Gilbert

Half-Blood

The darkness of the shed abruptly reached the young man's eyes. It was blinding, the way the tinge of the dark was starting to intermix with the light of the day, filling the shed with contrasting colors of black and blighted white. Though his eyes were getting used to it for the past three months, he was not still not used with the emptiness it brings. The shed was certainly small, and yet with him alone, it felt disturbingly large. Has he grown too used with having Arriana by his side, he thought for himself, even though he lived long enough to know what real emptiness is?

The cold wooden floor had now become warm with the morning sun. Everywhere, he could hear countless chatter from the noise of the town, just below this leveled ground, the chirping of the birds which seem to be unaffected by the passing of the recent war. It would feel as if the world around him had presumed peace, and had decided to leave the past, his long fleeting daydream he had woken himself from, buried together with the corpses of his kind.

Just the words of the human named Van came through him like wind whispering a harsh truth. Van was the conduit of her demise, as well as the demise of his entire race. And the child remembered Van spoke again, this time, about his approach to this new world he does not recognize anymore.

What is there left for him, he wondered? Peace was never a kind forbearing he believed, for it assumes the allure of a condescending calmness before an imminent storm. But he remembered her, as she comes around the corner of the castle and into the large tree where he saddled himself up on one of its branches. There she would sit down and hum, and wait for a long time until he decides to come down. "It's a small piece of peace," she would say, "though many had been sacrificed for it."

So value every moment of it for we know not the day it becomes the only thing we cannot afford.

He let his eyes wandered around and caught a glimpse of his hand. Struck by the light of the morning, it showed the paleness of his skin, one from which astoundingly labelled him as his father's kind, and contrasting so since he never felt anything painful with the sun's rays, only the warmth of it, as well as the fact that he was not fully what he was supposed to be. It seems as though it was a burden too heavy to carry, yet it was a crown he can never remove, and a truth he will never let go.

But was Van's words too harsh, he wondered, when he never actually did care about those pale things that stare at him with eyes so cold like the waters of a freezing lake?

Remember, a meek, undecipherable voice came to him, falling into the same tone like the suspicious mumblings of those who despise him.

Remember the story of the half-blood, drowning in the rain since two days past. Alone, he is and as still he stands, with the cold, bitter winds to whisper his act.

The words jarred his mind in an instant, memories resurfacing in a manner that all his heightened emotions are welling with spite and pain. He could stop neither the onset nor the disgust settling inside him, erasing his reason and his logic. It was disturbingly distasteful, the feeling of wanting to move for the sake of these swelling emotions. As if like tears, it wanted to be shed, and like rage, it wanted to destroy. His body seems to be like a tempest, but he suppressed it, although, at the back of his throbbing mind, he silently cursed the slumber his father had forced him into yet again.

Yesterday was nostalgia, and today is loathe.

The freezing lake in his father's estate was a large mass of water that stretches from the corners of Gilbert's eyes. Even with the darkness enveloping the night, he was able to see it clearly: the cold air touched the frozen water and flowed through the expanse as if it was a man unable to let go of its lover before his timely demise. Though the air lingered, the water was solid as it was still. And because it was still, it reflected the color of the darkness and the moonlight that seems to disappear in the hovering clouds.