I don't know what this is. A bit of fun :-) I hope you enjoy - or if not, you tell me why. I'd love to know what you think of this - it's my first piece of posted original work (butterflies in stomach.) Thanks!



Watch the moon, my darling, and watch your dreams drift by. And I will watch you and for one moment, forget the evil that has led you here.

You have so many dreams, for I see them dancing in your eyes and maybe, one day, some of them will take wing in reality. I see the nightmares in your eyes too that tear you apart from the inside out and pull the darkness around your heart so you can breathe it in and drown in it. Dreams and nightmares, they fill your human heart and set you afire. They burn you to death, my darling, and you seem to like the flames.

I am not human.

I am not something or someone you will ever look at and see humanity, see the beauty you strive for so desperately, see the happiness you spend your lifetimes searching for with such furtive anguish and futile need. The storms that sweep your tiny, insignificant lives do not and never will touch me with lightning or with rain.

I do not live your days, your fantasies, your hopes and I do not feel the fire as those same yearnings are seared away by hate and despair. I do not cut away my life with a knife, or sing out my soul for love.

Yours are the days. Mine are the nights.

And trust me, my darling, they are quite, quite different.

* * * *

There is a place, far away from city lights and human fights, that never sleeps. It lies under eternal starlight, cloaked in black and touched with the cold of a thousand winds that time has sent. Here there is death, here there is only suffering and the screams of those who feel torment that wrenches their soul beyond the moon and beyond the stars and beyond the cosmos itself.

This place is called hell, my darling, and it resides in my soul.

They have a thousand names for me, but none can ever even come close to the truth. Because when you name something, you take away a little of the fear that clutches your heart when you see me. You put a little light into the darkness, thinking the darkness will shrink back and run.

I will never run from you, my darling.

I have walked your world since the first star sighed and will walk it when the last has died. And while around, buildings fall and shatter into dust until they drown out the thunder, while the skies crack and twist in fire and while your people slowly fall into the dark that is always waiting to welcome you back, I will still stand.

So you see, you can put down that gun, my darling, and wipe your frozen smile from your face.

Do you know what I see when I look at you?

Not very much. Oh, outwardly, there's enough to keep any human engaged for a while. Your eyes, so green that emeralds are dazzled into insignificance and with a slight slant to them that add a hint of mystery. But your eyes hold fear and in them I see someone trying to step from a cage and being cut by the bars. How does it feel to be trapped in your own soul?

I can take all that away, my darling. But I don't suppose you want that. Too simple, too easy. For humans, it must all be intricacy and pain, it is all for a greater purpose. Or at least, that is how you console yourself. That is what you say when the war rips your land and when the famine catches you in its claws and drags you to the abyss. But, my darling, here is a question I would be interested to hear you answer.

What if there is no greater purpose?

Or rather, what if the greater purpose is not what you expect? You seek answers of your gods and goddesses. You pray and wail and weep as your children die and your family rots and the blood runs into the rivers until you can no longer see anything but the blood and after a while, not even that. But you still wait for that answer, and to the day when you return to the dark that birthed you, you wait upon that resolution.

I am the only god you will find here, my darling.

I have seen you walking in the shadows in my dreams. I knew what you were even then, while all around the wolves howled and the winds laughed as they threw you back into the flames. And you stepped from them unscathed, unburned and you slew the beasts and calmed the storm. Am I the wolf? But then, my darling, where is the storm? And where lie the shadows you cloaked your steps in?

I see your confusion. You don't understand me. Then let me put it far more simply.

One day I dreamed and you walked in that dream. Danger surrounded you from all sides, trying to push you into the dark where all humans must fall. And time and time again you were thrown into the dark, but time and time again you stepped back out, whilst others were caught and drowned within it and for you, the dark turned out to be mere shadows.

The shadows and the dark are oft confused, my darling, but the shadows are only places where light cannot reach, whereas true darkness is absence of light. Absence of hope.

Yet there is hope in your life and I am not sure what you are, but what I do know is this; of all your people, you are the only one with the power to kill me.

There is only one reason why you can do this, my darling, and that is because I love you. Love is a weakness, and it is a weakness that will destroy me. But not today, my darling, as I have said to you a thousand times and a thousand lives before this.

Not today, because I love you. And because I love you, I will destroy you.

You smile at me. That will not melt my resolve or my love. You humans think of love as fire and burning, something which is passionate and fiery and will one day, burn out. My love for you, then, is frozen flames. The heat is long gone, and the fire will not burn, but will remain as beautiful and ageless as the first rose of spring. An image within an image, spinning away into infinity and eternity.

