[Zerlina]

((Ok, but you can’t do the whole thing alone. That’s not fair! ^^. Just let me know what I’m not allowed to do

This is more a continuation of my last post as I was stopped))

“Caritas?” an image flickered in her head, as the familiarity of the name struck her.

“You don’t remember me?” he asked, and she shook her head “I fought with you on the plains of Gracia…nearly a year ago today.”

Titania stared at him, hardly able to discern his appearance in the darkness. She rose to her feet, observing his face only to realize that all but his eyes were wrapped in blue cloth.

“I fought with you? I’m sorry it was that battle you had to witness…I’ve improved since then.”

“I know.” He answered, steadily “Come, I will take you to the realm that you so desire to see.”

The mage nodded, following him into the darkness. While she could hardly see, she knew that they walked in water for she could feel it against her feet. The ground was slimy and every so often she thought she could feel the ghastly bones of long-dead creatures tapping at her skin.

“Where are we?” she finally asked, watching the man’s cloak turn in the shadows.

“I told you already. This is the border between worlds.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“This place,” he began “is what lies between Palis and the Celestial Kingdom- the realm of the gods. It is where all worlds meet and where all must pass after death.”

“It seems a bleak existence.” Titania muttered, her speech jumping as she caught sight of a ghastly face flicker for a moment in the shadows “Is this what afterlife we’ve all been anticipating?”

Caritas laughed “No, no…perhaps if you’re one of the few like me who cannot leave. Otherwise, the afterlife is something wonderful. They say it is where all you hoped for is fulfilled.”

“It sounds too good to be true.” She mumbled “too impossible. Tell me, though- why is it that you must stay here? Do the gods deny you the pleasures of paradise?”

“Not the gods,” he answered, shaking his head “I choose to stay here.”

“Why?”

“I don’t feel like it’s time to leave yet. I’m waiting for something…I know if I were to go now I would never be happy.”

“How can you know something like that?”

He laughed slightly, pulling his cloak tight around himself “I know because I see with eyes unclouded by mortal perception. The past, the present the future…all of it is the same. It’s the difference between where we’re standing and three feet away. I only have to look and I know.”

“You make little sense. But perhaps that is because my eyes are not so blessed.”

“You could see too, but it is Palis that keeps you away from true knowledge. In the mortal realm you can only do so much, but if you tried perhaps you could see more.”

“Why should it matter? What good is a seer who can only see the past?”

“Without a past you could never have a future. The elements of life lie in what has already happened- to ignore history is to forsake your very self.”

“You speak profoundly.”

“Not so. I only speak the truth.”

Uneasily, she continued to follow, watching horrifying faces pass fluorescent in the looming darkness “Will they not harm me?” she finally questioned as a cloaked lady clawed at her clothing, only to drift away as if by current “Do they not desire my blood?”

“You are wise, priestess, but they desire eternity more than they desire speech. Were they to take your blood, perhaps they would be given the gift of expression, but they would also be losing their promised reward.”

“Tell me…what reward do you desire?”

At this he stopped and turned to face her, quiet for a moment as if a child struggling to grasp a forgotten concept.

“I…” he mumbled, closing his bright eyes for a moment and then squeezing his fists as if he could catch his own words “…I desire much more than I deserve.”

“You still haven’t told me what.”

“Peace, my lady.” He muttered, taking a step closer so he could speak in a hushed voice “Peace is more than any man who has killed deserves to have. I have the blood of many children on my hands and I should not be granted what I want, but still I hope for it and wait for it…in my vision of heaven I see…I see the sea.

I’ve always missed the sea…”

“I understand you, for too was born near the waves.” She laughed slightly “I still remember walking in the shallow water.”

“It was warm at night”

“And the ground…it was always so perfect…the tide made it so.”

“It’s funny the way that the water pushes everything to where it’s supposed to be. Every grain of sand, every rock…it forms a pattern –a sequence. Something that you can’t see, but that you know when you walk on it.”

“I sense you mean to say more than ‘the tide is beautiful”

He laughed “I mean to say that everything has a place, and everything happens for a reason,” he smiled beneath his dark wrappings “Just as the sea pushes everything to place, so fate does. We can’t see it from far away, but when we experience it, we know. Everything that happened should have happened…there was a reason for it…”

He stared her straight in the eyes and waited for a response; it seemed his words had been calculated- carefully planned beforehand. Was that something he had wanted to say for some time?