"You're all the stars wrapped in one person, heartsister, and I think that's maybe the most beautiful of all." - email 503 ~~~ He'd dropped his sword and he'd taken up farming, and he spent many days bent over his plow, hunched and unworthy and scared to stand straight. And the Dawn hadn't come yet. That little voice was gone and he wished it was still there but knew it wasn't, or if it was he couldn't hear it anymore. It wasn't his fault but he blamed himself for it anyways. He'd wake up at night, blood on his hands and eyes wild, reflecting the stars that had shone down on him, that night and many others on the battlefield. "Get up." the voice had told him, but, deaf, he went back to his plow, thinking if he could just eke a single living thing out of the earth his soul could maybe be worth something. (The fool, his soul was priceless, more so even than starlight, but he did not know it and toiled on-) In addition to the Night -that neverending bleakness that settled in his bones- it was winter, and the snow fell like a deadly-cold blanket on his shoulders, enveloping him in deceptive beauty as his being went numb. But he toiled on, because- because- because- maybe there was some hope. Snow, more snow, and snow after that, frost creeping into the beds of his nails and the lines of his palms, the seeds he planted wasting to nothing. He lost himself in the blank whiteness of it all, the nothingness, and who could blame him? The Night settled into the hollow of his chest, dark and beating almost like a heart, but with no warmth. He forgot why he was working. He did not notice that the snow was starting to fall less. He couldn't bear to bring himself to hope, so he trudged on, until it barely fell at all. He didn't see the pale, grey light on the horizon. Until it melted, and one day he leaned down and grasped with surprise, water trickling down his empty fingers. Until a few days (or years) later, he cried out, and fell to his knees. A sprout. Something he'd planted, and it had grown- he cupped it tenderly in his weather-beaten hands, his dark eyes alight and- awake.