And because it is ageless, it will never change and never die. But you, my darling, are human and must do both. Already you have changed; for I see it in the way your laughter has wilted and the colour in your face has fled.

Your face has not changed throughout the aeons; still I look at you and the smile is identical, sometimes shy and sometimes assured, but always beginning like the touch of sunshine on the frost and reaching your eyes until they glow. Your hair as black as the darkness you tread through with a ghost's footstep. And you stand so proud, but are you so tense from vigilance or fear?

Still I see you hold that gun. Put away your toy, my darling, it cannot hurt me.

It is rare for mortals to find me. For you, I hardly exist, little more than a wraith that touches your life as light as a feather. For one hundred years I have walked among you unknown, doing as I willed and taking lifeblood that grew ever sweeter. One hundred years your spirit lay still after the battles of your last lifetime and now it wakes, to haunt my heart with indecision.

Your hope is obvious, you know. The way your eyes light and your grip alters on the gun. That crude bit of metal. Where did you get it? No matter. Why should I care?

It is true, I find it hard to kill you. But you need not think my mind will change. It never has, despite the pain it brings me. But never have you suffered. Never have you fought me.

You must learn to control your emotions. I can feel your surprise from here. No, never have you fought me. Because you see, before this time, you have always listened to me. And you have understood why the one who holds hope must escape the darkness and why the darkness must draw you back from time to time, but never to hold, merely to touch. But maybe you have never truly understood my part in this, my darling.

We are very alike, you and I. Although I am dead and you are alive, although you have only hate and I have only love, we are very alike. I catch their souls and you set them free.

And every time, you hunt me in that hope.

And here you stand with a mystery laid before your feet. A creature with many faces, perhaps once a woman, who claims love and yet claims the dark. Who will kill you, but only because you cannot live. They called me a djinn once, my darling, because they believed I could give wishes. All I can give you is death and love and the two often run together.

Eternity has been born while I have longed for you, my darling. The lyrics of every song ever written in the name of love mean nothing to me, but the music plays my spirit and the rhythm of the world catches me in its dance while time spins by and I watch for you and wait for you.

Each time you have died, I have watched for the star that came in your place to remind me that in the dark, there shall one day be light. But oh, my darling, you do not wish it to be today.

Our souls have been tied together and nothing will ever alter that. But while you have many lives, I have only one. And when I die, something within you will die too. We were never meant for happiness and contentment, you and I. Love needs not happiness, only room to grow and time to last.

You look at me and time stands still in your eyes. You see a thousand lives as clearly as I do. Deserts gold and oceans deep, ancient skies and a kiss as endless as the bond that brings us both to this place, to this time and to this ending. It was an agreement we made long ago, my darling, and one that neither of us will ever remember. Only the knowledge of that agreement remains and for you, I suspect, not even that.

We have been here long, now, you and I. Existing in a circle that has no end. If you kill me, that circle will be cut open now. You tell me that I say this only because I want to live. That is true, my darling. I want to live. It is my nature and nature is more powerful than science and logic combined.

As the door crashes open, I do not turn around but I remain looking at you. Green eyes and black, and I wonder if you see the sunlight in my stare or if there is only the dark left for you now. You smile coldly, my darling, and how the flames in my essence melt and begin to burn again as your mouth tilts up and the cruelty etches itself onto your face.

I move not as the knife touches my skin, enters my spine and severs my hold upon your world. In front of me, you congratulate your friend, and gesture once. I sigh as the stake is hauled from my back and fall forward, limp and useless.

Your laugh is bitter, and when you crouch beside me your face sparkles with life and vigour and hatred. Your hands are hard as you turn my face towards you while the life slips away. The contact is enough, my darling, it is enough for my spirit to ensnare yours and let you understand as the last of my love and my life burns away.

You see, my darling, I told you that hell resided in my soul. And when my spirit is gone, as it flies now on silent wings, hell has nowhere to go. Except away from the confines of my soul and into your world.

The darkness you saw in me, my darling, was only the light in a different guise. The dark is not always evil. But now the shadows have leapt free and the hell of beings that should have been dead long ago reaches into your world...and takes hold.

I have only one thing left to say, my darling, before I must go.

The sun has gone out. The shadows are here now.

Savour your victory; it will not last.

* * * *

Thanks for reading - I'd love to know what you think.