Love Unbidden
“I cannot die,” Gilgallon said to him, her words tinged with pleading. One of the girl’s delicate hands slid up the unyielding stone nearby, her chill grip seeking to ground her belief by latching on to something familiar. For a few desolate moments, nothingness was all she encountered. Then their bony fingers met, hands joining comfortably as their thumbs wrapped around each other in an affectionate embrace.
“I know, my dear,” the man known as Valentine whispered delicately into her mind. The skeletal mask which gazed down upon the recumbent heroine conveyed no sympathy, no love, only the eternal rictus which was etched into its flesh from millennia past. How anyone could find solace in the grim spectacle was truly a mystery, but Valentine’s presence seemed to put Gilgallon at ease, if only for the moment.
“Why must I sleep here?” she asked, each word puffing from her lips in a dense plume of fog. The heat had long been sucked from the surrounding area, and the corresponding energy swirled violently in the cobalt blue of Gilgallon’s eyes. Eyes that momentarily glistened with a thin sheen of moisture. In an instant, those pools glazed over into frozen lenses.
“You know the answer to that question, child,” Valentine chided her.
“Humor me,” she replied, snapping her eyelids closed so fiercely that she sent myriad shards of ice splintering outward. The fury in her boiled closer to the surface, threatening to rip free.
“As you wish,” the archaic man conceded after weighing the alternative briefly, “Your life, your path, your purpose, exists as a symbol for the love of all mankind.”
With that, the soul recounted to her the entirety of the tale and the pivotal role her spirit played in maintaining the balance of chaos. Fate intervened as she saw fit, and passion needed a champion. With that, the tempest was reborn within Gilgallon, and her heart was set upon the journey which would ultimately lead to the one true salvation. Valentine spoke in crashing waves of purpose and thundered with the wild hearts of those both past and present. For countless hours the man recited the supernatural lineage, and only as he neared the conclusion did he pause for unnecessary breath.
“This sucks,” Gilgallon dipped cynically into the moment.
“Yet, you know it all to be true,” Valentine countered, “Without you to draw the fury from those who walk the world, long ago would mankind have slept eternally in ash and flame. By bearing the burden of their hatred and malice, you grant them the ability to reach the only emotion which can heal the damage that has been done. Love.”
The power in the girl had subsided, subdued by purpose and offering a momentary reprieve from the storm. The instant of clarity brought doubt to Gilgallon’s harsh features as she formed her last fear into words.
“Will it ever end?” she uttered, managing to spill each syllable out before her throat choked closed.
“Only when you wish it otherwise,” Valentine offered in bitter portent, “Pine not for the elusive, child of fury. Embrace what you are. You have been chosen to bestow upon the people, all people, the ability to love once again. Truly, what more is there?”
“And when that task is complete,” the prophetic specter continued, voice rising with each passing breath, “When Fate releases you from her unwavering grip, you will rise above this dark and hallowed place of forgotten souls.”
Gilgallon’s eyes flared wide as her body drifted upward in response to the man’s potent words.
“You will soar on celestial wings of power!” his throat cheered, arms upraised.
The wind blew across Gilgallon’s face as she twirled gracefully in the air, feeling the rejuvenation coursing through her.
“And be reborn, the likes of wh–”
With a resounding thwap, the whirling blade of the ceiling fan cracked into Gilgallon’s head as she flew dreamily upward toward the zenith of her lofty bedroom. Hovering there in snowman pajama-clad disorientation, one hand clasped protectively over the painful welt alongside her head, the echoes of her slumbering vision were abruptly cast aside by the sudden rise of her fury and the choice words which raced forth.
“Oh, for the love of…”