Some men want to watch the world burn.

I am not like some men - I would rather see the sky on fire.

Quiet flame, descending on the treetops,

Gold spreading across them as a frost would,

Leaving embers that glow softly through the night.

What secrets do you hold? What have you seen? What do you know?

Then, as you fall, they emerge.

Dancing yet motionless, among the trees in the very forests you set over,

Even in my own home.

For as we sleep, we know not what waits for us,

What watches us.

But I know she watches me.

I met her, once. Her name is Ardre.

When I woke at midnight, she was at my desk, watching. Waiting. Guarding me from her wilder kin, silently dancing the night away outside my window. Anyone else would have been afraid. I, for some reason, was not.

And what we talked about was my own death. Would I rather go down for a friend, or lay alone in my own blood? Would I rather they were sad I was gone? Or happy because I was alive?

No. I'd rather die surrounded by my friends. I'd rather each of them felt how they felt, and not all one uniform emotion.

And then, three questions that terrified me.

Who would forget first? Who would forget last? And which is worse?

I do not know. But what scares me is, I never will.

I fear being forgotten. I fear the unknown.

But I write, so I am remembered. And once I encounter the unknown, it will not be unknown anymore.

What do you fear?

-A