TWR: THE REQUIEM

“Like the terrified inhale of a sharp gasp,
I saw her life being extinguished and fade
as in the exhaustion of sorrow.

In the inhale of that crumbling moment
my life’s meaning faded away
as sorrow filled my heart with loneliness.

Cradled in my arms, she died so pale
a lifeless shell, void of expression;
yet forever, my only, one true love…”

The Nephilim Scrolls I:1-9

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   "Father I realize it's only been three days, but you still need to eat." The body of her dead mother lay quiet, and bound in a red shroud, with her head in his lap. The slender figure of a man, weary from grief and fatigue, sat with his slumped back against the darkened wall of the stone hune cave.  His graying long hair fell over his limp shoulders and down his tuniced back. With only the slightest hint of pointed ears peeking out, his high arched brows accented a youthful beleaguered face. Yet, only recently had his adult daughter begun to notice his age.

   IL`brekah crossed in front of her father to sit beside him.   She was a beautiful girl in her late twenties.  With a slim build, striking features and large, round brown eyes that were adjusting to their newly darkened surroundings within the burial chamber.  The musky smell of dust permeated the air causing her nose to twitch.
  She tried to find some way of reaching beyond his three days of grief-stricken silence, "Tell me about how you and mother met."  Her voice was soft, but cracked as her full naturally-smiling lips struggled to do so.  It is strange watching him caress mother's covered face like that, she thought to herself, but did not say it aloud. Her high cheek bones nearly teared over as she tried not to cry.  Looking at his pale complexion in the dark cave gave her an uneasy feeling in her stomach.  It was like staring at a deathly white-powered statue she knew was alive.  He had once said that he had devoted his entire existence to her mother.  He looked small, like a wasted shell of his former self -- thin beyond belief.
    "Where did you come from?" Her quaking voice asked, "You've always been quiet about yourself -- why is that, father?"  As a way of not letting her mother go, she now found herself strangely drawn to know more about the distant figure she sat beside.  She had always felt more like a sister than a daughter to her mother, and this loss was devastating.  Her father had left home when she was very young and had only recently just returned, a little too late, she thought.  Now that her mother was dead, IL`brekah found herself alone, gently consoling the cold silhouette of a person she hardly knew.  Lightly rubbing his back, she was startled by his movement.  As he turned to look into her eyes, she noticed they were red and blood shot, like lifeless things unable to cry any more which made her own tear up.
   "Where shall I begin?" His dry, whispering words sounded creepy.  They were odd, even to himself; scarcely his own as his voice broke again, "For such things have many beginnings and each, older than the last..." His cracking dry lips trembled.  As his voice trailed off it seemed that his memories were being absorbed into the shadows of the cave about them. The air was still.  His, now tearing, large slanted-eyes had taken on that uncomfortable, silent stare again; and for the first time a slight grin dared to make an appearance.
   Other than the dusty morning light, beaming in from the opened doorway on his right side, no other light bathed that dark, dank room. As he began to speak again, his daughter listened intently to the song-like rise and fall of her father’s voice chanting.  IL`brekah's thoughts and imagination became immersed in her father's story.  It was as if she had fallen into a trance.  Her expressionless face watched the suspended dust particles drift within the flooding beam of light.

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