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Autumn’s gilded colors painted the grounds of his lonely estate. The once emerald grasses are covered in scarlet, gold, and copper. From the safety of his lattice window, he watches you. Bathed in divine sunlight and crafting a crown of fallen leaves.
What burns his profane skin makes you glow. A goddess trapped inside the fragility of mortal flesh. Even he, in his malevolent hunger, could not seem to mar your perfection. On rare days when the sun cast his rays through parted clouds, you would venture where he could not. And with you, you took the remainder of his shriveled heart.
As if you could feel his gaze, you pause in your careful crafting to gaze up at him. Lifting your brilliant eyes to his and waving your hands, covered in dark leather gloves. Smiling was involuntary when you reached for him so earnestly, and the lord of the castle returned your juvenile wave.
Even through the distance between you, he could hear your voice– a melody he would transcribe if he dared depict the divine. Such a thing felt heretical, and he feared to invoke the wrath of the angels for daring to do so.
The sound of his name left your lips, Sylus. You called and his unbeaten heart clenched. His love for you felt like life had returned to his body. Such indescribable joy filling the empty hollows of his soul.
Winter was approaching, and soon it would be far too cold for you to sit outside like this. He understood this, despite not liking it. How could he protect you if he turned to ash before he could reach you? You carried with you his desire to continue living, and the beat of your heart beat for him too.
Did you know just how much he treasured you? Had he made it clear enough? Was there enough finery in the world to show it? Certainly not.
When you return to his side, you call his name again. Sylus. Such a sound must be laced with magic, for your spell has him enchanted. You reveal to him your fragilely crafted crown of leaves, mostly filled with red. A mischievous smile decorates your ruddy lips and you demand your lord to kneel.
He does, letting you place the little circlet on the top of his head. Giggles escape you like bubbles in sparkling wine and the lord decides to taste them. The press of your lips will be his sustenance, and the shuddering sigh you grant him will seal his damnation. A place in a lower level of hell awaits him for tainting you, and he eagerly secures it.
The impermanence of your life is his only worry. It haunts him at night, resting at your side and doting affection upon your supple flesh. His mind aches with foreboding anxiety that anything-- anything could steal you away. Of all his that he holds precious, it only you that he truly fears to lose.
Winter brings with it threats unseen, but he assured he can keep you close during those colder months. Wrapped in furs and silk, he can cocoon the two of you for the rest of the year. For not even death would dare touch you while you remain in his arms.
But time still feels too fleeting. Water rushing through unwilling fingers. He cannot cup the incorporeal fluid of your soul and keep it for himself, despite his monstrous desire to do so. A beast such as he would never be satisfied with a single taste, and he fears devouring you completely.
Little moments seared into his memory like impressions into soft stone. He will let you imprint yourself onto him despite the sand that slips so carelessly through the hourglass. Your wishes will be his demands, your desires his pleasures, and your life...his.
The cloak of midnight covered the solemn lord and his hollow home. The stones of his manor had forgotten light and love, and only lamentation remained. For this misfortune estate and its liege lord had lost more than most this dreary winter.
Quiet rain pattered against lattice windows in a study that stank of wine and smoke. Snuff and spirits did little to temper the festering pain of the lord’s heart, sinking into his armchair and hiding from the world within books he once thought frivolous.
They were stories beloved by another, someone who he was so desperate to feel again he attempted to find her within the pages of books.
Ivory hair was drawn back into a simple tie, missing the tenderly created plaits his beloved once gave him. Deep circles marred his handsome, beguiling face– a face built for seduction but favored affection. Your softly granted kisses upon the arch of his nose or the sharp angle of his brow. A beast soothed by the cool waters of your gentle soul.
The words on the page blurred together. Damn this blasted rain, the lord of the castle thought. Though he knew it was not rain that dotted the ink, but brine of a different kind.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The hollow sound of knocking filled the chamber, drawing the lord’s attention to it. Incandescent hope blossomed and withered within the span of an instant, burning in his unbeaten heart.
“‘Tis some visitor,” The lord muttered, “tapping at my chamber door– Only this, and nothing more.”
