As Knight Falls

The campaign … was over - he, the last left alive on the field of battle, and barely, at that … his men had fought valiantly - the odds were never theirs, yet he was content in their efforts, and more than proud … the sky, Payne's Gray and brooding - the drab-but-stark background for giant flecks of snow that swung fro-and-to as they drifted - as if sewing the aching February sky to the crumbling castle bulwarks that rose angrily from the white-dusted hills below ... or perhaps, like himself, just indecisive - weary of wind and waft and the willowy billows that birthed them, as weary as he was of war - war and weariness, itself ... its ire filled his marrow with a longing for love and life ... and COLOR ... these wretched, barren highlands were ashen and lifeless now, dull and splotchy like his rusted armor - his once treasured fortress, all but ruins and rubble and regret - the only blush that met his gaze was the crimson trickle of his own blood as it drizzled from his beard to paint the snow - perfect, white snow ... faultless ... pure ... and yet ... in less than three full faces of the moon, these slopes would be bursting with heather and the hues of burgeoning blooms - pregnant with hope and heavy with springtide wonder ... he would never see it now, his mortality written red in the snow, but he could FEEL its approach! he closed his eyes tightly, sucked the keen winter wind deep into his being - frozen flakes tickling his nostrils and throat and lungs ... he breathed in again - each cold crystal inhaled, a tiny blessing - a brisk reminder of special things, moments of joy and pain, marvelous things he had done and seen and felt, tastes and aromas and aches ... and lovers ... oh, most especially those! precious, warm, bitter passions and the beautied beings that had conveyed them - the souls he had swum up and lost all his senses in, and the one - the ONLY one - who had captured his much-too-jaded heart ... he took one last, rooted breath, counting the cold flakes as they melted inside him - remembering each as a kiss SHE had given him on special occasions, and as darkness fell about him AND on ... he opened his dimming eyes - watched his final exhalation turn to frozen mist in the Scottish gloaming … and smiled.