This time the punishment was light. I have memories from this week I wasn’t, as paradoxical as it may seem. I didn’t exist, yet there is this idea, this possible dream where I, inside the executioner, witnessed how he placed Lady Death upon the chopping block.

The skull smiled a congruent oxymoron. As the man held his heavy axe aloft, Death recited the curse. When the axe came down, she laughed, and laughed, and laughed. The severed skull, with its perfectly cut in half vertebrae, mocked the executioner. “You cannot abolish death.” Those, and those alone, were her words. Once and again, as the color got drained from the world, as the image escaped from me, as if I were seeing it through a keyhole from which drifted away further with each second.

But, it doesn’t matter, for this fictional Lady Death is right. Ruminating on it is senseless.

As senseless as it would have been when Cirruin dreamed me again onto the world after a long absence. I came out of the cave confused, feeling a pain that dreams are rarely used to. Leaning against a tree, I stared at the blue skies. As the clouds of sugar on it drifted and swirled, I took a breath and it burnt so good. I was. Once again I was.

I wanted to run back into the cave and embrace Cirruin. The made thanking the maker. But it was not my prerogative to do that. Judging by the plants outside the cave, the color of their leaves and if they were flowering or not, it was still autumn. Season hadn’t changed, despite my absence feeling so eternal.

I parted for Zenvo without visiting Ludlun, because Ludlun would always will be there for me. Life too short, life too long. I had problem deciding which of the ideas caused me to feel worse. How unbecoming it was of my nature, that I wanted to exist long enough. I wanted to continue being Dariel’s and Orphela’s esteemed friend. Yet, what would I do if life was too long to befriend the ravens?

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I had to convince myself such worries were nonsense, that, if I could stop existing tomorrow, there was no point in dwelling on it. Yet there was one in visiting my friends so it took one, two, seven, fifteen steps, and I was in Zenvo, directly outside Dariel’s workshop.

The door was closed, but not locked. I knew how to open it, a simple turn of the wrist. Yet there was something weird on the door, a slight wear of the varnish that I found premature.

“Come in, we are open to business!” an unfamiliar voice beckoned from inside.

Despite the uncertainty of what I would find at the other side, I blinked, and found myself in the middle of the workshop.

A scream greeted me. Then, a hammer passed right by my head, almost killing me.

“Get out! Get out you thing!” Babbled a youngster. Judging by his appearance, I assumed he was just exiting adolescence.

Dariel came into the room to see me dodging clumsy saw swings while I tried to explain the situation to the boy. He went silent, mouth agape. His beard had grown several palms since the last time I had seen him.

“Quit your yapping, Selus, this is a friend!” he said, smiling, after a few seconds of stillness.

“He appeared out of thin air! Poof! Just like that!” he said, trembling, maybe struggling for the self-restraint to stop attacking me.

“This… is Terus,” it seemed that he didn’t believe his own words.

“So, he is a ghost…” the boy smiled briefly, and then cowered against the door, trying to dissimulate that his hand was searching for the knob.

“No, he isn’t, it’s… complex. Take your leave today and tomorrow, I will manage.” then my friend dismissed his helper with a contempt-filled gesture. The boy didn’t waste a moment before making his deft escape.

Then he approached and shook me by the shoulders. “High time you show your face here!”

“I am sorry for my non-existence those last weeks.”

His eyes opened wide, and then took the aspect of understanding. “Weeks, old friend?”

“It’s still autumn. Was it a month?”

“A bit longer, Terus. I have something to show you, in the outskirts of the city, a few minutes walking clockwise from the south gate. Let’s drink some mates first, yes? and tell me what you have been doing.”

“Nothing. So, has Orphela given birth already?”

“Yes, a while ago. Let’s sit and drink, then you can ask me a few more questions before we part.”