Like a river of ice, I move slowly, my journey imperceptible to all but the rare and exquisite few. And in the way that water remembers, in the frozen heart beating inside of me, I carry memories of all of those I have touched. For my coldness though, and for the frost that had pervaded me, only one had come close to touching me so as to leave a mark.
The lost princess had been so desperate with her affections that it instilled melancholy in me whenever I deigned to think of her.
The golden stallion, so like the sun itself in the way its light scorched one’s skin when basking too long in his presence. He had proven to be a disappointment, so driven by his anger and emotion that he was incapable of seeing sense. Let him fester in his squalid swamp, and let it remain as empty of worth as its puppet master. I had already given him a pound of flesh, so to speak, and I had become wise to the truth, that nothing he could offer me would be worth the cost I’d have to pay.
From these, I had moved on without regret, and I felt no sense of loss in their absence. There had come another, however, a bright and shining soul, and though I did not resent her leaving, life after her had been noticeably colder. But for that brief time we’d had, I would whether a cold far more intense than this. An eclipse is what we had been, a phenomenon that occurred rarely in nature, a dance of heavenly bodies coming together in the cosmos. A far more real sun, and me – the moon, ever orbiting, never showing the whole of myself to anyone.
Why did I return to this place, I wondered, as I stood alone in the empty Meadow by awash with lunar illumination. But in my glacial heart, I already knew the answer. It was in the hopes I’d catch a glimpse of the child as she roamed, without fear. I had only caught traces of her, but the truth was they had been mesmerising to me, and I would gladly wait hours for the chance for a flicker of gold in the corner of my eye, or a snatch of her scent on the mild evening breeze that rose and fell as it willed. And finally, my patience paid off, though I could not say how many days I had waited.
Time does not matter, not to rivers of ice.
“I believe I’ve been waiting for you, Küçük Yıldız,” I murmur as I draw closer to her, and though I yearn to commit the youthfulness of her form and the lustre of her eyes to memory (as something to cherish forever), I manage to steer my gaze, purposefully, out across the grassy plain in which we find ourselves. Everything else felt distant to me in this moment, as though we were the only two souls adrift in an endless sea. It seemed a miracle that we would meet, though, not so to me – if anything, this felt fated.
The whispering grasses were bathed in the silver light of the moon, just like I was, and the child beside me. There was a radiance to the both of us, one that would be eternally beautiful. There, towards the Falls, trees rose up – reaching always towards the sky, and it was to these that I gently directed the golden filly’s attention. “As the trees weather the depths of winter for the promise of spring, in this way - even unknowingly - I’ve long looked to your coming.”
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