The first time I saw her she was dancing, whirling around and around a giant bright bonfire in the middle of our village. She was not one of us; She belonged to a different world entirely. Twilight had passed and the night had settled heavily upon us. I was wide awake, yet not. My blood was thinned by the Saturnine revolt. I lived for the moment like a mindless beast, crashing through the scene like it was my dream.
My eyes fell upon her and it felt as though she were from my dream as well. Not this one though. From a night too far gone to truly remember. A promise from the darkness, a face in forgotten mist, a feeling that persevered even when the memory faded away. Seeing her dancing, dancing round that flame, rekindled that feeling within me. Fire of my own, warming my soul. I was tethered to her. So when she finally left, to seek respite or rest her weary limbs, I followed.
She wore a white summer dress that hung just right on her body. Though barefoot, she navigated her way with surety, aided by the sad summer moon that drifted listlessly above. This was a pale moon, a moon of loss, and I didn't realize how fitting that was until she finally turned and I saw her face. Away from the festivity, away from the Saturnine stupor, grief had come to the surface. It was sobering and humbling. Here was Ariadne, I realized, here she was within her own labyrinth. From that close I could see the radiance of her white skin and I knew that she was of the Tuatha De Danann. I grew fearful. If she had been bean sidhe or bean nighe then my chase would have brought me quickly to my doom. She was neither, though I could not know it then. Later I would realize that she was leannan sidhe, the faerie lover, and in that I had found for myself a different kind of doom. A slower kind.
She paid me no mind. I don't know if she even saw me. She was a ghost in a world without belief. Pale and impossibly fair, she possessed an unnatural grace. Even drowning in her sorrow, even then. Even trapped in the hopeless darkness of tunnel and corridor she had an inestimable beauty. Kneeling on the barren earth, she tilted her head to the sky, allowing the moon's fey rays to caress her comely face. For miles around the earth was ruined. This was a wasteland. For years nothing had grown up from the acrid soil. We from the village considered it desecrated land. We let it be.
A sharp movement jarred my attention back to her. I watched in confusion for several moments, then with horror as lines of liquid crimson wove down her arms. It beaded up at her elbows to drip softly into the thirsty earth. I watched her seraphic vitality turn dry, dusty soil into mud. The moon reached it's zenith and began to fall back towards the unreachable horizon. I watched her slip away. Slowly. I didn't understand yet, I couldn't understand.
Lady in white she came, but wearing white no longer, her evening gown had been darkened by blood and dirt and the immutable stamp of death. Tyrian purple she then wore. Tyrian purple is the color of the Midnight Bloom. I watched her and as I did, I saw the earth below her, watered by the blood of her life, become no longer broken, no longer useless. I watched her and realized that my heart, too, had been changed by it.
A final drop fell. A sluggish ripple cascaded away from it. She straightened. She stood. I saw then that she was no longer faerie. No longer a ghost, bound to the world beyond our world, but standing in the desert of the real. She had passed over. I watched her walk away. I watched her, and as I did, I realized that I loved her. The charm of the leannan sidhe had caught me up in it's shackles. I wanted very much to follow her once more, to carry her even. But I knew that that was not why she had come. I understood that she had her own will to serve. So I let her go.
I walked instead to the edge of the crimson pool and watched what remained of her sink into the below. I could feel her moving beneath my feet, spreading out across the land to reawaken what had for so long belonged to death. I vowed to stay. I vowed to tend that land, blessed by the kiss of death which truly is the kiss of life.
