I'm so lost, I am damned
In this gray lonely valley;
Starless nights so vast and so black
My prayers slowly sink to a whisper;
I'm falling into the deep
I'm falling
Drowning in destiny…
[Leaves' Eyes]
.
His legs carried him faster than Sleipnir out into the night. He slammed through a side door and bolted out into the shining dark light of Asgaard's night. A flight of stone stairs stood in his way, and in his haste, his boot caught on the last step. With a quiet gasp, he lost his balance. He turned so that he hit the ground shoulder first and rolled, as his centuries of combat training had ingrained in him. Cool grass and soft earth caught him. He tumbled over onto his back with a grunt and lay still, panting.
The air was warm and sweet with flowers. Somehow he'd found his way into the secluded garden his mother kept for their family's private use. My mother… my family…
He stared, eyes wide and unblinking, up at the endless starscape stretching overhead. Grief and adrenaline made his head spin and from where he lay, he wildly imagined that the golden fluted spires of the palace were fingers of a meandering shoreline, the universe beyond an endless glittering ocean in which countless wonders, adventures, treasures, and monsters awaited him. It was an old fantasy, something he'd dreamed up as a boy, laying in this very garden.
Now the shining night blurred, the stars liquefying and running together, as tears welled in his eyes. He blinked once, sending two crystalline drops rolling back into his hair to tickle his ears, and as his vision cleared, for an instant he saw the strange vantage point differently: instead of a shoreline, he saw the Bifrost bridge stretching out over the edge of the world, and beyond he saw not the shining lights, but the dark places between the stars, so black and void that he could hide forever in their inky depths and never have to face the light, and all its hideous truth ever again. His breath came in faster and faster as he pictured it, and for a panicked instant he was sure he could feel himself falling, falling up, rushing past the gilded pinnacles, rocketing like a stone down a well into the vast, dark oblivion beyond the stars…
With a gasp, he rolled over, squeezing his eyes shut. Little green sparks flashed in the air around him, magic stirring in the air with his emotion. He curled onto his side and covered his face with both hands, shivering. He was cold all over.
Cold… how can I be cold? I'm… I'm a…
Sitting up, he lifted his hands away from his face, staring down at them numbly. Little red half-moons all in a row dotted each palm, still oozing blood, though they were already closing. He could not stop himself remembering the sight of them, these hands he'd known for over a thousand years, suddenly hideously blue, hard, lined with unyielding ridges. Not hands at all; the claws of a monster. A bogeyman. A nightmare given flesh.
A snowflake landed on his palm.
He blinked, his brow furrowing in surprise. More alighted on the tips of his fingers, on his sleeves, and the ground beyond. He slowly lifted his eyes, looking around the lush green garden, stalks heavy with bright, sweet-scented blossoms, to find that, for the first time in living memory, it was snowing in Asgaard.
No, not in Asgaard – in the garden. A tinge of magic was in the air… his own, leaking from the edges of his mind and the cracks in his heart. Already the plants were beginning to wilt and wither before his eyes under the unaccustomed cold and damp.
My true state. A killing frost. Ice and death. A horror fit only for ruin and slaughter.
His eyes dropped away from the perishing garden. Something vital inside him began to wilt and die like the green, growing things all around him, as he stared at his hands with the inescapable knowing of what was hidden beneath whatever magic masked his true appearance…
The snowflakes tumbled onto his hands.
And melted there.