Stone Circle When the party is over

Reality blurred in the moments that passed, between what was worldly, and what was not of this world. He was still not dead enough to feel the bliss of Heaven's healing, and still too much alive to want to go there yet.

His wounds ached with a pain he never even knew existed. Excruciating. Agonizing, and he closed his eyes, his voice, quite wordless, emitting only as the high pitch of a whine. Wanting to let go, wanting to hold on. Not for him, but for her. For her, always for her.

What would she do when he was gone? What would he do, without her?

He tried to move, to get up, to help, but he couldn't. He couldn't feel much beyond the pain, didn't know if he could move anymore. The sound of the fight raged on, and he closed his eyes from the sight.

Waited, maybe, for death to come.

What came instead was a presence. Comforting, and soft, and familiar. His eyelid fluttered open, the one that could still open, and the setting sun washed Arlette in a stark, yet magnificent light.

"Lette." His eyes pinched in sorrow and something happy, to simply see her safe, and a warmth spread along the curve of his lips, lifting upward in a smile that seemed torn between relief and agony. Relief, because she was alive -- right? -- and here with him. Agony, because even with his blurring vision and the darkening shadows, he could make out the crimson stains smeared across her face, blood and pain he wished he could wipe away. "You...we're s'ppose'd t'run..." he tried to tease, but his voice felt rough, and hoarse in his throat, and his words faded to the pitch of a whine again.

It hurt, it hurt, gosh, it hurt so much, but he had so little energy to say even that. He closed his eyes, but some part of him could still see. It made sense, and none at all. Arlette hunched over him, but he could not hear her, not very well. The cougar, now dead. A limp shape of a sterling wolf beside it. His heart turned.

"Don't look so upset. I am not there anymore."

The voice startled him, and that was when he saw her: Nanook -- dead, but alive -- a comfort, and a fear. "Please," he did not know Nanook, not very well, but he knew Arlette had loved her. "Please." He knew he was dying, but he didn't know how. As much as he knew what waited for him on the other side -- a much better life than the greatest life here -- he did not want to go of this. Did not want to let Arlette go, did not want to let their children go.

Gosh, it was all just a wretched mess!

Nanook seemed to consider him, then met him with a soft, and oddly knowing smile. "It is okay," she said, and turned from him. That was when he saw the other side. Like a veil being torn, the heavens seemed to unfold before him, above him, around him, and she stepped into the light. And that was when he saw her: Nanook, the same, but different. Not younger, not older, simply changed, in a twinkling and a way he knew but did not understand.

She had walked the same path as him, and he had never known! But he would have eternity to know her now -- and there came a comfort, in that realization that she had waited for him. That she had waited for him, like he had been her own, as her children, and as Arlette, had been.

Beyond her, now, others appeared -- those who had gone before him. And he did not recognize them from their faces, or their forms -- but he knew them, and knew them with a fervour and knowing, as though he had known them here on earth. The tallest one met him with a smile and that same look of knowing Nanook had given him before. That it was not easy, but it was okay. "Dad," he whispered, and he turned to see the others... oh no, oh no. "D'you -- d'you see? Them? Lette?" Oh, he knew she couldn't -- but how he wished Arlette could see!

In the dark and weighty world, he did not look to Arlette again -- he could not turn away from them, saw her, in their faces -- but he managed to move his leg and reach out, to touch her, one last time. To brush the soft fur along the side of her swollen abdomen.

"They're safe," he whispered, with a coherence that comes before life slips completely away, "they're okay. You'll be okay." He did not know if she would be okay, but the One had given them each other, if even for this little while, and for this significant reason: that they might live, and laugh, and dream, and know happiness, and know sadness, and learn something of love and forgiveness together, that even now, she might know what loving someone truly was. He had loved her. He loved her still. And he had been faithful, and faithful to the end. And he hoped -- prayed -- that he would, one day, see her again. But that was not in his hands.

The light in his eyes began to fade. He felt this coming, and he tried to press one last word for her. One last thing, he hoped she would carry. The One had afforded him that grace -- but here, his words began to slur. He tried to say something about the One, that he was safe now, and protected from harm. And he said all these things, in that awkward space between life and death, but his words slurred, and the only coherent one that trembled from his lips was, "Forgive."

Then, his earthly voice broke entirely, and he stilled.

A new voice sounded as Kaito rose from the ground, and left the temporal world behind. A sound like a million waterfalls, cascading one over the other, and springing from the heights; a voice, which made his feet feel like they could jump along the mountain heights and never grow weary, which made a song rise in his chest, and bubble out in joyful declaration.

The One laughed with him -- a far more beautiful sound than he had ever imagined -- and He welcomed him home, to this place of rest and worship before the One he had worshipped and longed for here on earth. And as Kaito caught up to Nanook, she laughed with him -- brother and sister in the faith, though neither had known -- and they bounded together toward his father, his children, and the One he had waited his entire life to see.