Bright Love Ended

Darus knelt in the field of wildflowers, trying to decide which color would be more appropriate for the bouquet, blue or purple. He already had two blue flowers, but none as bright a blue as this one. And the purple was a deep, violet hue with a sweet smell that complimented the other flowers.

In the end he plucked both, unable to decide which one was best and feeling the need to return soon.

This was it, the big day. A day she would remember for the rest of her life, their lives.

Not that she didn’t know how he felt about her, he’d said it often enough, showed her on every occasion. Love was a sensation he’d never felt before, and could never get enough of.

And he loved her, his beloved Mytha.

The bouquet in his hands was huge now, his fingers barely wrapping around the stems of the many fragrant flowers. Despite having at least one of every color of flower he could imagine, the bundle of happiness in his hand still seemed to be missing something. Perhaps he could summon a butterfly to land on it as he handed it to her.

Mytha filled his thoughts as Darus returned to the small hut he shared with his beloved.

They lived on the edge of the village, a fact he lamented for her sake, born of necessity. Her parent’s hadn’t approved of Mytha’s marriage to a stranger, and the village wasn’t excited about it either. With no past and a cloudy future, no one really knew what to make of the odd young man who’d wandered into their midst just a few years ago, with no memory of his past.

But Mytha did. She was in love with him from the minute she saw him, or so she’d said on that wonderful day when they finally expressed their true feelings for one another. That had been the happiest day of his life. He’d been unsure of her at first, unsure of anything, but her soft touch and gentle nature had made him feel at ease, despite the fear and anxiety he felt coming from so many of the villagers.

That was the first thing that had struck him oddly as he stood among them for the first time. He felt their fear, their trembling emotions. Knew they were terrified of him, though he was slight, haggard, and ragged of clothing. He didn’t know why they were scared, not at first, but he knew.

And despite his many contributions to the town since that day, many people were still suspicious of his presence there, some were still downright terrified. Others had darker emotions.

Darus had shown an aptitude for building with wood, Mytha’s father’s trade. Actually, Darus quickly found that he could learn almost anything instantly, a trait others in the village didn’t seem to have. He decided early on to try and keep such things to himself; people were nervous enough around him as it was.

In those early days, Mytha never seemed to let the opinions of the others bother her. She took every opportunity to be near Darus, and soon her lovely features and adoring green eyes began to grow on him. It had been strange to him at first, for though he could feel every other person’s thoughts and feelings in the village, hers always remained a mystery to him. He could never feel her mind, and never really understood why.

Ultimately, he could tell how she felt about him without feeling her mind.

He’d been falling in love with her, without knowing it, really; love and the other emotions still being so strange to him.  He knew it was wonderful, this feeling, better than anything he’d ever felt in his life. How he knew that, since his memory had been wiped clean wasn’t clear, but know it he did, like a born instinct.

Mytha had insisted her parents give the disoriented young man shelter in those early days. But their misgivings about the young stranger constantly weighed heavily on his mind, until at last he built his own small hut at the outskirts of the village.

Though they remained distrustful of him, most people had no problem availing themselves of the prodigious strength the young man possessed. One by one, people began asking him for all sorts of favors, services he was only too happy to provide in the hopes it might ease their anxiety.

Those efforts only proved partially successful.

What should have been a joyous occasion turned sad when Mytha brought him home and announced her intention to marry Darus. Her father at first tried to forbid it, but in the end relented, knowing his daughter well. If he didn’t allow it here, she’d simply run off with the young man, and he’d rather keep her nearby.

Marriage was a strange concept to Darus at first, one of many he’d been forced to learn as he lived with people, rather than being taught as others seemed to have been.

In the end he thought it was probably one of the greatest institutions ever created. Somehow, he thought his own people had no idea of such a concept, despite not knowing who his people really were.

And so they’d lived together, on the outskirts of Valen, for one year exactly, today. An anniversary seemed important, a fact he’d observed while living with Mytha’s parents. It felt important as well, acknowledging the day they’d pledged their undying love to one another for the rest of their lives.

Mytha was waiting for him on the doorstep as he returned. Her dark look and tapping foot told a tale of annoyance. He’d slipped out that morning before she awoke. Thinking back, he probably should have told her he was going out.

Her eyes brightened though when she noticed the flowers in his hand. She took a deep breath, inhaling their delightful fragrance.

“Happy first anniversary Mytha. I love you dearly.”

Mytha began to weep for joy as she gazed into his eyes. It didn’t matter who he was, what he was, or where he was from. She could his love there in those eyes, feel it in her heart.

