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Bard Stefen tied his mare to a low tree branch with thin sure hands he was proud to say didn’t tremble, even at the venerated age he was now. Eighty years old... sixty-two of those years bereft and alone. How did I ever last so long without you Ashke?It was a little hard not to feel giddy, even as he knew he was going to his death. The Shadow-Lover was no one he feared, he’d longed for His embrace for decades now. All his friends had passed before him, dear Jisa and Trevan, who’d at least gotten to go together. Even Medren, his brother in all but blood, the one who had held him up through his grief and continually pushed him to find the small joys life still held, had gone on to his rest and left him as ever and always alone.You should have been with me, we were Supposed to grow old Together! He smiled a little in bitter amusement thinking of how insufferable Van would have been if he’d had the chance to become actually old. Thirty-eight years is Not old Beloved, and I have the irrefutable Proof of that now! He rolled his shoulders briefly, listening to the familiar cacophony of creaking and cracking joints, feeling the countless little aches and pains of his elderly body, the coldness that even the heat of summer no longer warmed.He shouldered his gittern and looked around, not entirely sure what he was supposed to do now that he was here. It was a beautiful spring day; the canopy of trees an expanse of brilliant jeweled greens sprinkled with flowered clouds of bright pink, white and gold late-blooming trees, the deeper emerald undergrowth woven with a riot of cheerful colors, an explosion of flowers yearning towards the young sun.Such a contrast to the first time he was in these woods, and the last time he was at his beloved’s side. It had been winter then, harsh winds and biting cold and the endless numbing white snow punctured only by the black grasping arms of the sleeping forest, a thousand cruel claws that scratched at them as they passed while crooked fingers reached towards the grey unfeeling sky. The only thing colder was the bitter grief, icy rage, and hunger for vengeance that consumed his other half.Or the second time he had been here in the autumn of the following year. The trees were a fiery blaze of color that matched the dying sky, matched his uniform and his wind-snarled hair. They had watched him like a hawk those first few months after the empty shell of him had been hauled back to Haven after the Battle of the Ice Wall. Rightfully concerned that he wanted nothing other than to return to his beloved’s side. He had wandered the halls in a dull haze, still pouring out his otherwise useless Gift to ease Randale’s last months of agony. Somehow, despite his own soul being a shriveled and blasted thing, as blackened and barren as the cruel stone passage where his love had fallen, he was still able to stand between others and their pain.In the flurry of activity following Randale and Shavri’s deaths, Jisa being Chosen and the crowning of Trevan and Jisa as co-consorts he’d slipped away, his duty done and nothing left to hold him back from seeking the release of his own pain. He’d gotten hold of a bottle of argonel to help him along. A cowards death to be sure, but he was a coward, if he’d only done something, said something perhaps his Vanyel would have still been here.No matter the turning of the years that trip was seared forever into his memory, he’d gone determined to join his love by any means, he had not expected his lover’s pale shade to stop him. He’d been deeper in the Forest before he’d appeared, knocking over his bottle of poison and standing between him and longed for death. He never forgot that last precious glimpse of his beloved, holding it close inside his broken heart and shattered soul. Such a brief moment, so few words exchanged, but those words had been graven into his soul since the moment they were uttered.
