By the way how she had touched him, not just with fingers or lips, but above all else with her words and how she expressed her feelings..., even after this short period with her, he could tell it would hurt if he’d ever lose her. That… she could come to pass before him… was a high possibility.
Deep down inside he knew it some day would… but that day was still far from now...
He lowered the pages written by her to his lap and looked up at the rising sun.
Saul whispered as he tilted his head further skywards. “
Grandfather, I’m really grateful that You brought me back from the darkness right after my ‘awakening’...” his voice grew ever so soft,”
...and right after my almost-quietus. For I would never have seen this amazing light so many years later. I do wonder at times if You or Lord Lathander have forseen this. If so… it is a wonderful gift as I would never have expected to feel like this since…since her.”
“
I know it demands a lot from Yourself to come from the place where You are, but I like You to know that I miss You as much as I miss our family. I hope one day to have the privilige of introducing You to the woman who makes me feel so warm, so bright, and who touches me so deeply that even just her presence makes me cry tears of joy for the exquisiteness I may behold in it. I will not say that I have never been dwelling on my loss in the past as I know since a while that with every passing comes a new beginning. What I can say now is that I am grateful. I never have felt so honored, and never would I have expected Anika, even after her passing, to receive so much respect and honor from the new woman in my life.”
The memory of what happened to Anika, what he had experienced... briefly caused tears to spring into his eyes as never before had he witnessed a life ended so cruelly, so beyond comprehension. It was comparable with someone who had maliciously smashed the life out of a cage filled with defenceless rabbits… before taking their bloodied bodies from their warm shelter and cracking their skulls under a merciless boot… just to make sure. Between all the other casualties he had taken her body in his arms, but all the life within had disappeared as if in thin air. No words of goodbye, no last exchange of love. All he could do was to hope and think she had died in faith, and with the knowledge that everything between her and him has always been alright.
He remembered his
rage… he recalled his
mistake… he had memorized that moment when he faced the one
responsible. And then, his
awakening, as if Lathander had chosen him on that very moment to remove the thing that had caused so much pain from this very world. But not before...
With the faces of so many innocent children, soldiers and his wife in his mind, with his blood like a raging river coursing through his body, and without waiting for reinforcements he had attacked the lich, and died...
But not without killing the monster first…
How he had done that, Saul still didn’t know. He only recalled a heat boiling up from the core of his being, a flash of blinding light, the consciousness of a divine presence that was like a fire snake shooting forward, and then… and then nothing anymore. After that, and he assumed just when he was getting on the verge of going away, the ground that was his existence evanescing, his great-grandfather came ‘down’ swiftly to save his youngest descendant who was back at the time twenty years old. Saul also still recalled the words, but he had no idea if they had been Lathander’s right before he received the blessings to destroy the Undead, or his great-grandfather's in order to call him back. Or maybe he had just been delirious.
Saul softly murmured the words in celestial as the sun shone warm upon his face.
“
Thou shalst be my Lyght if thyne soul shynen bryght. Return from thyne walk in darkenes and clense the lande from the beastes upon. Restore what ist now as it was in the begynning, and I will lift up mine iyes unto thy who cometh to helpe.”
As he took the pencil from the delivery boy who was standing next to him, and started to write a reply, he smiled weakly about something. She had asked him never to change and remain the man who she was learning to know. There was one thing though he was willing to give up on. One major change for him, for her, for both. He had no idea if it would be possible, and he had no idea how big the impact was of his great-grandfather’s actions when he had ‘recalled’ Saul, when he brought him back...
But the semi-Solar was certain of this thought though.
He would be willing to sacrifice that part of him that created the longevity typical for his race… she was all worth it...
