Flowers
The old General trudges up the ramp, fingertips tracing ethereal patterns into the handrailing. His eyes, cast into shadow by locks of silver hair, are bound and chained by dark bags that dip into his beard. His back is bowed; Galad's sword is but an afterthought at his hip, its scabbard clapping rhythmically against a white-steel legplate.
He'd gone to visit her, again. Pleas and promises cast, forgotten, to the wind; halfhearted oaths discarded like an apple whose flesh has shriveled and browned by exposure to open air. He'd laid flowers atop her earthy bed and fallen to his knees, ribbons of Light hanging like tightly drawn curtains around his hulking frame, head hung like a child caught with fists full of stolen candies.
He aged a hundred years every time, praying for the chance to see her face. Loathing for his own weakness welled in his eyes, left his throat raw.
The flower is the sole torch among the mildewed walls, dust and cobwebs of his thoughts. He stumbles towards it like a dying man to water, supplicating hands willing him forward; gently, he scoops it up and cradles it to his chest.
The torch falls from the wall, burns the room to ash. In the distance, golden rays crest a cloudless horizon. "Alectrael," he murmurs, and he is Drimmari once more. Dawn has arrived.
((characters mentioned: @zanrethan-sunforge‘s Alectrael))