>>6259392

You don’t let go of your cameo, the only warm thing in this ocean of freezing despair. You feel like you are in free fall.
Why is there no—
No answer?
Please, you shout inwardly, at the heavens, but those are empty and void, inane in their peerless blue. Around you, seagulls keep crying, keep circling. The priests and mariners secure the ships and walk down, surrounding you, but it feels like they might as well be on the other side of the world for all you care.
For all the emptiness cares.
“Ansàrra,” you mumble Her hallowed name, in hope it carries you up on fading wings, towards the warmth that you know is still there—
Nothing. It is not enough to even lift your body off the sand. It scrapes against your bare skin, against your nails, coarse and uncaring.
Why doesn’t She replies to your prayers?
What did you do wrong?
Is this part of your Trial? Is this—
“Get up,” says the Priest. His voice lost to you.
Why is your cameo the only source of heat you have left? You can’t seem to reach to Her again.
The light and warmth that has been with you for the past four years, that has lifted you away from a brutal existence — it has been sniffed out.
“Get up, stranger,” he sighs, somewhere on the other side of the world.
Above, the seagulls seem to laugh at you. Or perhaps cry. You cannot say.
Rough hands pull you up, push you on the sand. You stumble, almost fall, then the same arms keep you upright, and start walking, and you have to follow them, but your naked body moves on its own, without a command, without a care—
“At Dawn we wake up with bright thoughts,” you croak, the words wrinkled around your throat after your screams.
The others look at you, with gazes between the amused and the scandalised.
Perhaps they seem to be disgusted you are trying to pray, you, who have silver hair, you have been deemed an agent of the Adversary.
You, who can’t feel Ansàrra’s anymore.

[cont.]