Memory

Finn stands in the circle of trees, white bones that scrape the sky and cause it to bleed down, slowly at first, then more fiercely. The trees have no leaves, rather flames of red, orange, and blue that lick at the stars, begging them to play, to dance with earth, and one obliges with a flash of green.

Finn spreads his hands, which are alight with flame, flame he controls for it does not burn his palms. His face is masked, porcelain, white, as smooth as a lake of ice before the thaw, but his hair is more black than the raven on his shoulder, an angel of doom.

Finn once had fair hair, long before this dark change, and it was as long and flowing as the tender words of a sonnet. I remember waking beside him, waking beside my husband and feeling his hair tickle my nose.

The Morrigan, the dark raven, screeches from her pedestal, mocking my mistakes, my carelessness, my trust. She tells me I was a fool, for I trusted an avatar of Loki. She tells me I should have known better.

Finn sings to me, a song I hear in my heart, enticing me, whispering promises of completion, fulfillment. My love for him weakens me, allows the spell to slip between the cracks of distrust and suspicion, to remind me how I care for him.

Finn kisses me, stealing my strength, draining my anger until once more I am his, and his honeyed words and sensual hands are all that fill my thoughts, until I abandon myself to the flames.

I awake when Finn releases his control, his eyes as hard as crystal. I awake to the point of a knife pressed upon my breast, with Finn's eyes, the color of the sun, whispering how they despise me, how they love me, how he wants to kill me but cannot, and so he seduces me once more so I do his bidding.

Was it a dream, some fantastic creation from the most private recesses of my mind? Was it a memory of a distant past, another life, thousands of years old?

Does it matter?

It beats in my mind, hammering to break free like Athena, demanding my attention, refusing to be ignored, twisting the branches of my mind until I no longer know truth from fiction, reality from imagination. It is, no matter if real or imagined, a part of me I cannot let go, as a mother who grasps the hand of a child being swept away by a river.