And wished it kept
My dearest love
I'm not done yet.
How easy would it be, he wondered, to just slip beneath the ice and allow the breath to leave his lungs? How easy would it be to melt into the shadows one final time and never return, to cast everything he had ever worked for into the fire?
The answer was simple. So, so simple. It wouldn’t be hard at all. It would be easy. It would, more than likely, be the easiest thing Vikander had ever done.
Forlorn pools of ice blue gazed sidelong at the frozen lake, his posture hunched in on itself as the snow fell down in fat white flakes to collect and melt along his ebony body. The curls of his mane and tail were a tangled mess, hanging about his downcast face in a curtain. Once again he had forgotten his cloak, the bundle wrapped up nicely from a fresh washing in his chambers at the Scarab. For some reason the realization didn’t bother him as much as it usually would.
The cold seeped beneath his skin, but still he breathed. Silent, stoic, stationary, Vik stood at the lakeside like a statue. Were it not for the gradual melt of the collecting snow upon him, he was certain that he would truly look like a being made of stone. A statue. A sick, twisted version of some madman’s artistic expression, the ‘freedom of creativity’, tossed out and forgotten to endure the elements for seasons to come.
He had come out to the lake for a reason, but now that he was here, Vikander honestly couldn’t recall why he had bothered making this trip out into the snow. An ingredient, perhaps? A sprig of balsam fir? Maybe some strips of bark from the himalayan hemlock? He had no idea. Everything was empty, barren, and dark. No recollection would come to him. Why?
A voice, soft and lulling, beckoned him. It cut through the silence and steady song of the falling snow, guiding him like a siren. Icy blue eyes glanced downward to the pendant upon his neck, ears tipping back into frosted sheets of ebony curls.
”Come to bed, darling,” his dead wife whispered, the memory of her voice causing his heart to clench tightly in his chest, stealing the breath from his very lungs. Vikander believed that he would prefer the mercy of the bottom of the lake rather than this. It came from the necklace, the enchanted pendant wrapped around his neck upon a silver chain. Their voices were inside, trapped forevermore, just as their bodies were protected and hidden away where only he knew.
Their ghosts would forever haunt him. They sung to him endlessly, his beloved wife and daughter, driving him on a steady course to madness, yet he was not strong enough to toss away the pendant and be rid of his demons. He didn’t want to. Selfish, masochistic, greedy, desperate, foolish… Oh, but there were so many words one could use to describe him. Vikander was a man drowning, purposefully gulping in mouthfuls of water instead of air. He built his own pyre and stood upon it as it burned. He was the creature of his own destruction, the master of his own demise. Dark, wretched, terrible…
”Please, Vik, my love.” Her voice echoed in his ears once more, and Vikander’s eyes glanced once more towards the icy depths of the Vitreus Lake. Come to bed… A bed of ice and freezing water, wrenching the air from his lungs and the life from his veins. It sounded like heaven. He would be free. But…
”You’re dead,” he whispered, his freezing lips numb to the words that tumbled forth, “Both of you. You’re… You’re…” They were dead. Both of them. He swallowed, both parched and sodden, his breath heaving as he began to shiver and shake from standing out in the cold for, for… For how long? How long? Had anyone in the Scarab noticed his disappearance? Did they care?
Another voice. Repeated. His wife and her sweet, loving voice, beckoning him. Let her be the siren that drowned him. Let her be the one to end this misery, to seek justification for the sins he had committed.
”Come to bed.”
Vikander swallowed hard once more, defiant and stubborn to the very end. “No.” Not yet.
Open to anyone, but I can’t guarantee how amicable he will be!
