An older piece, something I scavenged from Diary-X back in the day. Where was it going? I have no idea. Maybe I’ll come back to it, some day…
****

He stood alone on the peak under a sky of black clouds and his anger blew away with the cold north wind, leaving only a lingering, resentful melancholy and a head full of dark thoughts.

The storm was coming, and lightning rode with snow in the crisping air.

Once, long ago, there had been a town beneath him - a pleasant if quaint mountain village, gavled roofs and cheery singing and the smell of gingerbread baking on a warm spring morning. Now, there was only the rising storm - thick, ugly, swollen with nature’s rage and forces beyond Gaia’s wrath - and the mountains, both looking impassivley down on the burned out timbers and charred foundations that stood as a grim gravestone.

Once, long ago, the Watcher had been happy.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d stood there, resisting the call. His cloak had once been a deep midnight blue, he remembered; he remembered being proud of it, bringing it home to show Molly who, despite her indignance over the cost, had been pleased with it as well and agreed that he was both dashing and handsome in it,
Live

but now it was faded and worn, the thick weave thinning to a feather’s breadth, the color so wan it seemed as gray as the paling sky. It still fit him well enough, and though the hem was ragged and torn it had grown no higher from the ground. THe clasp had broken long ago, and the brooch that had replaced it was tarnished and battered, the amethyst that set it delicate but tragically flawed. It had been Molly’s, back in the days when they were happy;
please, live

but that was long ago, and now was now, and now there was only the voice in the back of his head that nagged, and the voice in the back of his head that pleaded. He didn’t think he could resist the call on the wind for much longer, and wasn’t entirely sure why he resisted in the first place. He hadn’t been back in twenty years; why now? Why now, when there was nothing left but a heap of rubble and a fistful of bad memories?

He wouldn’t call his life a good one, not by a long shot - not since the day the music in his head turned cold and stale, not since the day he’d nburned his fiddle and walked away from its ashes with a heart of stone and eyes running over with tears. But it was his life, and he could not say that he regretted any of his choices; and if one wasted a life in “if onlys,” then one was no more than a foolish dreamer, and he’d left his dreams to crumble into dust beneath an autumn sky with the tang of woodsmoke thick in the air oh so very long ago. Twenty years ago now,
for me

and he could not remember smiling in all that time. How odd. Molly used to say how much she loved his smile, even though he wasn’t sure why she would; it made his face crinkle up like a demented prune, and he laughed like a mule brayed, loud and hoarse and unable to help himself, only able to blush furiously in the aftermath, but whenever he laughed Molly would too and that made everything all right. Molly, Molly, Molly…

Twenty years was a long time
I love…

to go without smiling. Twenty years was a long time with the ashes of broken dreams and betrayal to taint your throat. Sometimes, he wondered how she was doing - if she was happy where she was, if she smiled or if she mourned.

But there were some barriers men could not cross, and the fiddle had burned long ago.

He rose stiffly, joints creaking and protesting in pain. As always, he ignored them. They meant nothing, and the call would no longer be ignored.

I will, I will, I swear it!

He sighed and spat the bitter taste of one more broken promise down into the valley, where it could curdle and wait with the ashes of a thousand others. A happy life, a family, a house of their own.

One more broken promise, alone among all the others.

Perhaps, this time, the storm would wash them all away so everything could begin anew.

He turned and walked away, and the shadows welcomed him back into their embrace.