#void time

Nights had went on with mutterings and fitful attempts at sleep. Her nightmares were cryptic, harrowing visions that triggered her void form. Portents of familiarity that occurred a scant few years ago, when an Old God stirred to the surface and darkened Pandaria and Uldum with its influence.

Sleep walking or phase shifting was prevented solely because of her lover, her devoted anchor. She clutched to her Orchid in the night with a desperation, burying all her warmth into the scarred story of his own pale form. Sanctum.

Sporadically she argued with her Voidwalker which began manifesting of its own accord. Its voice was no longer a serving monotone, but jeering, teasing. Provoking. Yet the Voidwalker never sought to harm her. It seemingly breathed in her distress, exhaled amusement, reminding her ceaselessly of a failure. As if it fed upon it.

Safrona elected to wait until she was at her most exhausted before trying to find sleep, or drowned herself in an ocean of hard liquor to dampen the Void's noise. Some nights she drowned in her Soulsinger's arms, working frustration away until both mind and body were too worn to allow for dreaming. But even she could not continue riding that line.

She quieted her repore with him more than ever, not wishing her soulbound lover to be afflicted with the same madness that came for her. She did not wish her sleepless anxiety on her worst enemy.

The approaching spring took her away more to the realms of the living, to celebrations and the distraction of eventful masses. But she returned every night to bring her Soulsinger their stories, warm with the vivacity of it all and good drink. Tenacious, talented hearts, murmuring their lyrical ballads to make him smile. A small joy to break out of the Darkness.

During the week of the Hearts of Tenacity, she slept soundly for perhaps the first time in weeks. In her mind there was the sound and smell of rain, strangely, and nothing more.

A blessed petrichor, a momentary peace.

I’ve always been a fan of nothing. After all, we come from the void. There was nothing, but now there’s something; and better writers than I have explained how the creation of something from nothing was “widely regarded as a bad idea” (Douglas Adams.)

Even Samuel Shem in his seminal book “House of God,” which was highly influential to me when I worked clinically, expounds on the virtues of doing nothing and explains that often the best cure for overdiagnosis and overmedication is some good old nothing.