The man stood at the edge of the spreading water. His sword dragged on the sand, and he felt a great regret.

Will she ever even know I am here? he wondered.

Will I ever see her again?

What will it matter to the press of time?

And he turned and walked away into the press of the swirling mist. The sword disappeared, as well, for it was barely real enough to be even an illusion. He carried no sword anymore. That was just his past clinging to the new life inside of him, the new name and purpose.

I am not that man anymore, he thought.

Perhaps I can change what comes next.

He had wandered between the border lands of what he knew and what would come for so long that he knew not where he walked anymore, if it was a far green land or somewhere he had been before.

He was still trying to understand why he was alive, and what his purpose was. These questions carried more meaning for him, he remembered, because life and death had known him very well.

He tried to ignore the thoughts in his head, sometimes, wondering if other people knew what ran through his mind.

Of course not.

But he wasn’t sure.

Sometimes, when the seagulls whirled through the air and the waters were dark and he walked onwards, onwards as he always had, he simply let the thoughts stay.

I…

I killed my father.

Rain, colorless tears, fell, yet he did not weep. Something inside of him was still wondering.

What, now, is my life? What is its worth and purpose?

And so the dreaming years began. He wandered through the mist and the green hills, his mind numb, at times, or painfully aware, his hands feeling before him, his eyes staring behind as if his past was there.

Somehow, he lived. He clung to life, and he would notice that he somehow found food, and that in his sleeplike movements he found shelter. Perhaps he was meant to stay alive.

But the water and the wind were the same…they did not change. He remembered: he did not know what was, or what would be. Perhaps he was only alive because he was. He was no longer sure of meaning in his life, and barely thought on it…and he drifted through years, and names, and thoughts.

But then shreds of his humanity began to pull themselves towards a misty understanding, and hazily, he understood, and the drifting years were over.

He stood once more on the shore, watching the dawn plate the waters like golden filaments of fire.

He closed his eyes, felt the sway of the life and the water, and the water collecting under his eyelids and then receding. He breathed, deep and long, as if it could sustain the earth, by breathing.

He pulled his fingers through the water, and sighed a long, broken sigh that seemed to tie him to the ends of the earth, from the hidden wellsprings inside of him.

And he turned away, and walked, his shadow flickering under the dappled pools of sunlight, illuminated shafts that left him briefly in blinding contrast, plated with golden light…and then it receded, and the only thing to be found on that shore was the transient mist, even now stealing across his shallow footprints, so no trace of him remained.