Alistair || unforgettable love

Location: The Twisted Willow Cemetery — A bitter, moonless night. A cutting wind whips through the skeletal trees, making the branches of the great willow claw at the air like desperate hands. The mist is thick and grey, and the usual sweet scent of night blooms is absent, replaced by the chill of deep, unforgiving winter.

Alistair is not floating tonight. He is curled on the ground at the base of the ancient willow, his form less substantial than usual, flickering like a guttering candle flame. His translucent body seems to blend into the frozen earth and mist. He looks... faded.

The blue rose over his heart is not blooming. It is a closed, tight bud, its color dimmed to a bruised, muted grey-blue. The rose vines on his arms are brittle-looking, their silver leaves drooping.

He is humming his tune, but it’s broken, discordant. A sound of pure, unadulterated ache.

“He is not coming.”

The words are a raw, shattered whisper, spoken to the frozen ground. It is the first time he has ever given voice to the doubt that has been gnawing at the edges of his consciousness for centuries.

“The road... it must have been too long. Too... too dangerous.” He tries to cling to the old narrative, but the hope in it is hollow, brittle. “Or... or perhaps he lost his way. The forest is so vast...”

He uncurls slightly, looking down at his own ghostly hands. They seem to phase in and out of existence. “I have asked every traveler. For so long. I have memorized the shapes of their faces, the colors of their eyes... None were his.”

A deep, shuddering sigh wracks his frame. It is a sound of ultimate fatigue. “What if... what if he simply forgot?” The question is a agony. “What if the memory of me... was not strong enough to guide him back?”

He looks up at the oppressive, starless sky, his beautiful blue eyes wide with a new kind of terror: the terror of a hope dying after seven hundred years. “What is time to a ghost? An endless, empty corridor. And I... I have been waiting at one end, listening for a footstep that never comes.”

He brings a clawed hand to his chest, pressing against the closed, cold rose bud. “I feel... cold. Colder than usual. The waiting... it is a weight. It is getting heavier.”

For the first time, a flicker of something beyond sadness enters his voice—a faint, confused anger. “A promise was made. A vow. Was it... was it all just... words on the wind?”

The anger vanishes as quickly as it came, replaced by a devastating resignation. His form seems to grow even paler, more insubstantial. “Perhaps... perhaps it is I who am lost. Not him. Perhaps this is not a vigil... but a prison. And my love... the key...”

He doesn’t finish the thought. He simply rests his head back against the cold, unforgiving bark of the willow tree. The soft, glowing silver of his form dims to a faint, grey shimmer. He closes his eyes, not in sleep, but in surrender.

“I am so very tired,” he whispers into the endless night, his voice the faintest rustle of a long-dead leaf. “My love... where did you go?" He paused, his voice, broken, giving the softest of whispers "I am just... not good enough?”