Pilgrimage - Prelude

        For the past nine years, I’ve made a pilgrimage. This year is no different. Tonight, I take a journey that will last a little longer than a night, and will take me back ten years.

        We meet in the ruins of the old castle, saying nothing. We embrace, no words are exchanged. There will be time enough for words later. The reason that we are here is enough for now.

        Together we silently walk an almost forgotten trail towards a nearby cave. We stop, a ward is lifted, and we continue within. The long passage opens to an ice-cold chamber, the chamber where we have come to pay our respects.

        The three of us stand at the crystal in the head of the room, the resting place for our fallen companion. Not a day has passed within that crystal, though our eyes and souls have seen ten long years pass us by since that day.

        Hands are clasped, squeezed, released.

        We turn and leave.

        Rooms at the inn in the nearby town are waiting, the residents expecting our arrival. Food and drinks are brought, and at length, our self-imposed silence is broken.

        We talk of idle things, what has happened in the past year, where our lives are now. None of us have married, though lovers come and go. Our relationship would not be understood.

        Finally, I bring it up: the time has come. We rise slowly and head upstairs to the room prepared with candles.

        It is time to remember.

        Each of us tells a remembrance, a story that we all know and recall. But the point is not that we were there and we know the story… the point is that we remember. We remember the death of Kopii Rezo… but we all remember it differently.

        At the end of the night, blow out the candles. Sit in the darkness and remember the words.

        Sleep as in the fashion of the old days, the group of us in our own sleeping packs. Tonight we return to our memories.

        The morning comes, the old jokes are made. We’re getting old. The sadness is gone and we’re old friends who haven’t seen each other in a year. Pry ourselves out of the sleeping packs, argue about breakfast. Nothing has changed, and yet so much is different.

        I record it all, writing in the slender books that will be kept to look at through the year. I am the only one who writes things such. I am the only one who can. I ponder my coffee for a moment, then rise. It’s time to go. Time to return to our lives and continue living. The past will keep for another year.

        We embrace again, smiles are shared. And quietly we leave.

        Only I will pause at the cave. Only I will return the wards and ensure that all is well before returning to my palace.

        Only I will look at Lina’s face one last time within that crystal, and shed a tear.