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SPRING. 900S A.D. MIDNIGHT.
The world was quiet.
When man had fallen into slumber, Mother Nature had started to sing her night song. The soft sound of crickets in the wood, singing their song and announcing their presence; the tentative steps of the doe and her foal making their trek toward the falls; the distant howl of a wild dog alerting his pack to its prey. All of these sounds and natures delights were lost upon the man in the only hut alight on this night.
The world had yet to cease and the days had yet to stop in light of his grief. Elijah, son of Mikael, sat alone in front of the hearth inside his modest one-room hut. He stared into the flames that crackled and cast light upon his frame. One arm wrapped around a bent knee, he was a man crippled by his silent grief. A lost man who had lost everything, he was at a loss on how to conduct himself. His father’s words rang in his ear that emotion was a weakness, a vulnerability that would be exploited by one's enemy.
His grief had manifested itself turning a once happy man into the ghost of himself; the face he had once worn was now that a stoic man, speaking little and going along his life.
A gust of wind caused the fire to crackle as if protesting the interruption as well as caused a rocking chair to move; this tore Elijah’s attention from the fire to take in his modest dwelling. The one small room had been enough for a small family and was filled to brimming with things one would need in the raising of a child. It was as if he was finally seeing them for the first time and a sharp pain, as real and tangible as that of a dagger, penetrated his chest. He reached up and pressed his hand against his heart as if that would still the ache.
Staring at the cradle that his brothers had helped him create for the child lost, he let out a staggered huff of air. The pain was immense, the worst he could ever remember. The time Niklaus had accidentally shot him with a bow did not compare to the despair that Elijah now wore as a tunic. His days were dark and his nights were darker; he went through the motions, but as if a man walking through water.
He dragged his eyes away from the cradle and back to the flame, settling there as he willed his aching heart to still. He needed to cleanse this haunted dwelling; he needed to be free of this pain. Rising to his feet, Elijah stared at the fire once more. He knew what had to be done – and he could not wait for it a minute longer. Willing his feet to move, he stepped toward the cradle first; standing in front of it for a moment.
Calloused fingers slid across the intricate detail that had been carved there by his brothers, feeling his chest tighten once more, as he had imagined his daughter laying in it. Another staggered breath before Elijah grabbed the handle and began dragging it outside. Piece by piece, Elijah’s dwelling emptied of the things that reminded him of a life he was meant to have and lost in an instant.
A pile of things stood in the middle of the homestead: clothes and fabrics made by the many women of the village, toys, and offerings created by his siblings, furniture that was designed primarily for the comfort of his wife and that of her heavily pregnant belly. Anything that would remind him of that life now laid in this pile of things that he could not bear to look at again.
Returning inside, Elijah lit a torch and moved back outside to the pile that now stood before him. Without a seconds thought, he tossed the lit torch into the pile, listening as the fire crackled and licked at the wood; soon the fire had taken nearly every single thing that he had offered it – and as he had done inside the hut, he stared into the flames, as if looking for answers for the heaviness in his chest.
His face remained stoic while his chest felt tight and he couldn’t breathe; he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to breathe again. As he willed his face to remain expressionless, his heart did not get the message, and tears rolled down his face while he stared into the fire. Whether anyone had seen him do this or not was no matter to him.
As the fire simmered and finally died, Elijah turned from the ashes and moved back into his home, returning to his perch in front of his hearth; his home now as empty as he felt.