Caught In The Dark -

The moonlight glowed on the paleness of his skin. He moved his fingers in the cooling light, for a moment watching with wonder not unlike a child’s. White and flawless, he shone, pure seeming under Luna’s indifferent visage.1

An eastern breeze flowed easy through his flaming hair; his distant eyes followed the shadows of this world to move along the graves.2

This was his place. This was his home, the only one he ever remembered. Not the graveyard, not these dead that stirred with his presence. It was the darkness that hovered here. This place between, this darkness without intention or thought even for all it was aware. 3

His existence had always been stridden aside those that haunted this remote darkness, they considered him with respect, fear, and reverence. Gliding past him, unseen by all but his eyes. They watched him, careful in their gazes. They whispered to him, their voices as voiceless echoes reverberating in the silence found inside him. This silence that filled the ever-empty holes within, this silence that estranged him from the living world.4

He listened; he watched, eyes as far away as the things they beheld. This world, his world, and he let his consciousness sink into the void of it.5

He fell into the darkness with effortlessness uncanny, as if he had never been away. He dissolved to it as if he would never leave.
And found himself neither warmed, nor chilled. Not unwelcome by the darkness, nor embraced. A genderless, indifferent wellspring he had always seen it to be, in lives and existences long past, to the present day. Always the same.6

A signal flowed from him, changing the night’s ambiance where it touched. Of the horrors in the night, the weakest fled, and even things of nightmares receded to give way to him. His presence demanded nothing less.7

The deceased conversely gathered to him, safe and clutching to his ominous might. He would not harm them. The dead were his charges, passed to him by the keeper before him. His predecessor who still watched after him, still guided him. Blood Grandfather, to blood grandson. This gaurdian he was at lack of tonight. For all his talent and experience, there was no need.8

Far-away eyes moved to the black sky as the dead settled around him. The stars had winked out in his mind; he couldn’t see them as he looked up. There was just empty endlessness and the voices of dead who huddled close to him like lost children.9

In this darkness, memory began to plague him... limbs moved on his back that were not there. His eyes turned black and empty, reflecting the nothingness inside...10

‘Careful…’ A familar voice murmured in his mind.
The moon and the thousands of winking stars suddenly became apparent, the night had form and feel again. He remembered he was alive.11

Looking at his hands, he moved his fingers in the cooling moonlight. For a moment he watched with wonder not unlike a child’s.12

And a feather fell beside him. Rich brown and laced with gold, it floated down in the wind to lay upon his cracked and tattered boot. The breeze made it seem alive, rubbing it's feathery body against the aged leather.
He bent to touch it, and as his fingertip brushed it's edge he smiled. A quiet, reserved smile that gave light to his eyes.
And those of darkness.. shivered...