My Loyal Apprentice,
If you are reading this missive then know I’ve made it thru the gateway. Safety, as I have come to learn; is directly proportionate to how well one knows his surroundings. While my physical being is healthy and well, my safety is another matter.
I have made it Loyal One. As I write this she lies beside me, asleep. Her lower limbs intertwined with mine. Although the times, the ways and even the peoples are obviously not of our time Loyal One, she is the one I’ve sought! She bears little to no temperament of her ‘old’, ‘our time’ self, yet there can be no doubt it is she. There are little similarities, such as the way she unknowingly curls into my arm and body once deep slumber has taken her. The tiny crook of her tiniest finger is exactly the same as it was before, in our time. These things and so many more like them alert me to the fact that indeed, it is she – it is my one love. The gateway to love works Loyal One.
It works, perhaps too well.
Loyal One forgive me. Being near her as I am often sets my mind to softer delights. Instead I should be recording my journeys for you to add to the research. Allow me to untangle from the warmth of her body and then I shall record on.
…….
Loyal One, now I sit at her desk, candle lit, ready to tell you what do recall. It has been time since I have arrived here. I should have been more fortuitous in my efforts to catalog the gateway and it’s powers. I have not an excuse but dare say once I held onto her, I have been naught to want to let go. I must learn to recall this gateway was not created merely to appease my own desires. But powerful it is to be given another chance with the love you lost to death.
Research, I must focus on sharing this experience with you Loyal One.
The day I stepped into the gateway to love, I recall your last look of concern before my mind began to tilt. Dizzy I was not, nor sickened by it. It was not that kind of tilt. Instead, in my mind; it appeared as though my thoughts, my memories, my knowledge tilted on it’s side. It all twisted into an arrow shaped form of thought. Then all at once it felt as thought that arrow of my mind raced along upon an unforeseen line. Throughout it all, I could feel my mind dragging with it my heart and all that is physically attached to it.
Images from places or times I know nothing of sped by. The journey, if that is what it was; never gave me the sensation of bodily movement. It was only in my mind that a fluidic sensation of ‘travel’ occurred. I could not breathe my Loyal One. As second after second of time raced past, my lungs and then my entire body screamed agonizingly for life’s breath. Ache for breath I did, but I was denied.
Fright only lasted a sheer second as my entire being felt a cataclysmic crescendo building. Then at the moment I knew for certainty I’d failed; just when I resigned myself to the fact that death would be my fate; a violent blackness overtook me. My last bit of energy, the part of ones self one can’t control; caused me to instinctively cry out her name….and cry it out I did. The awakening was violent Loyal One. Violent, painful, terrorizing and my first moment of true, utmost confusion.
What I share with you now Loyal One is not just my recollection. Reviving as I did, in the mask of confusion I wore, I remember wisps of images where as she recalls it as it was for her.
She states that I awoke from my damaged condition screaming her name. Here, as she had been back in our time; her name is Miliya. I do not recall actually voicing her name, but my first memory is of her. She knelt beside my broken self. Her face hung tenderly over my own, so it was her eyes I recall at first Loyal One. It hurt my heart to see the shock, the terror and horror in her eyes and on her face. I recall now that as I tried to speak, not cry; her name, she recoiled – drew back and looked towards others who now began to gather.
When she spoke at last, it was to those standing by and not me that she said her first words; “My God, he knows my name – and I hit him!” She wailed in horror again and then began trailing a finger or two through my hair.
At first I thought my pain as part of the gateway effect. I did not understand why each time she glanced away from my eyes, downward; she cried violently. Over and over she called for someone named nineoneone as she covered her mouth with her free hand and tears spilled from her eyes. Her pain I could not understand it’s source of. What did know was her pain became so vast that despite my broken, damaged state I felt the need to sooth her.
I begged her hand and felt her slender fingers with mine already. She started brushing hair from my forehead and over and over she kept saying, “Oh God, you just appeared from thin air. You just appeared!!”
At first I could not understand. I felt broken. I was gasping for air, yet I could feel her hand, hear her voice, smell her scent. Either I’d died or the Gateway had worked Loyal One. At that precise moment, I knew not. All I knew was pain; torturous and growing while my Miliya was on her knees at my side.
She questioned me. Her words coming in the style of an incomprehensible plea; “Who are you? How did you just appear? Can I call your family? Do you have a cell phone with you?”
I did not understand. Miliya knew only she were any family I’d ever had, yet this Miliya knew not. I could not understand this ‘cell phone’. As pain gathered in insurmountable waves, the blackness grew. I knew nothing more then the blackness and agony wanted to tear me from my love – and fought it. I fought as hard as my waning strength allowed Loyal One, but I could not fend it off.
My last words, perhaps my first words as well were to the love I faced death for; to her, “Do not leave me my wife.” Then my pain, my love, my life force all faded black.
She stirs in the other room. For now I must cease this missive Loyal One. I shall write again of the second awakening I endured. Stay sharp, stay strong, and allow no one through the Gateway until I speak further of it’s effects. Be ye careful nothing ventures through it and comes your way Loyal One.
Record my words my Loyal One – for they may be all I’ll be known for now.
-Braeden
