The Moth to The Flame

(11 Dolefaren 413: The Crossing, Zoluren)

It’s an old dream, just like it’s an old tale. But no less real or true, for all the tellings.

She was almost light as air in the waning light of day. But cold was creeping into her body as the warmth of the life-giving sun sank on the horizon. Once it got to a certain point in the sky, there was no way to chase it. Her father taught her that.  But she had somehow lost track of time, and was not home yet.

She was feeling the cold in her extremities, and hurried.

Hurrying did not seem to get her anywhere faster. With no sun at all, she was quickly using up all her own warmth, and felt sluggish and slow as the cold was seeping in to her inner core.

Her thoughts turned to a song that brought her comfort. She liked to think it helped her to move faster. Her mother taught this song to her when she was a young girl. She remembered her mother’s warm grey eyes on her with pride.

Wait, that warmth was real, not remembered.

And when she looked, there was a glow ahead of her, a little to the left. She veered toward the heat source. Her spirits soared. She let the song within her soar as she made a beeline to the beckoning warmth that awaited her.

There was a dancing cadence to the warm glow and as it grew brighter, she matched the song in her head to it. With a joyful crescendo, she soared up to the sixth tone against the basic tonic triad that filled her senses. And there, she lingered.

Closing her eyes, her wings (what? wings? Why do I have…) beat faster with the pulses of the song, and she grew that magic tone, waiting until she was almost to her destination before resolving the chord.

Feeling the warmth falling around her already, with all the breath left in her, she judged the time was right to gracefully drop to the fifth. She opened her eyes after she began her beautiful new al fine’ to the song, and there the note strangled in her throat in a mocking sound of any kind of musical climax.

She had made a grievous error. And inertia was speeding her into the growing clutches of fire.

Her father’s words came unbidden to her mind, “The flame takes none but the willing, little lass. Remember that.”

There was searing light, and the darkness was sudden.