I asked for something before I agreed, and you get the same choice. You can join me-
That promise, that fragile hope was all that kept him going through long years, decades, an eternity alone, feeling like a tree riven by lightning. He’d grown his life around the cold blasted space, covered the void in threads of green. But the blackened hollow emptiness always remained at the core of him.It had been hard, it had been so hard to do what Vanyel had asked of him, what he had promised to do. Not only the monumental size of of his difficult, and at times he feared impossible task. But it had also hurt, not only the loneliness and the empty ache that never went away, it had also felt like he was destroying his beloved’s legacy. Jisa had asked him once angrily if he was trying to erase Van. It had been hard to explain to her without sounding mad that this was what Van had wanted, that his legacy was Valdemar safe, her people protected.The grandchildren he never got to meet...It had hurt the year he turned thirty-seven, the same age as Vanyel when he met him. It had hurt the year he turned forty and realized he was older than Vanyel ever had the chance to be. It had hurt as he slowly inexplicably became a hero in his own right, how much more he understood Van when his own undeserved fame drove young Bards to start writing songs about him. How much he longed to be able tell him all of that.These last few years had been some of the most painful, as he’d lost the last of his old friends and wondered when it would finally be his turn. He’d been slowly giving away his belongings, donating his extensive book collection to libraries, his instruments to his students, his keepsakes mostly to Medren’s grown children who had always called him uncle Stef, some to Jisa’s children.Vanyel’s Hawkbrother masks, which had graced the walls of every set of rooms he’d ever inhabited, were one of the last things he took care of. With no one left to fret over him, to be alarmed by the significance of the act, he eventually wound up burning them. He knew how much the secretive Tayledras valued their privacy, and the hidden meanings and stories behind those particular masks. He had no desire for such personal gifts to be casually displayed as mere curiosities.The very last thing he did before he left on his final journey was to take the beautifully carved wooden box set with Mother-of-pearl inlay and amber accents and presented it to the Herald-chronicler. There had been no body to bury, the only remains to be found of the hero who had sacrificed his life for Valdemar was the shattered focus stone Stefen had given him. It was too fragile and damaged to wear, nor could Stefen bear the thought of having the broken stone placed in a new setting. He had slept with it under his pillow for the first couple of years, until Jisa finally, gently convinced him that he was only hurting himself more. She had been the one to commission the box for it, and politely never commented on the fact he kept it on a shelf next to his bed.The woman had stared at him in utter shock when he explained what he was giving her, slowly she’d opened the lid with slightly trembling hands to gaze reverently at the cracked and broken stone in a half melted setting that lay nestled in blue velvet. He’d been a little afraid that giving up that last and final connection would hurt, but instead it had been freeing in a way. He’d journeyed north with his heart lighter than it had been in years.He wandered deeper into the woods, just enjoying the bright day and the exuberant birdsong that filled the perfumed air. Reflecting with a certain morbid amusement how odd it was to feel more like a bride on her wedding day, walking through garlands of flowers to meet her husband-to-be, rather than a man marching towards his death. He’d lost his love in winter’s cold, in the season of death. He’d tried to join him in autumn, the dying time of the year. Now it was spring, the season of birth, and perhaps for him, a rebirth of sorts.Eventually his ambling path led him to a clearing inside a tall ring of goldenoaks like a cathedral made by nature herself. Gracefully intertwined branches like the arms of dancers circled the most picture perfect meadow, lush and green and dotted with colorful wildflowers, and in the very center of the meadow, an improbably thick bed of flowers as soft and deep as a featherbed.Not even I would come up with something this sappy Ashke, and I’m a Bard. Stefen rubbed his stinging eyes and leaned his gittern against a tree, chuckling a little to himself at the sudden remembrance that his beloved had always had a sentimental romantic streak. He’d had little chance to experience much of it, but those tiny thoughtful heartfelt moments shone like jewels in the gold of his memories of their too-brief time together.He carefully lowered himself down to lay in that lush bed of red and white flowers and looked up at the wheeling blue sky above him, feeling the playful breeze toying with his hair and the warming sun soaking into his tired bones, thinking to himself what a lovely place this is to die. He wondered idly what it would feel like, what dying would be like? Was he just going to sort of dissolve into pure energy? Melt into the flowers and become part of the forest floor?Mostly his heart was singing with the thought that he would be seeing Vanyel soon. He wondered if Van was watching him right now, anticipating their reunion as much as he was. He thought of how easy he had it here at the end, to drift off to sleep in this bed of flowers basking in the spring sunshine and birdsong, dreaming of his beloved and hoping he would wake in his arms again at long last.He found himself lifting his tired voice one last time in song, a song that had been one of Van’s favorites. “How I long to reach a point of peace, How I fade with weariness and woe, How I long for you to bring release.” A song that had over the years brought him as much comfort as pain. “Bring the peace that suffering redeems...”He had no fear of Death, not anymore. The Shadow-Lover was a kindly friend, one who would finally take him back to his heart’s home. Death was only a doorway, a passageway that would lead him back to his long-lost beloved.“For with you I shall come home again…”