“I love you too, Darus. Always.”

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him gently, passionately, lovingly. She wanted him to feel her love for him in that embrace, and he did. Down to his soul.

The young couple spent the rest of the day reminiscing about the past. She asked him all the questions about his past that she’d asked a hundred times before, and he did his best to answer her honestly. She smiled every time he came to a dead-end. She would make up a story then, saying he’d come from a wealthy noble family, or was a lost little boy raised by dwarves in the nearby Black Stone Mountains. He smiled at her tales, wondering if they might be true.

A full moon rose as they lay outside in the night air, comfortably wrapped in each other’s arms. They no longer needed or wanted words; it was enough to simply lie together and look up at the boundless night sky. The stars themselves looked down on them in seeming approval of their love for each other.

He would never forget that night.

It was Darus who first smelt the strange odor. Smoke, heavy smoke it was, burnt and acrid. When Mytha noticed as well, the couple rose to find the source. A bright light was flickering from the center of the village.

A house was on fire. Most of the town had crowded around it now. A few men were carrying buckets of water, throwing futile drops on a raging inferno. Maggie Sanders, a washer-woman who’d lost her husband not long after Darus had entered the village, was wailing in tears. This was her house.

“My son, my son.” Her words barely discernable through the anguish in her voice.

“Oh no.” Mytha whispered as they watched the house burn.

Darus began to walk forward before he really knew what he was doing. If her son was in that burning house, why was she standing out here crying about it? Of course, the flames. They were harmful to humans.

Though he’d seen fire a hundred times, watched people cook with it and learned culinary himself, it had taken him awhile to understand its nature. For reasons he’d never understood, the heat of a fire had never seemed to touch his skin, nor cause him pain in any way.

Seeing another way to help ease the villager’s fear of him, Darus plunged into the burning house.

“No! Darus! Don’t!” He heard Mytha’s cries, but he had to do this. Not just for himself, but for this helpless human child as well. He’d seen death in the village as well as life, and its effect on him had been profound. The last thing he wanted was to see death on a child’s face, the sound of a mother’s sorrowful anguish.

Flames leapt around him, at him, trying to torture him. He ignored them. His clothes burnt soon enough, a small price to pay if he could save this child.

Darus found the boy soon. By fortune or fate, the flames had just begun to reach the middle of the house where the boy was hiding under his bed. The boy was coughing profusely, ash covered his lips. He moved little when Darus pushed the bed aside and offered his hands.

Taking the boy up and covering his delicate skin with the remains of a blanket, Darus pushed through the flames. Suddenly, in what seemed only a few steps, the pair was outside again, well away from the flames.

“Micha!” the mother’s voice shot through the din of the blaze. Hushed gasps erupted from the assembled crowd as Darus handed over the young boy to his mother. After casting a strange, fleeting glance to her son’s rescuer, mother and son disappeared into the night.

Suddenly Mytha stood before her beloved; so much pride in her eyes. She looked him over and smiled, noticing his clothes were almost burnt off entirely.

Others around were noticing it as well.

“Your about to need something to cover up with, son.” The gruff voice came from a disheveled man with a grey beard and no hair on his head. “Aren’t you hurting?”

Darus looked down. His shirt was long gone, and his pants were slowly burning into ashes. He put them out as best he could.

“Ah, yes. Thank you.” Darus replied, somewhat sheepishly. “I better go home and get some clothes on. Will you need me to come back and help you put out this fire?”

“No thanks, we won’t need your help anymore, tonight.” The venomous reply came from a younger man, with a smaller beard, and a hateful gaze.

Darus, despite having just saved a young child from a certain death, suddenly felt uncomfortable and ashamed.

“Oh, well, okay. I, uh, I guess we’ll be on our way.”

“You do that.”

Darus turned toward home. Mytha followed, after giving the suspicious townsfolk a look of her own.

Suddenly the first voice, the old man’s, cried out.

“Wait a minute.”

The pair turned to see the old man, the younger, and much of the crowd moving toward them. The older one, who’d been the sheriff here for some twenty-odd years, walked up next to them. He studied Darus intently for a moment.

“You don’t have a mark on you, do you boy? Not a burn, not so much as a scratch. How is that, hmm? The rest of us couldn’t get near the place, and yet here you are just walking in and out as easy as you please. Care to explain it, son?”

“We don’t have to explain it.” Mytha replied. She knew the town was disturbed by his presence, but she didn’t like where this was going. Not at all.

