Vacantly staring out into the empty room, lost in memories rarely remembered anymore, tracing with the mind's eye the timeless undercurrent of power and time. Remembering the tears that were shed on soft pillows and her sister's comforting bosom that hopeful, terrible, desperate night. That night before that fateful journey, before Freljord's rebirth. Dispassionately and yet wistfully reminiscing how they clung to each other all night and in the morning how they stared at each other for an endless moment. Each trying to paint every little nuanced detail of the other in their mind to hold for forever after the presence that gave birth to the memory was gone. Knowing it would be the last time they would see each other. Knowing that there was no other choice.
The weakness had to be purged and sacrifices must be made. Nothing was ever earned without it. Nothing worth having.
"And so..." A deep breath. "What did you do?"
Lissandra had nearly forgotten Ashe was in the room with her, eyeing her warily from under the cowl of the hooded cloak of the Frostguard. She had never promised to tell everything. Truthfully an entire lifetime wouldn't be enough to tell. The girl would know what Lissandra wanted her to know.
Her ghostly white fingertips once again grazed the cold abandoned stone of the empty throne. "I did what I had to."
The room felt like a hollow tomb. A memoriam for bodies that could never be buried and left all the more forlorn for it. The witch glanced at the former queen. Ice blue eyes regarded her unabashedly in unvoiced need. Beseeching answers to questions that no one else had the power to satisfy.
Lissandra smiled and cocked her head slightly in grim amusement "I died, child."
A/N: I have not uploaded since early 2016. I wonder how many of you thought I was dead. To be honest I thought I might die with where I was while writing much of this. I also wonder how many of you still lurk around here. Do say hi if you do, I've actually really missed this community and all of you.
I'll apologize despite apologizing over this thing so many times. The last 2 (or closer to 2 and a half) years have been pretty... terrible frankly. Family problems, work problems, health problems, head problems. Pain and drugs tend to, at first, be very inspiring. Very enlightening. Over time they wear you down and numb your mind. It becomes so difficult to think. Often it can be difficult just to breathe. Let alone walk and talk and do all the other things you need to do in life to... be alive. I've been fighting like hell guys. Fighting to be able to keep doing relatively normal things. PoF had to go on a back burner. I just couldn't focus and my writing just wasn't making sense. I was having a horrible time trying to articulate words that I knew well but couldn't really think of. That's unfortunately not much better but I can at least form full sentences again without getting lost less than half way through.
I'm not saying that I'm better. I'm not saying that I'm going to be updating this thing consistently. But I think I am in a better place in life now to put some attention back into this thing I love and have put so much effort into already. So I'm giving you this little teaser chapter and an update to say - well guess what I'm doing with my memorial day weekend friends. Yeah hopefully this.
Also, a huge downer I know, but I need to know if there's any talented writers out there that might be interested in picking this up if something more than a "can't focus" hiatus comes over me. Mention it in a review or send me a PM and we'll talk about it. I have well over 10,000 words of content written and a somewhat outlined plot so it wouldn't be impossible for someone to take this over in the event that I can't finish it. It would mean alot to me to have that backup.
I've also lost a beta reader so if you're interested let me know that too. I just need someone to point out grammatical errors and such.
And as always, please leave me reviews. Let me know how it's going and what you might like to see out of PoF. Even though I haven't been uploading the story and you, my readers, haven't been forgotten. I still take your input very seriously.