The Harbinger

(Return of the Night Owl Challenge 2022)

The Harbinger

No, she was not lost.

Golden eyes searched the play of shadow and light, the midnight snow alive, as if lit with millions of glittering diamonds.

She’d been here before.

A breath she hadn’t realized she ‘d been holding eased through her lips, creating a puff of icy mist. Reminding her of another ghost she would need to deal with. A shiver skittered over her back and arms, a secret code she could read in the dark, read in her sleep by now. She rubbed her arms. It did nothing for the cold that grew from within.

Secrets. Her entire existence was one secret after another, asleep or awake, no matter what she did, one monster after another, one supernova after another.

Later. She’d deal with that later.

Sheer will snapped her attention back to her present surroundings.

A breeze whispered over the nape of her neck like a lover’s touch, lifting the fine hairs. Intimate… knowing.

Her time was short. He would know, feel her absence by now. He must.

A tug low in her belly alerted her that she’d almost reached the edge of the protective forest. Her teeth gritted as she drew in a steadying breath, controlling the involuntary chatter. Weight shifting side to side, one foot, then the other as quietly as possible, she increased her breathing, raising her heart rate, flexing muscle and sinew, assessing, anticipating the needs of this human form to do what she needed.

The tang of copper on her tongue caused her pause.

Blood. Already? No, no, no… it was too soon.

There… movement… still, black eyes shining against the ragged bark of a tree. As she watched, an owl unfolded wings of snow and stone, to lift and float on silent wings to kiss the twilight above, dissipating like a fever-dream at dawn.

A sharp crack split the stygian night, snapping her head around, a glittering halo of hair flaring in an arc of midnight around her. Her enhanced hearing scanned, searching for its source. Nothing. Her eyes flicked through the intermittent stripes of trees, skeletal limbs reaching heavenward to a whirling, ancient vault of stars, beseeching an even more ancient god. A god that had come and gone, leaving throbbing, indescribable beauty and unspeakable horrors behind him. Or so the legends told, and so the bards now long dead had sung.

She knew better, though.

She knew he’d never left. She knew that he had slept after his defeat, slumbering deep for untold eons in the bosom of this planet in a far-flung reach of a backwoods galaxy, imprisoned by his makers. Only recently had the signs begun, the rumbling of awakening, growing stronger, shifting, turning, flexing, finally healing from his clash so long ago. Shackles and chains of metal not from this world, wound tight, had loosened.

She knew. She knew him as only a lover could. As only one who had shared his skin, his breath, his viscera. His blood.

His shadows.

The tiniest snap, closer now, robbed her of any effort she’d attempted to concentrate on building the gift in her chest, her hands.

Knowing her time was diminishing, she twisted her face into the shape of concentration, eyes squeezed shut but ears pinpointing, tracking his approach, throwing in all of her intent.

He must not overpower her this time. Not again. Not ever.

Finally… like a titan bubble from the depths of the sea, her power burst within her chest. Flooding through her body. Nerves singing, synapses crackling. Frenetic pulses of electricity coursing through her body, arcing through pathways not used in millennia. Pins and needles of pain racing through her, from the base of her spine curving upward, a bright flash of internal light rocketing through each one of her vertebrae, flexing, pulling her with the inexorable gravity of the sublime. The taste was intoxicating, even through the taste of fear and blood, and she choked back the ecstatic gasp and moan that threatened to reveal her location. She fought to stay above the crest of the wave, to bridle the wild energy and turn it to her will.

Not his. Not this time. This time—he would remember. He had to. Remember who he really was, who she really was.

She slowly opened her eyes, containing all of the raw elemental potency, wrapped around her like a cloak of command. A nebula of desire and satiety. Eyes blazing like the hundred suns, she sought him out.

There.

As if he’d been standing there since before the forest had even been a seed carried on the wind to this desolate place. Before the land had sustained life. Before the planet had been born of stardust and ice.

A stillness that emanated from him, silent depths of worlds they had shared, galaxies they’d created, when they had been young. When she had been free. When they had both been free together.

