He finally woke me up last night.
I was camping in the office, and Woolie showed up around midnight, about an hour after I scared the hell out of the cleaning people.
He was in terrible shape, flickering and faded. Distraught.
What follows is what I pieced together from what I could hear and understand.
“The light that drew me here is almost gone, and I feel myself breaking apart, turning to ash like embers on the wind. I was something real, but now I am vanishing. Held together with a light that wanes by the moment.
I knock and knock to try and get back to what I lost. Who I left behind. But my hands pass through the doors like mist. I can’t return to her.
Molly. My own Molly. The first of my guild who welcomed me. The girl who lived across the world, who I never would’ve laid eyes on had I not found Neithernor. The warmth of her hands. The light in her eyes. A light that both blinded me and made me whole. I never deserved her, but I feel as if I have somehow betrayed her, though I don’t know how, not by following through the open door, to the light of this place. No, it was before we were all made of mist. I broke her heart. The pieces here, still in my hands, but I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know much of anything anymore. All the warmth is fading from your world. Perhaps I belong here, having wronged the ones I love, though how escapes my mind.
I will end here, in ash, undeserving of a way back home to her, and unknowing why.”
Then he knelt in the corner of the office and wept in silence. It was heartbreaking.
I sat beside him. I couldn’t touch him to console him, and he either couldn’t hear me or didn’t want to. I don’t know when, but I fell asleep there with him, and it wasn’t until the sun rose that I noticed he was gone and fragments of phrases had appeared on the walls. Written in what I think is ash.
After a couple hours of toying with them, Catherine and I think this is the order they go:
As the hunter’s moon ascends, find a feast for all the senses
Seek a long-abandoned sun that’s now rotting behind fences
Find a monument to travel and a way to let in light
And a view upon a hilltop that once was used for flight
Feel the wind over the water, where bodies lie below
Then find the lonely, wayward stone where prairie grasses grow.