Disclaimer: The poem 'Echo' is by Christina Rossetti, who though she may have been a depressive, repressed cloud of gloom, wrote some damn good poetry. The characters are creations of my mind, the decaying wreck that it is, and belong entirely to themselves. The concepts of the Nightworld are the creation of the wonderful LJS, I borrow them to twist them to my own fiendish wants. .

I hope you enjoy
Ki

Aislamiento

Come to me in the silence of the night
Come in the speaking silence of a dream
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

It was a dark night when she met him.

Of course it was. The night was always dark, even when the moon hung in a bright white smile or the stars wavered above. Light meant nothing to her anymore; all her light had been obliterated in one harsh, painful instant.

Oh, how she yearned to remember what warmth meant. What safety meant.

Sometimes, she longed for insanity, because it would steal away this dreadful grief. But however hard she prayed, however many candles she lit inside her soul, her voice went unheard and her tiny sparks of hope fluttered out, one after the other.

Little sparks, blinking out, until she was dark and lost and alone in her broken world.

Once...long ago, she had shed tears. She had held them, and howled like a beast; she had ranted and begged and still they remained cold in her arms, cold in her arms beneath the eyes of an uncaring god.

But the tears had run dry, and she had left them scorched and entombed in her home.

All she had was walking. She walked as the blisters grew on her feet and burst, leaving them a weeping mess. She walked through cold winds, through rain and sleet, and through it all, her eyes were dry and barren.

Through it all, she felt nothing.

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That night, that strange fateful night, it lay around her thick and dark as a heap of crushed velvet, only the whispers of the wind bringing tales and ice-cold caresses from the north.

"You are hurt."

It was a soft voice, a voice of cobwebs and silk threads that wound around her senses like a long forgotten song. Not an aristocrat's voice, but not quite a commoner's voice. She felt something in her mind...a strange sort of warmth, like the sun slowly seeping into her mind and making her drowsy.

"Let me help you," it continued, soothing and purring. The fuzziness in her head became thicker, making her steps falter briefly. So nice, that voice, so sweet...it only wanted to help, that was plain...why didn't she stop and let it?

No! cried the tiny voice that had kept her walking this past week, walking away from the ruins of that place that had been home, and now was but an unhallowed grave.

Niva glanced up, her eyes a livid grey in a face that was sunburnt from days of walking, walking, walking, a face that had become as hard and smooth as stone. Her brief glimpse showed her a tall figure, dark against the setting sun. She knew better than to speak. Silence was as good as refusal sometimes.

"Did you not hear me, girl?" His voice seemed to bite suddenly before the soothing, calm tones returned. "I only want to help. Let me stop your pain."

She felt that tingling sensation in her head. She blinked away the sleepiness. It was night, but she had slept only this morning. She slept when she needed, when her body could continue no longer. Her tears had long stopped, but her grief continued, an undying river that lay within and eroded her from the inside out.

She thought she heard a voice, resounding like churchbells.

Why isn't it working? The first one alone all day and she's a lackwit.

There had been no bells for her family, no sound but her feeble cries. They had died like cattle, blackened and pitted, and no one had known.

Only she remembered.

She owed it to them, surely, to keep the memory strong.

The man kept pace with her, his strides long and furious against her painful, shuffling walk. The blisters on her feet stung wildly, her legs ached and her back was a tight mass of pain. None of it mattered. She walked through the aches, always moving, waiting for the sky to change and her grief to fade.

"You have been travelling all day, girl. Come and rest with me..."

Mesmerising almost. Dripping onto her ears like nectar, and Niva felt her will begin to weaken. Oh, all he wanted was to take care of her, to take her from this hard road—

Why? A ruthless voice demanded. He doesn't know you. You're just some grubby girl walking on a road. It's late.

Just my luck, his voice grumbled, while aloud, he spoke soft promises and made offers of comfort, safety, help. Niva frowned faintly. How could she be hearing two voices, one with her mind and one with her ears?

Is she deaf, or mute, or merely stupid?

The insult barely pierced her armour of grief.

A plague on you, answer me! "Lady, I am only trying to help you."

A plague. A plague...she laughed, and it was as if a raven had shrieked. Oh, the plague had already been upon her, and passed her by. Plague did not want her, but it would snatch away her father, and her mother, and seize her bevy of sisters...but it would leave Niva. Useless, ugly Niva.

Oho! A reaction.

"Go away," she said finally, tiredly. "I have nothing worth stealing."

His voice deepened and hardened, like glossy sand into glass. "I only want to help..." ...you into the next world.

She turned her thin, aching body to face him. And for a moment, she felt something pierce that thick armour she always carried with her now.

Oh.

An angel stood before her.

She blinked her heavy, sore eyes. No, not an angel, merely a man with the face of one, golden-skinned and dark of eye. Dressed in a long threadbare cloak that rippled and curled about as though it lived still, yes, an angel fallen for sure with that nose, broken more than once, and the tip of one ear cut clean away.

He stared back unflinchingly. Used to the looks of women like her, she supposed, from that honey-slow smile that began to turn up his mouth. He didn't look like he smiled much, from the cool light of his dark eyes. A deep, swirling brown that cut into her like a knife.

Niva recoiled from the force there. He was wrong, all, all wrong...his smile was kind, and his voice was divine, but his eyes...his eyes showed the bleak truth.

She had crossed herself before she even knew it.

His eyebrows raised slowly. "I don't fool you, do I?"

The quick question startled her. It had been a long time since she felt anything. Her senses tingled and Niva realised something surprising.

She wasn't afraid of him.

"You may be a fool," she said softly, "but you don't fool me."

She tried to brush past him, in her hobbled gait and her travel-soiled clothes. But he simply blocked her way, stepping with her as she tried to move around him. Until she halted, aware of how close he was. Alarmingly, unsettlingly so.

But she didn't step back, or move at all. Why should she care?

"Well, it takes one to know one," he murmured, but his eyes remained hard. His hair was darkened by the light rain that fell, turned a deep copper. When it was dry, she supposed it would be the fresh colour of new copper, like molten sunlight. "Are you a witch?"

She fixed him with a flat, hard gaze. And he called her a lackwit. To confess such a thing was to ask for death. "No."

"Good," he said, and the dark eyes widened as black seeped into them like melted onyx. "Then you won't mind if I kill you."

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