Sunset
by Ashura
archive:
warnings/notes: none
****
you used to captivate me
by your resonating light
but now I'm bound by the life you left behind
your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
your voice it chased away all the sanity in me
these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase
It is sunset, and her window faces westward. The sky is vibrant beyond its confines, streaked with gold and violet and crimson like splashes of wine across silk. Beneath it the sea stretches on and on, forever perhaps, past the point when cartographers have given up and turned for home, to the ends of the earth and beyond.
The world is endless, but she will never see it again.
It is strange, is Time, and Fate, the way they come about full circle as if the universe is truly built in a sphere, as if humans and Old Ones will never learn from their mistakes, not for all their trying, for all their fighting. Gwenhwyfar remembers her last imprisonment in this same tower, the swell of her belly, sitting by the window for long lonely hours singing to the baby within.
She had played the harp, then, and wove tapestries, leaned against the stone that framed the arched window and whispered prophecies into the air, things the Old One had told her. He meant to reassure her, but she only stared seaward and knew that in the end, she would be alone.
She had hoped, at the end, when her lord had given her son the choice, that he would come to her. She had only memories of the ancient Welsh mountains, of a cabin and a man with a good heart, with a song in his soul that would never go free. She remembered the child, a tiny creature who did not cry, with golden eyes and no colour in his skin anywhere, and she had cradled him into her arms and named him Raven, named him for the old protector of Wales, for Bran whose head was buried facing their enemies, to always give warning. For he would be the one to save them, and the youngest Old One with him.
She knows this, has always known it, and she told it to the sea and the sky. But still she mourns the son she will now never know, and the life together that they will never have.
This is immortality, then. Empty halls and voiceless shadows, and memories of what could never be. Some nights in winter, when the thunderheads hang thick and low over the sea and the rain pounds against the stone that confines her, she still hears the Wild Hunt trailing their quarry, loud and raucous, across the sky. The howling of the Hounds of Herne chills her blood and makes her fingers tremble, and sometimes she envies them their freedom, and other times she wonders if the Hunter is really free at all-he has been chasing the wind, after all, for even longer than she has been singing to it.
But the sky is almost clear now, streaked with wisps of shadow where the clouds must be, and the sunset reflects gold in the water. And Gwenhwyfar leans against the sill, rests her head against the cold stone, and wishes her son well. He chose love over immortality, when the choice was offered.
She wishes, sometimes, that she could have done the same.
****
you used to captivate me
by your resonating light
but now I'm bound by the life you left behind
your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
your voice it chased away all the sanity in me
these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase
It is sunset, and her window faces westward. The sky is vibrant beyond its confines, streaked with gold and violet and crimson like splashes of wine across silk. Beneath it the sea stretches on and on, forever perhaps, past the point when cartographers have given up and turned for home, to the ends of the earth and beyond.
The world is endless, but she will never see it again.
It is strange, is Time, and Fate, the way they come about full circle as if the universe is truly built in a sphere, as if humans and Old Ones will never learn from their mistakes, not for all their trying, for all their fighting. Gwenhwyfar remembers her last imprisonment in this same tower, the swell of her belly, sitting by the window for long lonely hours singing to the baby within.
She had played the harp, then, and wove tapestries, leaned against the stone that framed the arched window and whispered prophecies into the air, things the Old One had told her. He meant to reassure her, but she only stared seaward and knew that in the end, she would be alone.
She had hoped, at the end, when her lord had given her son the choice, that he would come to her. She had only memories of the ancient Welsh mountains, of a cabin and a man with a good heart, with a song in his soul that would never go free. She remembered the child, a tiny creature who did not cry, with golden eyes and no colour in his skin anywhere, and she had cradled him into her arms and named him Raven, named him for the old protector of Wales, for Bran whose head was buried facing their enemies, to always give warning. For he would be the one to save them, and the youngest Old One with him.
She knows this, has always known it, and she told it to the sea and the sky. But still she mourns the son she will now never know, and the life together that they will never have.
This is immortality, then. Empty halls and voiceless shadows, and memories of what could never be. Some nights in winter, when the thunderheads hang thick and low over the sea and the rain pounds against the stone that confines her, she still hears the Wild Hunt trailing their quarry, loud and raucous, across the sky. The howling of the Hounds of Herne chills her blood and makes her fingers tremble, and sometimes she envies them their freedom, and other times she wonders if the Hunter is really free at all-he has been chasing the wind, after all, for even longer than she has been singing to it.
But the sky is almost clear now, streaked with wisps of shadow where the clouds must be, and the sunset reflects gold in the water. And Gwenhwyfar leans against the sill, rests her head against the cold stone, and wishes her son well. He chose love over immortality, when the choice was offered.
She wishes, sometimes, that she could have done the same.