhounds flashed by me in their antics. As they spun I saw the damning proof; a long bloody cut along the black one's flank.
"That beast–"
I woke suddenly, breathing hard. At least my Shegus hadn't been the one, attacking people in the dark. He must have had a reason… I must have had a reason.
"Shegus!" I sat up. "Let's go for a walk!" My voice sounded shaky, if happy. There was no reason for dark thoughts to despoil a bright morning.
The room echoed, no one was there. It took a few long minutes before I remembered. Shegus had died a month ago to illness, there had been nothing that could be done.
Feeling ready to break, I dressed and went for a walk alone. The sun was up, but it was still early. My phone said it was around 9.
Memories had been returning more quickly, but they were never the whole story. An image, a scene, thoughts, an outline, they never explained what came later, or all of the reasoning behind what I remembered happening.
I had been an elf, that much I knew. One of some importance if I could tell anything. This being a day and age with the internet, it was one of the first places to look for answers. Nonsense, junk, mystic mumo jumbo, and piles of Tolkien and fanfiction met my halfhearted searches. That seemed fruitless. After all, how could any author have just happened to write an unknown life and time as fiction? It was silly, and most of what the web had for reincarnation sounded laughable at best.
So, I'd tried to put it from my mind. I was either nuts, breaking down, or getting there.
But that didn't stop the dreams. The funny moments of memory that snuck up and sucker-punched me.
The air was crisp and the grass wet. Everything here seemed so quiet and calm. Birds sang from their branches, and the air was sweat. Nothing was wrong here. I hadn't done anything, life was good.
I fell to my knees and sobbed, body constricting and collapsing inward, my heart a void beyond feeling. The tears and pain of my flesh did nothing to ease the pain in my soul, mourning a lost son I couldn't be sure existed.