Fading Into Grey

Prologue

I can see us now, standing in the fading twilight in the shadow of the Old Tree. We all laugh and share in our stories of old and perhaps happier times in the warm evening. But none of us can deny our renewed feeling of content.

The roar of a distant forest lion startles a young girl who had been playing in the long brown grass. She runs back to the group, her tail and nostrils all aquiver, until she is swept up by strong arms and given a reassuring hug by a doting family man. Seeing this, another one turns to his mate and nuzzles her hair, brushing her tanned cheek with his fingers. She smiles at him and swats his hip, causing them both to run into the field again, laughing and carrying on like they had taken twenty years off, the man easily outstripping the woman in speed. He catches up to her, and pulls her back to him, pressing an unrestrained kiss to her lips, the two of them momentarily forgetting the space they are in.

I watch them but once their lips touch I turn away. I only have eyes for her, the one alone in the group. She sits serenely, feeling the wind blowing her ears, her grey tail wrapped around her legs, her long silver hair flying, watching her young daughter being tickled until she laughs. An odd sort of smile appears on her features as she watches, as the wonderment of whether I would have done that instead comes to her. Slowly, she rises to her feet, brushing down her fur leggings, and walks through the field. She comes to the Old Tree; our tree. Her scarred fingers brush over the deadened bark and she wends her way around the trunk, her movements growing more desperate as she begins to reach the other side without finding it. But then she does, and she gives a sigh of relief. There, scratched into the wood, permanent forever, even if I couldn't be.

A lump rises in my throat as she turns and stares back to where she had come from, directly at me. She cannot see me. But she knows I'm there, watching them all. As I promised, I am the rain that falls from the clouds; I am the snow that coats her hair; I am the wind rushing through the forest; I am in the laugh of her little girl.

One of them suggests they head back, and I watch as they begin to leave me. The little girl, with a fire in her eyes, runs to her mother and takes her hand, ready to walk back to the village. The place I used to live, with the people I shared my life with. An odd thing happens when you die - time becomes irrelevant. There is no longer a boundary between ground and sky. No beginning and no end. There is an infinity amount of years spent before birth, a short time whilst you live, and then an infinity amount after death. If I could have, would I have warned them of what was to happen before they reached this time? Would I warn them of the sorrow, the joy, the love, the danger that was to come?

I have all the time in the world to consider it, and I know my answer: No. Why would I give them a fear and a regret that would keep them from enjoying a journey that will be over too soon?