#matirit

     But he was there.  He had to be.  After all, she had been real, even if he wasn’t.  If she hadn’t been real, why had he felt the most frightened he had ever felt, thinking of what he might feel if he didn’t feel her?  Her.  Matirit.  Next to him, with him.  It was an endless cycle coming back to his mate.  

     Conlaed growled, daring the darkness to do anything about it.  If there were walls, he would’ve slammed through them.  If there were doors, he would’ve clawed at them.  If there were windows, he would have crashed through them as many times as it took to make him believe, really believe, that things could ever be like they were.

    That was the real prison of this never-ending expanse of darkness.  There was nothing.  No walls, no doors, no windows.  Just dark, as far as the eye could see.  No floor either, of course, something stopped his feet from falling but there was absolutely nothing tangible.

     Matirit was the only thing that mattered.  He was supposed to protect her, make sure that she would never fear again.  He ran a hand, claws beginning to emerge, through his hair.  He tried to keep his breathing steady.

     A failure.  That was what he was.  He had found her, searched centuries for her.  They only had a few days together, before the mage had imprisoned them here.  “Where is here exactly?”  He asked himself aloud.  The words echoed on and on, nothing stopping their resonance but distance and the silence between.

     Something had to change.  Eventually, something had to tip the scales of monotony.  But what?  The thought of that at the time was simply incomprehensible.  Conlaed had much power, magic if you will.  But any power was powerless without something to use it on.  Alone in the darkness, his power was but a slowly dying ember.  Back, in the real, his power was used to keep him running for her.  But that was it.  If he overused it, he too would be torn away into nothingness.  

     His stomach growled angrily, he had eaten some during the running, but not enough to keep him satisfied for a year.  Immortality, complicated thing isn’t it?  Some think it a blessing, until they are granted their wish and find it a curse.  To not die, never have an ending, the period on the sentence, is the greatest curse one could possibly bestow.

     You could go on and on and on, walking in the darkness.  Never eating.  Always sleeping.  Always dreaming, never feeling.  Never living.