ALEX CAVANAUGH GETS A VISIT ... from me!

ALEX CAVANAUGH:
http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/

is getting company at 5 A.M. Friday ... ME.

I talk a bit how music plays a part in my END OF DAYS and

how it really plays a part in all of my writing.

Alex was gracious enough to be a good host and patiently listen.

Visit Alex yourselves so my presence won't cause a slump in his comments!

This is another Friday Challenge too:
THE PERFECT EX from END OF DAYS ...

{A continuation from the last challenge}

Alice Wentworth and the shade of Victor Standish have been grudgingly allowed one last dance before the warriors of High Fae Queen, Oyggia, sweep down upon them.

Sinend turned to her liege. “What harm could granting them a last dance do, Your Majesty?”

Her winter frost eyes grew contemplative. “None. And there actually may be profit for me in it.”

Victor snorted, “Well, we’ll dance anyway.”

“How, Victor?” I husked. “We cannot touch and there is no music.”

He winked. “No music? With me in your head, au contraire.”

A melodic, bitter-sweet waltz sang in my head with the sighing of violins, and I knew it was echoed in Victor’s as well.

“And touching?” I asked. “What shall we do about that?”

He smiled as sad as the tune in our heads.

“What we’ve done since we first met, Alice. We mirror one another, moving in sync one with the other, heart to heart, movement for movement.”

He held out his hand. I placed my hand above his misty one. We began to dance slowly and gracefully. Hot tears blinded me and hid his face from me. And yet, they did not, for I had his eyes ever before me, whether awake or asleep.

Our last dance was much like our whole love affair. We were so close, yet so far apart. Mirroring each other in step and heart, but forever separated by our very natures. Still, we moved as one, fluid and sweeping. The melancholy tune tugged at me soul-deep.

We danced in sweeping steps that took us all along the circle of hilt-clenching warriors. Victor ignored them. He studied me as if trying to memorize each gesture I made, every word I spoke. We whirled and twirled in a dance of love unlike the one of death Skeggjold and I had taken but moments before.

I drew in a breath I did not need as I swung in circles in our last waltz.

“Are you dead? Are you a ghost? Oh, I must know, Victor, what are you?”

“In love with you, Alice. Leave it at that.”

“No, I simply cannot die without knowing.”

His wavering form kept dancing but his face grew grim.

“You will weep bitter tears at the price of knowing, Alice. Do you still want me to tell you?”

“Yes! I will not die without knowing just how you come to be dancing with me, to have helped me these past days though all say you are dead.”

He and I danced as one, our feet seemingly floating above the still smoldering grass. He brushed my lips with his.

They tingled upon mine. There were tears of farewell in his eyes.

“I can see where you would have to know before you died.”

He closed his dark eyes for the briefest of moments, opened them, and then looked so sad into mine. “Remember those painful adjustments Magda gave you?”

I nodded, “Yes, when she mysteriously said they had made me into what I needed to be. But to be what, Victor?’

He sighed, “To be able to see the me that was within you.”

I almost sobbed, “I do not understand.”

He smiled as if the act hurt him. “Remember when to fight Abigail Adams, you became mist within me?”

“Yes, and I took on a part of your memories, your skills ….”

Victor interrupted, “ … took on a part of me, Alice. I’m the part of Victor you took with you that day. I stayed with you all this time.”

Oyggia cried out, “Yes! I can kill a soul echo!”

Victor spun from me in the flow of the music. I saw his intent. He was standing far from me so he alone would be hit by the queen’s savage energy blast.

His eyes. Oh, God, his eyes.

He was not afraid, not a bit. He knew Oyggia would do this. And yet, he told me anyway … because I asked him to.

Victor was calmly looking at me with all the love in his spectral heart. I was blown to the ground by Oyggia’s attack. The world became one enormous explosion.

When I opened my eyes, Victor was gone. Not even a flicker of a wavering image.
He was gone not just from in front of me.

I – I could no longer feel any trace of Victor within me. None at all. My heart felt cold stone. My chest, my soul was empty, alone.

Victor, my love, was truly dead. Dead.

I heard an animal wailing in pain. I went stiff with a sick realization. That was no animal. It was me.

Me.

Oyggia crowed in triumph as I wailed on my knees.

She sang the words, “We come to it at last. The End has come!”

I rose slowly to my feet.

“Oyggia, do you have the steel to fight someone who is looking you in the face?”

(Yes, Hell is about to be unleashed ... just not in the way anyone expects.}