Chapter 2 : Like a child again

I had arranged to meet with a dear friend of mine, who I had not seen for quite some months now, so we could go for a drink and maybe catch up on what had been going on with both our lives, when I started to reminisce on times long gone by.


Once, I fell in love with a girl that had the beauty of summer in her, and held in her eyes the richest sunset ever I had seen, and her name is now lost to me; lost in the mists of time.
I can barely recall today how good it must have felt to touch her, to kiss her.
Only the tiniest ghost of what I felt for her, that boundless, unfettered love that could only have been sired by Summer itself remains.

But i remember how she made me feel...
Oh, and how I miss feeling so small and vulnerable, like a child in your arms...
It was good. So, so good.
But as summer ends, so too does the love of summer...


Summer, that faraway and distant summer of which i am so proud.
And pride, so they say, comes before a fall.
And after Summer, comes Autumn.
And with Autumn, Fall.

I once loved a girl as melancholic as Autumn.
And you, little girl, were all i ever wanted, and all i ever knew i wanted for myself.
Worst of all, you were all i always, always knew i could never have.
You made me feel so... so extraordinary... so awake to life... so alive!
Not just the merest traces of those feelings linger; but memories, memories that are both bigger than space, and longer than time.


"I will be yours forever", you said to me, in another life. "But if you want me, you'll have to run after me."
"Madness", I answered.
"Don't you know who I am? I run after none. Only the weak run, and someone of my grandeur proudly blazes the trail that he for himself makes. I do not run.", I answered, jokingly.
And you ran away from me, my love; you ran far behind the mountains, and beyond the shores of night.


Thousands of years ago, it seems, you told me that everything has a price; every action we make has a repercussion or consequence.
"I am the Sun, the Sun that shines and gives you life. I am Life, the life that every single day enfolds you when night falls. Everything has a price."
You would say things like that, and I'd find myself saying words that I could have never said to anyone else.

I'd say that I would love you forever; though I knew that one day one of us would falter.
And I would love you like none other; though I knew that every day I spent with you killed me softly, and slowly.
And I knew that if I had to, I would gladly die an infinite number of small deaths just to be part of you.

One last time, you said the killing words, "Everything has a price."

And I fell.
I fell like the Morningstar, never to have another ascension.


" You make me happy, and i hope you feel the same
You make me feel just like a child, a child again!"

The Mission, Like a child again