She thrust herself upward, surging into the clearing, heart and hands glowing, great graceful leaps through the powder. Not her original planned course, but there was no time to mourn that now.

Thick hair obscured her vision, but she did not need it to know precisely where he was—where he always was, no matter the distance. There was no gap or obstruction between them. Only illusions. Only pain. She bounded like a startled doe, graceful and fleet.

And then, in mid-leap, total realization exploded within her in an instant like a solar flare, and she stopped dead, levelled.

She drew her slender frame up and turned to face him.

She remembered.

All of it, even if he did not. Yet.

Blending within the edge of the treeline, an ancient, glittering black gaze met hers, acquisitive and avaricious. Her heart stuttered to a stop in her chest, before beating again in a slow, deep, portentous thud, her head hearing it boom within like a death knell. Incalculable eons hung between them, dripping with heat, cold, forgetting, desire, craving, and heavy, relentless animal hunger. His eyes contained an infinity of beginnings and endings, void of remorse or sentiment for creating or destroying either.

She watched as the weight of his huge body shifted and flowed, lethal celestial power and grace, and he stepped toward her.

His gaze never left hers. She sent out tendrils of inquiry, felt his heart’s texture, and almost despaired.

Almost.

But it ended here, in this humble, unassuming glade of snow and fire, for better or for worse.

This time she had the power, not him, no matter what her body’s senses shrieked within.

Closer, and closer he came, an eternity, until she felt the entirety of the substance of all the galaxies he carried within him whirling in his eyes, resonating with her own, a spell that ensnared and enfolded, possessed and ravaged.

The spell of forgetting.

Her eyes fixed on his, but her determination and will were resolute. This was her stand. The fate of the world, the galaxy, the Universe hung in the balance. She remembered. She nearly despaired when his body stopped inches from hers, emanating the threat of complete obliteration. Total annihilation. No trace left of her existence.

He towered over her, radiating malice, and promising her utter destruction, her fragile human body before him, shuddering, torn between the elemental intensity of his presence and the body’s urge to flee. It was too much, and the quivering in her legs threatened to topple her. Her eyes flooded with tears. She felt all of her pain and his. She felt all the love they had ever shared, all they had created, all they had forgotten in their extended slumber as civilizations had risen and fallen, races born and died.

It was this love, this eternal, enduring love that made up the story that outlived unnumerable stars, the worlds they had created, that consisted of the very fabric of the Universe itself… the love she had committed to carry within her, in any time and any form she would ever take. His vow had been to protect her and carry her.

This vow was the only thing that gave her the will to do what she needed to do now.

Their eyes locked, and they stood like statues. One as hard and harsh as the mountains and trees, one as soft but eternal as the stars.

The oceans of tears in her eyes overflowed. She reached out, slowly, and gently placed her hand on his heart.

She opened her mouth… and sang. A single note. One single, eternal, resplendent note; carrying, expanding, permeating all matter, every single atom in existence.

In that moment, the entire Universe stood still. Nothing else existed but them.

The light blossomed and grew. They stood still as reality around them crumbled. As their forms cracked like rock filled with magma, light lancing outward, blindingly bright. Being remade anew. Like a phoenix taking flight out of the fire they transformed together.

She watched as understanding dawned in his eyes, as emotions played over his face, horror, mountainous regret, unutterable sorrow. He placed his hand over hers on his chest. And then, the exquisite tenderness and resolve of the being he had once been. He returned to himself. No longer the King of Darkness and she his helpless slave.

In that moment, love returned.

She smiled; it was the dawn of a new Universe.

Joined again. No longer a prisoner. No longer a slave, but two Creator Beings completely restored to balance and full glory, full joy, full power. Full Love.

* * *

Shining black eyes in a wise, flattened, feathered face silently observed, and then blinked slowly, turning its head to meet the sunrise.

Their task was complete. Union had at last returned, finally, after a heart-breaking, interminable absence. Love ruled again, as foretold… but not guaranteed.

Order and balance were once again… restored.