thinking about an old online friend…

I was a witch obsessed with knowledge, you were a priest and I don’t know what you were obsessed with, if anything, because I was too blind. I stole your holy artifacts to study them and you never could stop me, no matter how you tried. You were incomprehensible to me yet I understood you like no other. We seemed destined for animosity. By the laws of nature, we should have hated each other. And yet I remember building that wedding pavilion in the thick jungle and nearly collapsing from exhaustion…

I remember seeing the face of that royal brown bear and being swept away by the overwhelming desire to know, to understand it. I remember boating with it for miles and miles. Callouses on my hand, my back drenched in sweat as it’s fur pressed into my back. I remember the sound of the boat scraping against sand as the river narrowed. The jungle with the wedding pavilion was an open plain, wide enough for all our guests, but this jungle was thick with trees. Maybe that’s why I failed…

I barely remember the attack. Only surprise and pain and waking up as the river lapped at my face and realizing what had happened. The sun was so bright, the heat so intense in that jungle. I withered like a golden tipped rose, perhaps from the heat but more from the weight of my guilt. I ran, my cloak dragging through the water. I stumbled back the way I’d came and collapsed on the rocky, mountain river edge. Orange wood, strange faces, yellow wheat. They took me in, but I told myself I would leave. Just one more day I thought. But one more day turned into one more week, one more month, one more year. And now I am only a figure in the stain glass windows of a temple that isn’t yours. A legend, a myth, a deity. What made me worthy of this praise? Nothing, but they do not know that. They didn’t know me, not like you did. They don’t understand how I failed you. I deserve nothing but to be crushed beneath the heel of history and buried in the dirt where no one remembers my name. All I can hope is that you do me the mercy of sparing just a minute to go into that temple and gaze upon my fractured visage.

Batlast, if you are reading this, I’m sorry for leaving you at the altar, but in my defense, you deserved so much better than me.