“I’m the law here missy, and you’ll tell me whatever I want to hear. So shut your yap. Well, how ‘bout it?”

Darus stumbled with his answer. He had none, really.

“Well, I, I don’t know. I just, saw the boy was in trouble and I reacted. I guess I didn’t think about the fire.”

“I don’t care about the fire. I want to know how you survived it without a scratch on you.”

Darus was taken aback.

“I, I don’t know. I, don’t”

“What does it matter?” Mytha asked, her voice beginning to crack. “He just saved Micha’s life. When none of the rest of you would even try. How can you…”

“Shut up, harlot!” The younger man yelled, acid in his voice. “You turned your back on us and married this stranger. You’re just as bad as he is!”

“Bad? We’re bad?” Mytha could scarcely believe what she was hearing.

Darus could. He could feel the hate coming from these two human men before him. The intense jealousy, especially from the younger one. The rest were frightened, of Darus, of this sheriff, seemingly of everything. Darus knew he had to calm this down soon, or it was going to get ugly, bloody.

“I honestly don’t know why the fire didn’t burn me, sir. It’s never hurt me, a fact I probably should have told you about sooner. I know that now. I can only promise you that I only wanted to save the child, and I have never meant any harm or disrespect to you or anyone else.”

Darus sensed something from the sheriff at that, relief? Satisfaction? He never knew for sure. He did know that his words only inflamed the younger man even more.

“So, you have been hiding something from us. I knew it. What else have you been keeping to yourself, huh? Did you bewitch Mytha to love you?”

“Of course not.” Darus replied. “And I haven’t kept anything from you on purpose. I swear to you that I have no memory of myself or my life before I came here. And…”

“Liar!” the younger man shouted. “He’s a thief and liar. And now it looks like he’s a witch or something. He ain’t human, that’s for certain now. I say we run him up a tree, see if he survives that.”

The sheriff turned to the young man.

“Hang him? For what?”

“Witchcraft, or something. He ain’t human anyway; we need to get rid of him before he turns his powers on us.”

“I have no powers.” Darus pleaded.

“Shut up!”

The sheriff pointed a crooked finger at the young man, hushing him.

“You shut up, Markus. I do the talking here.”

The younger man was having none of it. He sensed his chance, and he was taking it.

“Then do something, if you’re the sheriff. He’s a witch or something, you gonna just let him walk away?” Markus turned to the mob, who were listening intently to the tense exchange. “How ‘bout it, folks? We just gonna let this monster walk away?”

“Monster?” Mytha’s calm, imploring voice cut through the night. “How can you call him that? He just saved a child’s life. He’s been nothing but good to me and this entire village. He’s been there for all of you, whenever you needed him, and has he ever asked for one thing in return? No, and yet you all are afraid of him, hate him. But you don’t have too, he’s a good soul, of that I’m sure. I know him, live with him, love him. He’s the best man I’ve ever known.”

Markus saw his chances for glory begin to slip away.

“Ya, well, that doesn’t prove anything. You were bewitched by him. You’ll say whatever he wants you to say.” Markus turned to the assembled crowd. “Just because he used his powers to save little Micha doesn’t mean he won’t use those same powers against us later. Can we take the chance? I say no. What happens if we do something he doesn’t like one day? Who’ll be able to stop him? He’s a monster, or a witch, or something. Whatever he is, we can’t let him stay here.”

Markus looked down, finding a good solid rock with which to emphasize his point.

Before anyone could stop him, before the sheriff could object, before anyone could move, Markus was standing up, leaned back, and threw the rock as hard and fast as he could, aiming straight for Darus’ head.

It struck Mytha instead.

Blood erupted from her right temple, squirting all over the ground even as she fell. Horrified gasps from the crowd were ignored by Darus as he caught his beloved before she hit the ground.

Sheriff Pots was livid.

“Dang you, Markus!” The sheriff was old, but rage gave him the strength to put Markus on the ground, out cold, with one blow to the side of the head.

The sheriff looked back at the bleeding young woman; the crowd held its collective breath; and Darus cradled the love of his life in his arms.

With the house still blazing in the background, the sheriff dispersed the crowd, and then gathered the unconscious Markus on his back. Turning once more before he left, Darus and the young woman were suddenly gone.

What had Markus done? Had he just doomed them all?

Darus rushed back to the small hut he shared with his beloved. He laid her gently on their bed, tears in his eyes.

Blood flowed from her wound, no matter how hard Darus pushed. She began to pale, and he knew her life was slipping away.

