SciFi and Fantasy Stories: Into the West

Tulnea gazed down at his wife.  A bittersweet smile chanced across his lips and he almost laughed, but the motion turned into a sob.

How peaceful she looked, dark hair brushed neatly back from her pale face, eyes closed in everlasting sleep.

He knelt down and touched her cheek, cold in death's grip.  How many times had he brushed his fingers across that smooth skin, looked into those jeweled eyes and heard that light and carefree laughter?

Too many times, yet not nearly enough.

"Lay down your head....night is falling, my darling.  Your journey is over."  he whispered.  Already he felt his throat constrict.  "Sleep...and dream of the ones who came before.  They are calling, can you hear them?  Standing on a distant shore..."

He bowed his head.  His shoulders bobbed with a silent sob.

Tindomerel likewise stared tearfully at her husband.  He was close to her but she could not touch nor speak comfort, separated as they were by the world of the living and the dead.

"Why do you weep?"  she inquired.  How she wanted to brush away those tears with a light fingertip, run her hands through that golden hair.  "Soon...you'll see that all your fears will pass away, and you'll be here in my arms, safe and sleeping like always."  she said to him, her voice silent as the wind.

Tulnea looked up and stared off in the distance, where daylight was rapidly fading.

"What can you see over that horizon?  Are the white gulls calling?  The pale moon is rising...the ships are coming to take you home."

Tindomerel stared at him.  "Don't say we've come to the end!  The white shores are calling me...but you and I will meet again."  she paused and smiled wistfully.  "And you'll be here in my arms...just sleeping..."

Estanesse forced himself to look away from his father's tears.  How many times over the last days had he tried to convince himself that it was not his mother's body lying motionless on that dais?  He met the gaze of his own wife, soon to be a mother herself.  She looked at him softly, unable to bring words to her lips.

Tulnea rose to his feet, picking up the white flower he had lain on the ground.  This he gently placed on his wife's breast, unmoving as it should have otherwise been rising and falling with her calm and steady breaths.

Tindomerel watched this with a stoic calm.  She closed her eyes, a silvery tear slipping down her ghostly cheek.  It hardened as it fell, becoming an orb of glass, suspended weirdly in the air.  She held out a hand and cradled it in her palm.

"All turns to silver glass."  she whispered.  "No more than a light on the water to guide the gray ships floating past."

She started to turn away, the spirit leaving the body.  It was no more.

But she turned back as a beautiful birdsong filled the air.

Tulnea looked up at the black nightingale perched on the flowered balustrade.  It looked at him inquisitively, dark eyes compasionate, then chirped a lullaby which sounded familiar to him.  He held out a hand, but the bird flew away uneasily.

A hand touched his shoulder.  Tulnea turned and looked at his son.

"Father?"

The former king shook his head and looked back at his dormant wife once more.  Estanesse clearly did not see the bird, his last image of hope.

Tindomerel could hardly bear it.  She turned away after one final look, and faded into the growing darkness.  The spirit had reluctantly left.

Estanesse had gone back to his wife's side.  His father lingered a while longer.

"I already miss you."