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[Arahim]

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The long hours of evening wore on slowly.

Underneath a fading sun, dipping low past the treeline, Arahim watched the moon rise, and listened to it's low, droning song, full of Night's promises, and dark beauties.

As if yesterday's memories, stars began to appear in the deepening blue above, drawn by the changing melody and newness of the dusk. Asking to be remembered again, if only for a short time.

He stood alone upon his roof, and watched his son throw rocks, and splash through the shallows of the pond just outside of his front door. The pond and it's outlying bushes, and reeds had become a constant source of discovery for the boy in recent days. He caught frogs and lizards, and delighted in frightening birds out of their lethargy; laughing, and waving as they shrieked their way, outraged, into the air.

His mother followed a good distance behind him. Her long, dark tresses flowed haphazardly, caught upon the whims of the cool breeze, as though alive. Of late, she trailed a cloak of ghosts and regrets in her wake like some sorrowful queen crowned with the doubts of a thousand yesterdays.

Sylvan had lost weight, and something more that Arahim could not quantify. Still, he could not take his eyes from her.

If asked to, he would return whatever it was she lacked, and made her so strange to him these past weeks, even unto his own pain and ruin.

[Arahim]

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Sylvan had yet to marry him, though he had asked for her hand in what way seemed best to him, upon both knees, and his soul laid bare to her.

He had cleaned up an old ring held long by his mother, and given to him in death, as it had been given to her in life. Arahim had supposed that it had been gifted many times over throughout his family's history. He had held onto it with a quiet solemnity until he knew that it was his time to pass it along. That it belonged to Sylvan, who would then, herself, pass it on when came her time.

Long, lonely nights had born and died for Arahim as he carved his own words upon the inset of the simple band, and in doing so made what was past, into what may yet come.

The burdens of his fathers, and mothers long gone, would remain long gone.

What blood, what sins. All promises kept, and also broken. They, too, would molder in a time that Arahim would not repeat.

These things, and more, did he promise to himself, and did so daily as he counted the hours spent with Sylvan, all that time ago, like a miser counts coin behind locked door, and heavily draped window.

Again did he reinforce his resolve upon looking into the eyes of his newborn son, and yet trebled it. The eyes that mirrored his mother's, in intensity and unique green. Shifting like liquid as they caught the light.

Their future took root in the child's laughter, and the very first time he curled, reflexively, his soft, tiny fingers around Arahim's own. In this, was everything good. Both the lost and forgotten, and the yet to be.

All this he had done, and sworn where most it mattered. In short, he had yielded.

He had yielded to the life he wanted, had, and would fight to keep.

He had yielded to her, and the quiet pains she kept to herself, but parcelled out in small measures to him when they became too great to carry alone.

If there was to be a tomorrow, and another after that, she would need to do these things as well, and she would have to mean it.