No, no, no please don’t leave me. I love you, so much. I need you, Mytha. You are my reason to live, my purpose. All my heart is yours. Please don’t leave me now. Please.

“She’s gone. I’m sorry.”

Darus had felt the new presence in his hut, knew it wasn’t one of the hateful villagers. Didn’t care. All that mattered was his beloved.

“She’s not gone.” Darus shot back. “I feel her heartbeat.”

“And you feel it getting weaker. That wound is not meant to heal. These people are so fragile.”

“I won’t let her die.”

“And how will you stop it? She’s already slipping away. You’ve forsaken your heritage; you no longer have the power to save her life.”

“But you do. Save her!”

He knew, somehow, despite not knowing this stranger’s name, who he was or where he came from, Darus knew he had the power to save Mytha’s life, and much more.

“Do I?” The dark stranger, dressed all in black, seemed genuinely surprised. “How do you know this?”

“I just do.” Darus replied, desperate. Mytha’s heartbeat was faint now, almost gone. Darus’ tears flowed freely now.

“Please, please save her. I’ll do anything.”

“Indeed.” The dark stranger seemed almost amused. “To what end? What shall you do then? How far would you go?”

“Please!” Darus cried. “Just save her!”

The stranger hesitated a moment, almost too long. Suddenly he knelt down, wrapped one hand around Mytha’s forehead and closed his eyes. Her bleeding stopped, but her heartbeat remained faint. Her breathing was shallow.

The stranger stood.

“This is all I can do for her. You must do the rest.”

“How?”

“You’re the expert in these people, you tell me. Or don’t you remember?”

Darus looked down; staring into his beloved’s closed eyes.

“I don’t remember anything.”

“Of course.”

Darus looked up at the stranger’s answer.

“What do you mean? How did you know I lost my memory? Who are you?”

The stranger shook his head.

“My name is no longer for your ears. I am one of your kind though. By now you must realize you aren’t human. You look like them, live like them, feel with them, but you aren’t one of them. You forsook your past, to be with them, and when that happened your old life was stripped from you. All your knowledge and wisdom, gone. You can have it back, your memories, your knowledge, power. But you’ll be unable to live with them, and this decision is irreversible. Once you return to us, you can never go back to them. And in the end, it doesn’t matter. They’re all doomed anyway.”

That last part struck Darus with a cold gloom. He knew deep down this dark stranger was right, somehow, without knowing who or what he was talking about. A dark foreboding fell over the small hut.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, even though you don’t know. Think carefully, that knowledge comes with a price. To return to us means leaving them, leaving her. So ask yourself what you want, shall you live with us, or die with them?”

The answer was clear before the question was asked. But what was the doom this familiar stranger referred too? Darus felt the answer was close, on the edge of his consciousness.

“Please, what’s going to happen to them?”

The stranger’s met Darus’ question with a long silence.

“I cannot say.” His dark voice said at last. “Unless you are willing to return to us.”

Darus looked down at his beloved Mytha. She was barely breathing, but she was still alive.

“I can’t leave her. I won’t. I don’t know what I had in this old life you speak of, but I cannot imagine it compared to the happiness I’ve felt since I met her. I’d rather feel that for a few more minutes than spend a lifetime without her.”

For a long moment, the dark stranger had no answer.

“No, my friend.” He replied at last, standing over Darus as he held his beloved’s hand. “You had no such happiness in our life as you have now. Only duty, have we. You have found so much more. For that, for your choice, I have always respected you, even envied you. Would that I had the strength of conviction that you have.”

The dark stranger turned to leave.

“She’ll live.” He said over one shoulder. “For as long as any of them. Cherish your time together, old friend; do not waste it on trivial matters. I hope for the best, for both of you.”

And then he was gone.

Darus stayed on the floor kneeling, hovering over his love, trying desperately to impart his love, his strength, to her. He covered her with their best blankets, in time lying beside her in the dark of their cabin.

The wind outside blew briskly, a cold wind, unseasonable for the time of year. Darus searched his mind, when he wasn’t worried about his beloved, for the meaning of the dark stranger’s obscure warning. It danced at the edge of his mind, taunting him with its hidden meaning.

He surrendered at last, defeated in his effort to remember that or anything else about his past.

The stranger was right, what did it matter? What did matter was Mytha, their love, and the time they had together.

He determined to make the most of it, whatever was left to them, and they did.

When the end at last came for them, Darus saw that it was swift, and painless.

It was not to be so for much of humanity.