~~~~~
Stefen awakens standing in the middle of the bed of red and white flowers. Poppies, for Healing and Remembrance, and Starflower, for Loyalty and Eternity, he thinks absently. The enclosing ring of trees were hazy shapes lost in a soft grey mist. The same sort of grey mist that had surrounded Vanyel and Yfandes in the Not-a-Dream he’d had a fortnight ago, telling him his task was finally done, that this was his long awaited Call to come to the Forest of Sorrows, to lay down his burdens at last. To come home.The mist brightened and a cloaked figure stepped forth, dressed in Herald's Whites and with long silver hair spilling from beneath his hood. Ashke. Stefen felt his heart leap, or whatever passed for a heart in the spirit realm. But the man’s face was shadowed, he had only the impression of ageless beauty before eyes of blazing depthless blue looked at him and an overwhelming sense of Presence made his knees nearly buckle.“Shadow-Lover, lead me into light…” He sang the last line almost instinctively, his voice somehow clear for all that he trembled in every fiber of his being.Gentle arms wrapped around him, held him cradled against a strong chest. It was so much like being held by his beloved that he curled into that comfort and let the tears flow unchecked.“Dear one, sweet Healsong. You have done so well, given so much succor to the grieving, rest here a moment in my arms. Let go of your sorrows.” He clung to Death’s robes, sobbing uncontrollably as a lifetime of grief and loneliness washed through him. The broken Lifebond, that aching empty hollow inside of him that had held a seemingly endless reservoir of tears, eventually ran dry in those steady arms as Stefen cried out more than half a century of pain.Then he just rested, a moment, an hour, he had no way of knowing. There was no time in that liminal space in the embrace of Death. He was balance, the end, and also the beginning, a fleeting moment, and all eternity...Sometime (or no time at all) later the embrace loosened so that he could stand on his own again. He instinctively wiped at the tears on his face but they were gone. So too were his wrinkles, the coldness and weakness he had become accustomed to. The long hair waving on the edge of his vision was again the color of the autumn leaves the first time he had sought to join his beloved, no longer the silver of the snow he had lost him in.“You have more than earned your place dear one, and you have a choice to make.” Death’s sonorous voice, so similar to Vanyel’s baritone but somehow even deeper and richer, sent a little shiver through him.Stefen opened his mouth to say he chose Vanyel of course, he was all that he’d ever wanted, everything that he had worked for. But the Shadow-Lover laid a gentle finger over his lips.“A Moment first impatient one.” Death smiled at him with immense fondness before His expression turned serious. “You have the right now to the full truth, and you need to know the things that had to be kept hidden from you, so that you may make a fully informed decision.”Stef looked into those strange ethereal eyes, eyes deeper and bluer and more vast than the widest sky, burning like the heart of flame, strange and knowing like a Companion’s.“I know…” Stef said slowly, feeling a sort of relief that here at least was someone he could tell his revelation to without them thinking he had gone irrevocably mad. “I know, that I used to be… Tylendel?” His voice came out more questioning than he had intended.But he'd had no one else he could ever talk to about his suspicions; that he and Tylendel had more in common than just being Lifebonded to Vanyel. That they were somehow the same person… it sounded insane when he said it like that.He’d been afraid that he really was losing his mind when it first started happening. First the dreams. Dreams of a younger Vanyel, his face unlined by grief, body unmarked by duty, hair black as a raven’s wing. So slender and fey, and smiling at him with such heart-stopping sweetness he woke with tears on his cheeks and the ache in his chest felt as sharp and fresh as that first horrible night he woke screaming to the knowledge that he was irrecoverably alone. He dreamed of a younger Savil, whom he’d always missed far more than had ever made sense for their brief acquaintance.Then late one night, heartsick and lonely (and more than a little drunk) he’d wandered into some random Herald’s suite and gone unerringly into a room with a lovely garden door that he swore he’d never ever seen before, and cried himself to sleep on a sofa there. The Herald whose suite it was had been very surprised to find him passed out in his office the next morning, but had thankfully recognized him and summoned Tantras instead of the Guard. Tantras had looked at him strangely the whole way back to his rooms in Bardic, after apologizing profusely to the other Herald on his behalf since Stefen was far too mortified and too hungover to speak.