The bleak of winter had surrounded the castle, demanding entrance of its frozen fingers into every crevice. Fires would be built in hearts to deter December’s insistent prodding, but no more. For a need for warmth had left this keep, absconded by Thanatos’ greed.
Heavy violet curtains were drawn open to let in the pale moonlight and the dancing sound of frozen rain. Sharp against the window’s glass. He lord rose to his feet, seeking comforting in the cold and repeating, “‘Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door – Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; – This it is, and nothing more.”
If the blessed beads of rosary did not burn his profane flesh, he would cling to it. Repeating the mantra of insignificance for the blasted tapping. For no soul touched by death was ever returned, a lover even greedier than he.
With heavy, solemn footfalls, the lord approached the bolted door. Calling out in a hoarse voice, “Sir – or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, and so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you–”
An offense creak the door did make, as darkness met the lord’s keen eyes. Darkness there, and nothing more.
For too long did the lord stand frozen, waiting for something to arrive. A gust of breeze tinged with sulfur or perhaps a whisper from the voice of his lost love. A sign from the beyond that told him this longing ache in his chest would be pacified.
In utter desolate mourning, the lord did whisper out– both in a cry of anguish, and a desperate call. The sound of your name left his lips, echoing indiscernible down the cavernous hallway. The corridor stretched and opening like the maw of the abyss.
And from that maw, full of void and terror, the sound of your name returned to him. Whispered back. – Merely this, and nothing more.
It was not the voice of his beloved that returned to him, and the lord whirled to shut the door. Lock away whatever damnable beast that taunted him. Surely a creature of Hades had come to feed on the lord’s grief. Dining upon his suffering with iron forks to poke at the ample fatty feast.
The air around him trembled. Terror burning at his cursed soul. “Surely, surely, that is something at my window lattice. – Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore – Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; – ‘Tis the wind and nothing more.”
With trembling fingers, the lord unlatched the window and swung it open. He found himself pelted with tiny pinpricks of icy rain, and blinded for a moment. Within another blink, a flurry of movement caught his dewy eyes.
With many a flirt and flutter, In here stepped a stately raven of the saintyl day of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door– Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door– Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
The lord shut out the winter’s weeping assault, but left the window unlatched. For if this intruder of ebony and smiling wit thought to make itself at home within this chamber so suddenly, then perhaps it would vacate just as quickly.
An unwelcome disturbance to the lord’s solitude and another small fracture in his fragile sanity. For unseen on this raven’s black and slickened wing was the feeling of dread and nauseating hope. The flicker of a thought passing through his mind that perhaps this was a messenger from you. And tucked beneath the noble feathers of this bird, the lord might find a note with your novel penmanship. Writing to him of your wellbeing and desire to soon return to his side.
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou – art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore– Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quote the Raven, “Nevermore.”
Such a plainly spoken reply surprised the propitious lord, though the relevancy of the raven’s reply puzzled him. For even in his long, unnatural life the lord had never encountered such a thing, and he believed the same to be true for the rest of the world. For who had ever seen such a graceful fowl sitting in their chamber that claimed the name Nevermore?
Sat upon the stone visage of Pallas– titan of warcraft, father of victorious Nike, and befelled by Athena– the raven did not speak again. A single statement was all it made, as if in that one word the creature’s soul was stated– answering any and all questions the poor lord could inquire.. Nothing further then he muttered – not a feather then he fluttered–
The lord took a small step forward, and for the first time his steps did not fall like the tolling of the church’s bell. Echoing the final beat of your precious heart. In quiet curiosity, the lord muttered, “other friends have flown before– On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”
The reply was so quickly uttered, breaking the tenuous stillness that the lord found himself surprised. Rising from his perpetual hunch to the stately height you used to mock him for– tone loving to coat your words in sugar. Arrows of your mirth at his expense lodged forever in his flesh. Pleasure instead of pain as if Cupid himself had struck him.
Grief plays the mind like an untuned harp; plucking at strings to her fickle whims. There is no logic in her everlasting song, only desperation and pain. The lord felt them string tighter, with bountiful leaps in logic and reason, he made assumption.
Perhaps the raven– most certainly a speaker of the dead– could only speak that one word. Stoic death meant to play a game with him, and the lord would step up to meet this challenge. “Doubtless, what is utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster – Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore– Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore, Of ‘Never–nevermore’.”
