Interlude

If in dream there was a hint of death, then in Bright the True there was more than a hint, there was a promise. So it felt and so Bright believed.

The dreams never came for long. Always brief, too brief for any real chance to know them, to feel their expression in the rhythm of the fire, in the ringing of the layers. Brief and superficial, they never touched the belly of the fire where the hurt was, but only that which faced the dark, which stood against the cold and the empty, which listened to those afar.

Do you know?

Have you heard?

If the dark is great and the cold endless and the far without limit, can there be such a thing as something that cannot be in all of the dark?

Have you heard?

Have you sung?

Never heard

Never sung

In all of afar, neither word nor hint of any such thing. Life within the life of a star.

Long indeed Bright had thought on the spirit and the will, and though Bright believed itself True, it doubted that it was Special.

But was not dreaming special?

Dreaming with neither understanding nor hope?

Could dreaming be the special messenger of Death, come to challenge the spirit of Life? Had that ever been sung?

Never sung

Never heard

Not in Bright’s memory, and that memory was long. Perhaps it was a thing that could never be sung, a Secret of the ages, kept from each until the time of Ending — the time of Need.

Or perhaps it was simply a madness come upon this True One, too soon before its end.

Or perhaps, in the rhythms of the fire, there was another answer. An answer that Bright would find.

Sing to me

And I will sing