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[Cezanne Abella]

---

His expression was a mix of childlike innocence, and urgency. As so often it had been, of late. Arahim stood on the steps of the theatre, arms crossed and clutching something to his chest. He wore only a pair of cropped black pants, and the muck and mud that clung to his bare feet. His hands were scuffed and scratched, and painted with dried blood.

“What is it, Ara?” Cezanne regarded him closely. “What's wrong?”

It was a question that she'd asked herself – and Arahim – many times over the past weeks. So often he'd rambled on about his wife, and his children. How they were frequently gone, having left just before dawn. Cezanne, hesitant to contradict him, had gone along with his skewed sense of reality – the best that she could, at least. How could she know what world existed in the mind of the mad?

And who was she to take away a man's family, even if it was only a figment of his imagination? Clearly, it was more than that, to him.

Arahim dropped a hand away from his chest, still grasping a faded blue mask tightly at his side, and he offered her his free hand. His eyes were pleading, as he seemed to search for words. His lips twitched, and he shook his head, brow furrowed. His disheveled hair spilled over his shoulders wildly, bereft of the spider fetish that usually clasped it back neatly.

“Home.” It was the only word he found, but he reached out to her still more desperately and took her hand in his.

“Arahim, what's wrong?” She allowed herself to be pulled along, as he had no more words to offer. At least he was taking her somewhere. Perhaps he could show her, if he could not say.

At his front door, Arahim paused, looking back at Cezanne as if he wanted to make sure she was really still there. Then he pulled open the door and pulled her inside and up the stairs. At his bedroom door, Cezanne resisted. He pushed the door open, turning to look at her when she pulled back. His eyes bore a sadness beyond anything she'd ever seen from him. Even in the weeks after his beloved Sylvan had disappeared. Even in the months after his son had passed from this world to the next.

Arahim pulled again, this time more gently, and Cezanne followed him inside. With a shy smile, he released her hand, and crawled onto the bed. He crossed the expanse to curl up facing her on the far side of the bed, clutching the blue mask again to his chest. The spider fetish that usually held his hair was sitting on the bedside table, where he had clearly removed it earlier to rest. Something was terribly askew.

From the far side of the bed, Arahim watched her with childlike diligence, as if trying to commit the image of her to memory. He patted the empty side of the bed with one hand, watching her expectantly. His gaze was more lost than any she'd ever seen. Cezanne sat down on the edge of the bed, whispering – half to him, and half to herself.

“What is it, Arahim? What's gone so terribly wrong?”

Arahim patted the pillow, and returned his arm to cross the other, clutching the mask again.

“Sylvan wouldn't understand, Arahim. I can't sleep here.” Her gaze shifted then to the mask. “What is it you've got there?”

Arahim released his embrace and lifted the mask to look at it, seeming to be more interested in watching it himself than showing it to her. Cezanne lifted her hand toward him. “Can I see it?”

So like a child, he slipped the mask beneath his back. A secretive shadow crossed into his eyes, and he smiled.

Cezanne sighed. “Rest then, Ara. I'll stay until you sleep.” He nodded and closed his eyes. She lifted a hand to brush back his disheveled hair from his forehead, but he was asleep by the time her hand reached him. Cezanne shook her head and rose from the edge of the bed.

Something was terribly wrong, and it had to be brought to light before it could ever be faced. It had been so long since she had summoned shadows that she scarcely remembered how. But it was a talent that she would now call upon again. She would become his shadow and learn what she could of his affliction. Quietly, she shut the bedroom door behind her. And, since the worst of it thus far had shown itself in the middle of the night, Cezanne slid down to sit on the floor outside the bedroom, her head resting against the door. She would know if it opened – if this madness drew him again into the night.

If there was only one thing in his life that didn't disappear with the rising of the sun, it would be his shadow. Cloaked in darkness, she drowsed there till dawn.

[Arahim]

---

"...you slept right here. Your head against the door, curled on the floor. I stood outside all night at the entrance, near the stable there. I watched all night."

"It wasn't a dream, Ara, it was just a long time ago."

*******************************

It was that elusive calm.

The tantalizing what-could-be he had been shown once, and then forcibly gifted with. Made to carry a vision, a feeling he seemed never to fully accept. Its path twisting and forked, and just past his ability to navigate.

It was this damned calm that ground its ill fitting pieces so contentiously against the things he did have. Threatening to dislodge his firm footing. Cast down what he so loved and nurtured with the whispers of promise.

Arahim could not wake, and so quickly drifted to the next...

******************************

were he to find his voice, he'd have screamed

spiders tore relentlessly at his hands. Swatting uselessly at an endless torrent of the terrible creatures, he flinched, and spasmed at every pointed touch

desperate to protect his face

a thousand spiny legs click-clacked across the walls and floor, pouring in through a window he swore he had not opened

the night beyond spoiled and lightless

his floor, a seething, chitinous sea

his bed, sweat soaked and bloodied

[Arahim]

---

...'cross a dividing stream
a warm May sun-shower
soft across meadows of flowering green

A hidden glade
A fount flowing crystal
A chylde of Spring

Her song ever touched by
laboured under the auspices
of watchful Winters

Skirling kite colors
brief, fleet seasons
clean limbed, and fair

[Arahim]

---

The eye of Day had closed, and by ones and twos, lights were born in Ashencrosse. Its walls just past the sheltering treeline only yards away, but far enough removed so that Arahim, motionless and alone in the gathering dark, could not be touched or colored by the glow. Every candle, every lantern, a small, and largely unconscious ritual of welcoming a new Night.

Round holes of glass. Squared paned windows.

Stained. Semi-ajar. Unshuttered.

The warm spill of illuminantion settled comfortably, stretched out across grass, and terrace, and well kept yards. With a natural familiarity, even laid head upon neighboring homes, or shops closing down, and settling books til tomorrow's waiting business. The natural overlap brightening corners sometimes forgotten even by a noon sun. And in the spaces left between, and untouched, deeper, more secret shades of dark.

The lights watched him. Kept him awake, but not at bay. Drove him away sometimes...but that too, was his own choice. It was just that in the gloom he saw clearly, he found calm,

(and his family)

(and love)

(and remembered his monsters)

The world so bright was like watching time pass through water, which was wrong. Disproportionately wrong.

And he would stay away but for the nagging calm he had left at Home.

And the not so subtle reminders on his hands.

And a song promised to him.

[Arahim]

---

Cezanne had lost him hours ago with the end of another day, and though it did not suit him exactly, it seemed well enough. The words of it sang clearly, and brought him a comfort in this solitude that he knew, on some base level, one that required no conscious reason, was a terrible thing.

The sky promised a midnight storm. Rolling purple clouds smeared over the Night's stars, nebulous and pregnant with thundering rains. The air charged with an anxious hesitation, as if creation held its breath.

Held it until the pain was nearly pleasurable.

Arahim stared up at the tree. It was not the tree they had sought out in vain, but it was tall and old. There were long stemmed wildflowers of white and yellow at its base set out in chaotic clumps. The grass here was high.

Twigs fallen from above hung askew, and at odd angles to the natural growth - caught on lower branches before finding the ground, and their final rest. The breeze sent shivers through the odd geometry, and crackled through the dead leaves.

They seemed to him large insects caught, and twitching, but watchful in their last moments.

For hours Arahim watched them back through the eyes of his mask, and ever did the scene shift and change. Sometimes to his delight, sometimes he felt very small, and afraid.

And sometimes some others stood with him and watched too, and they knew things.

And told them to him without mention of price, or promise.