The Edge of Darkness (Of an Impossible Love By Arlan)

 The Edge of Darkness

(Of an Impossible Love)

By Arlan

"If you don't make the effort to seek the Light, the Darkness will swallow you."

It was always going to be a fight and I was a fool to have thought otherwise. I was, I am, mortal. He was, is, always will be, a god. And one who toyed with hearts as easily as a cat toys with its prey. 

In hindsight, I know he never meant to. I know his words were true, once. But that was little consolation in the aftermath. It was little consolation when I was left broken and betrayed and he moved on to love another, even though the one he chose was the one he was meant for, the one with whom his heart lay entwined from the beginning.

Broken hearts do terrible things to you. They poison you. They twist your thoughts and lay bare your weaknesses and bring to the surface your jealousies and insecurities and anger. Yes, anger. I, who had thought myself so pure. I, who had held my head high and turned my back and walked away thinking I was unaffected. What a fool! How vain of me. Unaffected? When I had loved and been loved by a god? When my first love, the first opening of my heart to another had been so complete? He forgot. I did not. And it ate at my soul and blackened my heart.

I was fortunate to have run. My foolish mortal anger had won me the distrust and wrath of my lover's family, even if he had simply turned away. Perhaps even that is arrogance. What was I to them that they should see fit to notice me? At most, they might have swatted me from their presence as no more than a fly. I escaped their presence. I did not escape the memory.

But this is meaningless to you. I should explain.

 "The tragedy in loving a god is when they love you back."

I don't know who said that or where I heard it, but it's true. If he'd simply never loved me, if he'd never played the strings of my heart, body, and soul as the maestro plays the lute, I'd never have walked the edges of the Dark. I'd never have contemplated the temptation of the Abyss, and I'd never have journeyed so far from home that I near forgot how to return. Not that home exists anymore or that, after many a weary month of travel, I had any true desire to return.

What audacity led me to the brink of disaster? I dared walk among gods, I fell at the feet of goddesses, I pledged loyalty and fealty and love, and I forgot that, to them, I was nothing. I should have accepted what crumbs fell from the offerings at their altars and counted myself fortunate. They spared me. They raised me up from the darkness into which I had already fallen and I should have been content with their gifts so that I could at least remain to bask in their grace.

I didn't. I trusted the words that fell as sweet poison from his lips and when his eyes drifted and his heart was swayed, my words said I could accept and forgive but my own heart betrayed me.

"When the greatest gift is to walk away and not look back."

My own words, and yet I couldn't live true to them. Yes, I walked away but I permitted bitterness to take root in my heart and I regret it now. "The greatest love comes at the price of the greatest pain." It was my pain and I carried it alone. I turned my back and walked away from all those who remained and offered to share my burden. I raised my sword in anger and not my hand in peace. If I were going to cry, there were those who would have sheltered me and kept my tears secret. I had no need to dwell on my pain and no need to seek out the darkness.

I regret.

A mortal can offer no words of apology to a god. What power in my words? What meaning to my regret? What value in me, the deserter, the knight who abandoned his oath and fled into the night like a whipped dog? Would they permit me again to bend knee in their presence? It matters not. If they will permit me only to catch a single glance of him from the shadows, I will be grateful, for to know he is at peace, to know he has finally found that which would ease his heart and lay to rest his nightmares would be sufficient for me. 

She completes him as I never could. She gives him eternity, which was never mine to share with him. And she gave him family which was also never within my capacity to offer. I am grateful to her, even as my heart still bleeds.

I loved, and was loved by, Eros, the god of love himself, and perhaps, in some tiny, half-forgotten corner of his mind, he remembers me and bears some affection for me still. It matters not. In the end, I know he did me a kindness in drawing silence between us. I could not have remained under so much as a whisper of his presence and have maintained my sanity. And even so, I came close to losing it.

I have returned. I have seen things most mortals will never see. I have walked the edge of darkness and tasted the foul breath of the abyss. I have survived wounds deeper than the bite of a sword and wear scars as a monk wears robes. I have known the silence of ice and the scream of the ocean winds. I have known bitter solitude in the greatest crowds and the greatest peace in the emptiness of the desert. I return and hope only to permit my heart peace for though I love him still it is now as the love for the house of one's childhood; fondly remembered but never to be the same again.

I hope he remembers. And forgives.