Prologue - CULLEN STORY PART 1

He woke to the sound of breaking glass; & his face was wet with tears.

It was raining. The steady fall of water filled a little mountain stream to its highest level. Its waterfall swelled with movement and wild energy, descending to a small round pool that looked like milk under the full light of the moon.
As the water continued its faithful course and crashed happily against the stones, a memory filled with powerful emotions that had been sadly left slowly developed into something different. Something new.
The trees stopped their chemical conversations about weather patterns, passing molds and insects. The stones stirred from their slow dreaming.
The action was remembered by the surrounding trees, the scattered boulders, the curling green ferns and the rushing water – a memory that hovered between more than its original world like a traveling star in the morning dew. It was a dream that waited on the edge of becoming.

Following the silent ancient commands of nature, two young people met. He soon found himself consumed by thoughts of her. The first effect of such a strong compulsion made him more attractive to other women, but he could only speak of her and his praise made all the others feel like easily discarded common clay.
She playfully resisted his advances in the beginnings, until he transformed himself into a great red bull and then a golden yellow boar as he slept at her feet. She finally relented to his tenacity.
He wanted to embrace her sacred fire, her direct connection to life, and he promised to never forget her mysteries.
To him, she had the scent of the moon, flashing fireflies above a river’s edge, the steaming breath from the stag in winter. She was an immense western sky full with rain clouds, and brave poetry.
She was all the timeless moments between notes and the moaning winds that rested beneath cowslips and owl’s cries. She seemed to be in perpetual motion even when standing still. She gave him a wonderful sense of not being alone, like the homeless spontaneously invited inside for Christmas dinner.
Sometimes she whispered in his ear about fate, souls that searched for each other always and intelligent design, proposing that God could have created us to feel emotions so that he could experience those feelings through us.
He responded softly, telling her that she was a measure of Heaven’s cloth, embroidered with liquid amethyst and peacock feathers. He told her gently that he believed that life had no guardians and inflicted pain without care, compelling us to pursue any form of happiness we can find.

She began to love him, slowly learning that he lived with constant passion. He was untamed, unpredictable and even dangerous. Like an unconquered, virgin land powerful and fierce. He ate meals of bloody meat, steel and conflict quickly, like a starving wolf and fought for many causes like a man possessed.
Sometimes their passion became a lustful combat but whomever the victor, the two lovers mutually celebrated their triumphs naked, wrapped in soaked sheets and each other’s arms.
She improved him, patiently searching for his many fractures and he no longer desired a man’s other quests for wealth or fame, but some days – she could only watch him as he was stilled by a world that spun past him in madness.
He suffered from constant internal battles, unable to remain wholly tender or finally succumb to his darker drives. Some days he was all cheer, bringing his wit and heart, all his agility, convictions and wisdom to the surface. She could warm her spirit before him on those days, like a frozen traveler by a welcoming fire.
Other days he was a lonely wolf wandering, his brave dreams disintegrating into a surety that he was truly doomed to enjoy only the briefest moments of love’s illumination. Even then, when he was at his most melancholy, her grace thought he made his struggle seem too beautiful and she stayed by his side.

They were young and it meant nothing to feel free instead of cautious, passionate instead of responsible and it was easy to throw away their lives almost daily. Eventually they discovered that sacrifices made for deeper love led to deeper grief.
Their first gift had been to make their mutual loneliness vanish. Their last offering returned it, swollen and bloated. He was finally possessed with only doom and prophesies. She was finally filled with so much secret pain that she was convinced it would swiftly kill her.

Where friendship, loyalty, laughter and a future of undying love once had been, there was only a grief that was of equal intensity. This could not be shared and they grew distant, feverishly gripping at the tearing threads of sanity. They feared the howling emptiness that seemed to yawn hungrily beneath them, a void of madness and self-destruction, hoping to forget even their best memories.
Now, all the days that would never be, were there before them. All they had left was an aborted future that he sent crashing into the falling water and tumbled rocks of a tiny, unknown and unremarkable waterfall.