What Dreams are Made Of_Part Fifteen: The Gift.

Parts of the substrate had been scraped with a broad blade. Patches of wet color bled through the withered earth. Regions of rough surface concealed nameless portraits raked in viscid tones. A few turned their textured heads silently. The paint itself was alive in covert plot, so that he became wary where his feet fell.

His eyes were drawn to the lake. It mimicked the ebon sky in shades of carbon black. He did not dare its depths. Mirrors might reveal lies that he’d craved only to forget.

Dull pigment stirred like dust in the backdrop of his thoughts. Voices murmured dimly and then amplified quickly into a cacophony of corpses; their rasping chorus reached over obsidian channels and across the unseen void. The landscape broke into fragments and points of color that swirled and lifted higher. A blue streak forked above the swelling waves and thunder cracked so close he could smell the ozone. Hands fell from his ears. He stumbled forward as the ground came up to greet him.

In the eye of the storm was silence like a terrible roar, and the richness of the world was drowning in its wake. Just one detail stood away from the twisting fray. He had seen nothing like it here.

Slowly he reached for the object of his design. He pulled it closer. Its polished handle and nickel ferrule wrapped securely around the sable tip. It was a talisman. At that moment, the wind died down in a sudden hush that tore the breath from him.

The storms fading reprise ceased in the timbre of her words, “Life is a tide of terror and great beauty...for which we are all responsible. We must each know who we are with certainty; a conviction to merge in myriad possibilities. Go to the mere and see who you’ve become.”

At the water’s edge the sky had turned a deep Prussian Blue. A few stars flickered in the lake. She was behind him. Though her beauty still startled him, it was the stranger who stood beside her that caught his eye. He knew the face. But, the inner image of the child so familiar did not match. The man staring back at him looked both tested and tranquil. He saw past his hurts and misgivings with intense desire and strength of will to make of life whatever he chose.

Epilogue:

The solitude embraced him for a few moments before he realized she was gone. The plot surrounding had no more hold on his heart. He looked into the lake to where she had been. A radiant circle was mirrored there, full and round.

The Moon: how he longed to be there. It was waiting like a promise in the sky; he waded away from the shore and dove into its shining center.