“M’sorry Tran.” He’d mumbled, pausing at the door to his own modest suite, hoping Tran wouldn’t insist on making sure he got to bed alright. He didn’t want Vanyel’s oldest friend seeing the state of his rooms right now, he worried over him enough as it was. “I… I don’t know why I did that.”Tantras had laid a hand on his shoulder, his expression gentle with pained understanding. “I know winter is a hard time for you…” He said as tactfully as he could.It’s been ten years! Ten Gods-Forsaken Years!! It shouldn’t still Be this hard. Stef fought to keep from shouting his thoughts aloud, shrugging off Tran’s well-meaning hand and hoping he hadn’t picked up on his silent rage and despair. The man was damnably perceptive.“You could have gone in the daytime Stef, Herald Eston wouldn’t begrudge you that. Everyone knows what you meant to him, everyone knows everything you’ve done for all of us.”“What?” A chill cut though the heat of his embarrassment and anger.“If you’d wanted to see Van’s old room, Eston would be happy to show you anytime. I hope you know that. Stef, you are part of us. I know I keep telling you-”“Say that again.” Stef had demanded, grabbing Tantras’s arm with a grip that seemed to surprise the tall lanky Herald.“Y-you wanted to see his old room?” Tran stuttered in surprise, clearly not understanding. “That was Savil’s suite when she had students, Eston found you in Vanyel’s old room, from when he first came to Haven…” He’d shut the door wordlessly on Tran’s confused and increasingly worried face, and refused to talk about it afterwards.He never asked to see the room in daylight.“Yes.” The Shadow-Lover’s gentle voice broke him out of his reverie. “You were Tylendel before you were Stefen.” He spoke softly, but His words landed like hammer-blows against his soul. “I would give you back the memories of your former life. There is terrible pain there, but also incredible love. Love that not even I could sunder.”Stefen shifted uneasily, was this what he had promised? To turn back into Vanyel’s lost love? Had he ever even really loved him or only the shade of his lost dead love that was hosted within him?“Will I… will I still be... me?” Stefen asked hesitantly. “Will this… just sort of turn me into Tylendel?”The Shadow-Lover smiled at him with the same sort of gentle all-encompassing compassion he’d received so often from the Healers who’d tried to patch up his broken heart and soul, but His compassion was as vast as the sky and deeper than the ocean. “You are, and will always be yourself dear one. Putting on a shirt of a different weave doesn’t change who you truly are inside.”Death stepped back and glanced away, seeming to become distant for a moment. “But perhaps you would take reassurance from one who has gone before you.” He waved a graceful hand and a section of mist brightened and thinned.Stef looked to where He had gestured, unneeded breath catching in his non-existent throat, hoping, and somehow fearing that it was his long-lost ashke. Instead, out of the mist stepped an entirely different beloved sight.“Medren!!” Stef exclaimed, shock warring with joy as Medren strode towards him grinning hugely, looking as he’d looked when they were both in their prime, thick brown hair flowing over his strong shoulders and the familiar crinkles by his merry hazel eyes softened by youth.“Stefen!” Medren caught his arms that he’d unthinkingly extended and pulled him into a hearty embrace, clapping him on the back as he did when they hadn’t seen each other for months. Then, when Stef clung to him desperately tightly, trying not to fall completely to pieces, he simply wrapped his long arms around him and held him as tight as he could. Held him like he’d held him after Van was gone, when he truly was falling apart and didn’t know how duty alone could possibly drive him to survive.Thrown together as students in Bardic, a noble’s bastard and a bastard of the streets, a couple of unwanted misfits no one really expected to fit in. They’d become the fastest of friends, as close as brothers despite their differences, and somehow wound up spending most of their lives together. Often separated by missions and travel, he’d always known that he had a safe place to roost with his oldest, dearest, and truest friend.Medren had died a few years before Stefen had finally received his long-awaited Call. It had somehow hurt nearly as much as losing Van. In some ways worse, for as much as he adored his Vanyel-ashke, theirs had been a fiery love, an all-consuming incinerating love that had burned out too soon and left him alone in the cold. Medren’s love had been a steady hearth-fire, a home where he was always welcome. A place he could lay his empty aching soul and find yet some warmth in this cold cruel world.“Stef! I’m so very glad you’re here!” Medren exclaimed, and then at his expression he chuckled. “Sorry, I know that wouldn’t normally be ah- a kind thing to say. I was just so afraid I wouldn’t get to see you again before you made your Choice.”The Shadow-Lover smiled at Medren, seeming to flicker a moment in Stef’s vision to a more feminine form. “You have played your part well. I promised that you would see each other again.”Stefen looked back and forth between his best friend and the Shadow-Lover in confusion. Something unseen and unheard passed between them and Medren bent his head, something partway between a nod and a bow, and the Shadow-Lover turned His brilliant burning blue gaze back to Stefen. “It is time I return to you what was lost.”Stefen gulped a little and straightened his back and nodded acquiescence, hoping that he would somehow be able to bear this final trial. After all he had been through, he had to, he would do anything to see his beloved again.Medren turned to look at him and take his hand in his. “It’ll be okay Stef.” He said, giving an encouraging squeeze. “I’ll be right here beside you.”