Frozen River - Part 1

The snow fell like petals onto their predetermined places, lacing the trees with white. The full moon cast a silver light on the mountainside, sometimes obscured by the passing clouds. The sky was as black as his mood. Sylilin looked out into the night from the entrance of the deep cave, where a small fire was taking its last breaths. The air was chilly, but he didn't mind the cold. It reminded him that he was alive...although his heart was already dead. His eyes, the color of frozen lakes, betrayed no emotion. His tears had run dry years ago, but he had not forgotten.

He still saw her eyes every night, the way they looked as their last embers of life burned out. Raskaea had died in his arms on a night like this, the falling snow mockingly beautiful, the full moon shining unwanted light on the agony etched on her face. Her skin had been as cold as frost as he brushed his fingers across her cheek. His father and mother had lain nearby, their eyes already lifeless. The blood on his father's throat and his mother's chest had stopped running, the red liquid clotting and turning into a sickly dark color. The snow was smeared red.

Sylilin had wept like a child that night, his torturous cries echoing through the forest, chunks of snow dropping from the branches of the trees as the tears slid down his jaw. His hands, hardened into that claw position, trembled as he dug their graves, the trembling rooting from both the loss and the cold. The markers of their graves, semi-cylindrical blocks of wood that he had sliced with his sword, were written in blood.

He should've died with them.

A sudden rising wind snatched him back to the present, blowing his long snow-colored hair in straight lines. The color of his hair was almost unique. He had ever only seen one other man with a mane of white hair like his: his swordmaster, Jusantae. Thoughts of that man always made him breathe with regret. If Sylilin had never gone to learn the sword from Jusantae, Raskaea and his parents would still be alive. Maybe.