Author's Note. I used my favorite poem by Robert Frost to write a piece about Cream's internal feelings as she departs from Knothole.
Ephemeral.
As I sit beneath the serene beauty of autumn's bounty, I am reminded of a poem my mother used to read to me so long ago. A since-forgotten work by a nameless author in this world of strife.
Watching the dazzling golds, reds, and browns float down before my nose, the words come to me as if I were being struck by a subtle yet poignant understanding.
"Nature's first green is gold,"
When I stare down at my once beautiful, white gloves, tarnished by blood and dirt. I feel overwhelmed by a sense of exacting verisimilitude. Life, as the season, was utterly ephemeral.
"Her hardest hue to hold."
Being here, surrounded by beauty and serenity, was a gift, though a gift that I might have taken for granted. My desire to go home and return to what I know has made this morning sit all the more unbearable.
"Her early leaf's a flower;."
What I have seen and who I have met has made me want this to last an eternity. To stop time so that my life and youth be spared degradation with the endless colors painted around me.
"But only so an hour."
I stand and feel sinking despair. For I know that the things already set in motion cannot be altered, and like fall's death gives rise to harsh winter. I, too, must move forward towards an unknown end.
"Then leaf subsides to leaf."
I'm scared… scared to move forward from the sea of gold that keeps me safe. Tears well up in my eyes, and I fight to keep them in. The pain of uncertainty and the desperate need for absolution pushing me towards winter.
"So Eden sank to grief,"
"Hey, Cream!"
The minute I hear Tails' voice, I am pained. I slowly turn to see him there, with his rifle over his shoulder and a smile on his face. Beckoning me away from my newly found haven and back to where I thought I wanted to be.
"So dawn goes down to day."
With reluctance, I slowly and silently take to his side, and even as he speaks. I cannot think of anything but my last day in the forest. It indeed was short, but I have come to resign myself to inevitability.
I turn my head away from Tails as he talks so that I can stare back at where I had just been.
As the distance between myself and beauty grows further, I can do nothing but whisper the inevitable acceptance of truth as I leave Knothole forever.
"Nothing gold can stay…."
