LOVE NEVER WALKS ALONE_Friday's ROMANTIC CHALLENGE_VOICES

It is Friday once again, and with its arrival comes the Romantic Challenge of Francine and Denise_VOICES.

Blog address : http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/p/challenges.html

My 395 word entry is LOVE NEVER WALKS ALONE from my historical fantasy, ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

It is 1853 aboard the cursed transatlantic steamer, DEMETER. To save his love, Meilori, and the LAST FAE, Fallen (yes, she is in this novel as well), Samuel McCord has walked through the Door of Nasah (‘testing’ in ancient Hebrew) into utter darkness :



The light of love slipped through the black shutters of this strange realm. It was warm and emerald. The light I saw in the eyes of Meilori. My torch that I would carry in this darkness.

I kept walking.

Meilori’s eyes seemed to waver. I remembered her anger, her warnings, her despair. I clung to our bond, our love bruised but enduring, curling about my spirit like perfumed smoke rising from the embers of our hearts. I would endure. I had to endure. For her.

Laughter. Cold. Brittle. Knife sharp.

DayStar.

I slowed but kept moving ahead. I shivered. Not from the cold, but from a sudden growing warmth within me.

Meilori. Her velvet words spoke inside my mind.

‘Beloved, wherever you are, know this -- you are a great man.’

I started to protest but her soft words stopped me.

‘Hush, I do not have long before DayStar senses I am talking to you. You are Samuel Durand McCord, beloved, and you are a great man.’

I could have sworn I felt the lingering caress of tender fingers on my cheek.

‘You turned your back on war to save innocents. You fought cruel laws, usually to no avail. You have written no symphony save that of your deeds. You have written no poems outside words of comfort to those in pain.’

This time I did feel her invisible lips on mine.

‘Yet you are greater than any general, any composer, or any poet I have ever known.

You are great because you are kind when you could have so easily learned to be cruel. You are great because you love when so little has been shown you. You are great because you are humble when you have the power to be a tyrant.’

I felt my nose tweaked.

‘And finally you are great, not because you never fail, but because you never quit. Now, do not make me a liar!’

And suddenly the blackness was colder because my sense of her was gone. Snatched away like life by a pistol shot. DayStar must have sensed her talking to me.

I burned to go back to her. I knew better. With life in general, and with DayStar in particular, there was no going back. No, I had to bull this one through to the end. Through to my end if everyone’s warnings were right.

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What I think of as the love theme for Samuel and Meilori :

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