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It was the ‘tween: warmth and cold, light and shadow, good and evil, safety and…. It was a choice – always his choice. Stoically, he stood on that edge. Eyes closed, he felt completely in the moment. Slowly, he forced air into his trembling chest, while his heart ran away like some wild mustang. The still air gave a slight chill to his skin, still damp from the waters of his ritual cleansing. Images of joyful happy times in the light skirted the edges of his being. Bumps and bruises together with warm hugs and cheery smiles were felt at his back. Strange yet comforting sounds lurked that way. He cast a critical gaze into the dark. Searching for the familiar; finding only shades and unease. Before him lay things that could not even be put into thought. They meandered, squirmed, and slithered around his perception and just beyond recognizable thought: lonely things, forgotten things, dark and cold things. The silence was profoundly deep, it was almost a sound itself. He started to ball his hands into tight fists and then release. The unconscious movement, an act of will against the world. This was his fight. His first step was sure and brave. The second, carried him further away from his innocence. In here, the very air itself seemed to press in upon him. Deeper still, he walked. All around, the nameless and the formless hid just out of sight. He swallowed roughly at the sound lodged shallowly in his throat. He didn’t dare give voice to his feelings. Each step brought him closer. An eternity later, he found his destination. However, he felt the empty soulless dark rushing toward him. He jumped atop the cold yielding thing as fast as fast would allow. He was a moment away from safety and a moment away from nothing. Quickly he sought the center. Then peeling away its surface, he slipped into his hiding spot. Covers over his head; he warded the very night itself away. Even as the silence huffed down his neck and the darkness tried to swallow everything, he smiled. His chest might have burst from the thumping of his heart, but he no longer cared. He had made it. Against all things of the night, and all things of the shadow, he had made it. If he had made it once, he knew he could do it again. |