Passage- A #Fantasy #ShortStory- Conclusion

Read Part One

Read Part Two

Read Part Three

Read Part Four

Getting up slowly, he glanced down at himself. He should have been covered with mud, but he wasn’t; he was barely dusty at all….and…he was also glowing!

With all the other peculiarities that had overwhelmed his attention in the spectral ambiance of this new environment, he hadn’t paid attention to himself. He’d never seen his aura before; he’d never really given it any thought, but here it gleamed into the rose-hued shadowlight, impossible to ignore. And as his emotions shifted from the rage and terror he’d felt just moments before back to curiosity, the color of his aura shifted. Cascading sparks of crimson cooled to lush indigo-violet hues that made his skin appear bluish and other-worldly.

The hovering murmuration of sparkling lights lingered over him, as if equally beguiled by his discovery, and from the floating conglomeration, he began to hear voices. Like hers, the language perplexed and eluded him; nevertheless, the sound was soothing in a way he could not explain. Scanning the horizon for the figure he’d been tracking, he found he could still see her lithe silhouette amid the shadows and barren rock in the distance. She hadn’t disappeared. Instead, she seemed to be watching or, perhaps, she was waiting. It didn’t really matter which; all that mattered was the fact that she…it….whatever it was… hadn’t slipped away into the unknown.

Softly, her voice called to him once again, crossing the distance that remained between them; yet now it felt even closer than before, as if she stood beside him. Looking down at himself another time, he felt greater excitement than bewilderment and all he wanted was to reach the woman so he could get answers for all the questions tumbling through his mind. He didn’t waste time contemplating the peculiarity of his aura or the strangely familiar voices whispering to him from the light. He didn’t speculate over what it meant or why the ropy arm of slimy earth had tried to drag him under, into their realm.

Their realm. The realm of darkness, of death. How he knew these things, he didn’t know; yet from somewhere deep inside himself, he realized he’d always known. Known about the dangers of the darkness, the treachery of the ground and the reason why the beings of this place lived in the air. Each moment that passed brought greater clarity, despite understanding how or why. Shaking his head at these realizations, he looked up at the hovering lights as an image formed in his mind. A vision of this place, not dark as he saw it now, but bathed in glimmering, sparkling light as if seen from within the vast murmuration of sparkling beings.

“Weston.”

His name drifted on the breeze, echoing from the shadows even as the light from the mass of sparkles dancing over him flashed brightly… for an instant. She called to him by name, refocusing his attention, and he couldn’t resist the urge to run. Her whispers became softer as he drew closer; then stopped altogether as he suddenly stepped from the distance into closeness.

He stared at her; mesmerized, just as she stared at him. She looked into his blue eyes, her own gaze as peculiar as everything else about this place. Violet in color, her eyes seemed to glow from within, sparkling much the way the lights did that still hovered over him. She looked him up and down, his tall stature and the strength of his body emphasized by the odd ornamentation of cloth covering his body. She seemed fascinated by him, yet the expression within her scintillating gaze held recognition and undeniable affection. A smile curved her pale lavender lips into a delicate smile and he returned her curious stare, both intrigued and startled by what he saw.

Lissome and irrefutably beautiful, she stood bathed in a semi-translucent rose-tinted light he hadn’t noticed from the distance. Her shimmering silvery hair, sleek and long enough to reach her knees, reflected this delicate pink hue. The color of her skin seemed to mirror the atmosphere around them, Rosy-purple in hue, she seemed to shimmer from within. She stared back at him and he understood that she was one of the sparkling entities that floated around him.

A star-being in human form, yet entirely unclothed.

The sight of her made his senses spin and a wry smirk turned the corner of his mouth. Not too difficult to figure out why, given her unclad state, but why he felt so irresistibly drawn to her was less easy to sort out. She stood before him, no longer whispering, though it seemed he could still hear her. Was it possible she was communicating with him telepathically? Certainly. It was also possible that he’d slipped over the precipice of reason and had lost his mind entirely .

He could be lying unconscious in the cool grass of Astonbury Corners, having tripped over the old well and knocked himself out by hitting one of it’s rocks. Everything he’d experienced could be nothing more than an elaborate dream concocted by his sub-conscious and his overactive imagination. It would certainly be a lot more reasonable than thinking he’d stepped through some sort of magic portal into an alternate reality where the ground was treacherous to walk on, where the air itself was alive, and where an alluring female stood before him, exquisite in every detail and beguiling him with some form of telepathy…or magic.

But she was beguiling. Exquisitely.

Unconcerned about the fact that he was quite certainly dreaming, and unhindered by the watching star-beings, who shimmered their myriad lights as if encouraging him, he stepped forward and gazed down into her upturned face. Drinking in the soft blush of her cheeks, the delicate smile turning her lips, and the spectral glimmer in her eyes, he reached out with a trembling hand to touch her. Lightly, hesitantly, he allowed his fingers to trace the contours of her cheek, her neck, and the tempting curve of her bare shoulders.

Each second seemed to transform into thunder as the gentle contact of his touch ignited an irrepressible, passionate yearning within him. His intense inspection of her brought his attention back to himself when he realized that, in the shifting spectral shades of the atmosphere his skin was reflecting the rosy-violet light just like hers did. He stared at his hand, perplexed, as an unanticipated notion suddenly filled his mind.

He remembered her.

She was his Love.

He was home.

The End

 

Words and Art by ~Morgan~

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