For a creature brought to him on the unnatural gust of hell's own wind, the raven tilted its head. It looks so like a normal bird– neither more beautiful or ugly than one he would see adorning the bare trees just outside his window.
The lord dragged over a cushioned seat. The one he claimed in a pair with yours. Matching brocade and lacquered mahogany. The lord and his beloved had spent many hours lounging in these matching seats, reading and chatting and pretending to not desire the other.
A pang of anguish burned at his stony chest at the many hours wasted. Your time had been far too precious to pretend that he was not yours entirely. From the very moment you stepped inside his castle, burning brighter than the sun with your rapidly beating heart and the divine light or your human soul.
Sitting upon the velvet cushion, the lord pondered this visitor and how to extract the message you must have sent. Could he extract your voice from this midnight minion, what little twists of cruelty would he need to enact to hear the words he wished to hear?
The raven’s shiny eyes burned like glassy obsidian into the lord’s despondent ruby. Gemstones weighed on a scale of wills and study. What could this softly uttered word have meant– was it the answer to a question the lord had yet to guess? Or perhaps the key to unlocking some nefarious riddle.
Wind and rain bombarded the fragile window, rattling its unlatched lock and aged hinges. Those thin panes of glass creaked against the onslaught, and for a moment the lord’s attention turned. A midnight storm threatened to break what had survived the test of time, but was this what would fracture them?
With cold realization, the lord turned back to the raven. Strands of pearl hair falling into his face, fraying like the rope tethering him to reality. For it was not a messenger bird, obscuring a rolled letter of love from your treasured hands– but a sign from a crueler being.
Golden wings of a Seraphim had disguised themselves. Heaven’s own messenger had come to taunt him further, for it was you that would return Nevermore. Had God not punished him enough with this hollow eternal life? Existing on stolen vitality! Never to taste anything but the tang of iron and salt from a collapsing life!
“Wretch,” The lord cried, “thy God hath lent thee– by these angels he hath sent thee. Respite– respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore; Quaff, of quaff this kind nepenth and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quote the Raven, “Nevermore.”
Rising to his feet, the lord snarled at the blaspheming bird, “Prophet! Thing of evil– prophet still, if bird or devil! – Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, DEsolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted– On this home by horror haunted– tell me truly, I implore– Is there– is there balm in Gilead? – tell me– tell me, I Implore!”
Quote the Raven, “Nevermore.”
A terrible sob tore through the lord and on his heel he turned for he could no longer face the beady eyes of his desolation. The undoing of the last threads of his fragmented mind.
Twas not on glad tidings did this raven fly in. Sat upon the mind of another fractured soul, torn apart by wisdom’s hand. Winter’s unforgiving and merciless skirts collected this denizen of hell itself to let it latch itself onto the lord’s grief. A festering wound for the carrion bird to gorge itself on.
Broken, the lord pleaded, “Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore– Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quote the Raven, “Nevermore.”
A better reply would be a silver blade or the sunlight’s mercy. Turn his body to dust and ash before condemning him to another life without you. Would he never see you again? Truly? Such a thought was too much to bear? Searing pain in his chest like his unbeaten heart was tearing in two. Tiny shreds of would be all that would remain of him, for if the Raven did not make haste to end his life– then sorrow certainly would.
Through sharpened canines did the lord spat, “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quote the Raven, “Nevermore.”
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor. Shall be lifted—nevermore!
The raven: stoic and ceaseless, brought to him on hellish wings, assumed a mantle in his chamber. Never leaving the lord’s despondent shoulder. Sitting upon his grief laden back. A companion to embody his guilt, reminding him of the door with which you remained locked behind. Mortality does not open to a dead man’s command, despite his desperate please.
A prince of hell sat upon Sylus’ shoulder, and he named the bird as such. For, despite the fowl’s benign appearance, it was not of this world. If God wished to punish him, then Sylus would punish the messenger.
Cursed with eternal life, Sylus sentenced the bird to the same. And even centuries later, adorned in all manner of machinery, Mephistopheles remained seated upon his new master’s shoulders. Forever whispering the reminder that you would return– blessed, beautiful and full of love– nevermore.