Orange. The Mindcrafter.

-- Who's next? Orange, with the harp?

-- Him. He gives me creeps, yuck.

-- Yuck? And what if Frey overhears what you say about his people?

-- Can't stand him, either. Barf.

Stop here a while, stranger. Please. I see you went a long way, even longer journey waits forward. Why not to warm yourself near this small and cosy fireplace of mine? There's not much I have in this world, but the fire I can share. Come down. There's plenty for both of us.

There's not much I have in this world, not much what I can share. This fire...and maybe the song. Do you want me to sing for you, stranger?

Don't be afraid, please. I'm just a travelling bard -- alone, harmless. What harm can the music do?

You are still alert and cautious. I give you a fright. No, please don't deny it. I can see. There's something aversive, disturbing about me, am I right? The eyes, especially. Strange colour, isn't it, that sunset orange. No, you are right. They are quaint indeed, even the mirror tells me that. I haven't asked them to be like that, though. Like I haven't asked for many things that I was granted. My entire life, for starters.

Yes, yes, I know. Neither eyes nor life itself is something that you can choose. I know that even better than you do; I've been told that so many times, that I've lost the count. I'm the first to tell it myself, mind you.

You're right again, there is a story behind my words. Id' better play some tunes on my harp, if you don't mind. I'll feel better; besides, I'm a lousy storyteller, but quite a bearable bard. At least that's what people say.

Thank you. Now I feel more confident. And you, make yourself comfortable, forget your hurries and problems for a while. There still is some time left for you...enjoy it. Or, rather, lets enjoy together.

So...where were we? Ah yes, the life, the right to choose. You say that life is something given to you by your family, and it is not fair to blame it for hardships and ways of own life. One must use this gift as good as one considers it, instead of whining because of something one cannot choose. I cannot argue with you. Simply because I have no experience, for I never had a family.

Oh no, you're wrong. It is possible. Strange, maybe, but definitely not

impossible, Fjolgir thought, looking emotionlessly at two dead bodies. The baby in his lap exhausted his puny strength on crying and now just sobbed, piteously. Yet, Fjolgir paid no attention.

Utterly unbelievable, he thought. She knew she had a newborn, she was a mother -- and yet she had chosen the meaningless death. Why? She could not expect him to pity them both, her and her husband, and she wasn't. He was old and cunning enough to recognise the determinance to die in any eyes, were them of a human or of an alve.

He felt no remorse about what he have done. If the woman had chosen to die defending her man -- well, that was the way of her own will, and Fjolgir would even respect her decision. If not the baby.

She was the mother, and she let her son down, that was what Fjolgir could not understand. Especially considering the rumours that the alve very seldom had children.

But maybe that was the reason, Fjolgir smiled, grimly. The children of alve were rarity exactly because the adults did not give a damn about them.

Like they never cared about people, and considered their lives to be of no importance. You came, you killed someone that stood on your way, you went further. Like you simply got rid of the puny insect that whirled around -- absent-mindedly, with no real purpose.

That was a wrong point of view, and Fjolgir just proved it to this particular alve. Frey's folk was seldom met in human domains, and some people's attitude to them balanced on the edge of admiration and worship -- the alve were more beautiful, more intelligent, more skilful and talented in everything.

Much more merciless, too. And Fjolgir, who had never worshiped anything in his life, had demonstrated, how unwise it was to break human laws in human territories, if you were not, contrary to beliefs, immortal.

Mortal they were alright -- and the thought returned Fjolgir to the baby, who now only gasped, soundlessly.

To say that Fjolgir suddenly felt the responsibility about the baby was wrong. Quite often people left their own children to die in wilderness, if they hadn't shown the personality of a survivor. And this baby was even of different species.

Neither the baby triggered the soft spot in the old warrior's crude and tough soul, for this soul did not have any. Longing for the family was not the case either -- Fjolgir was single simply because he liked it that way. And nevertheless, he did not leave the baby alve to die, but took it with himself.

Any alve with glamorous looks of a demigod and eyes of someone thousands years old, would only nod, knowingly. 'Fate', the alve would say. They firmly believed in fate.

Fjolgir did not. And when people asked him, why all of a sudden he took the care upon this little alien creature, he always answered, dryly, preventing further possible discussions:

"It is my business, and my

only I have never understood him. And he never explained me his ways. He just let me be...initially.

Do you know what confused me most, stranger? That I was never able to surprise him. Nothing what I said or did. I don't know whether that was because of his knowledge that I was different thus able to do anything, or he plainly did not care. Now, I will never know; this question now is just next in the army of questions without answers.

I'm not complaining about my childhood. It was fairly alright, I never lacked anything, save the emotions, but as then I had no chance to compare -- we lived aloof and estranged life -- that did not bother me.

Maybe, if the next period of my life was different, I would remember my early years as oppressing and mirthless, but now I'm sure they were my best years.

What had happened? Oh, just my father suddenly decided he is incontent with me, and began to form from me something that would suit his vision. My shock was great, of course. I was not used to any kind of attention, and now all this...and you'll be amazed, stranger, when I'll tell you what an unexpected and innocent reason triggered my father to fall on me with all his purposeful

cruelty, even if it was done incidentally, was cruelty anyway. Quite often, cruelty was the only way to deal with certain situations, then it was the necessary evil. Cruelty without any reason was evil itself and should be rooted out.

The outcome of the small local battle between those two cruelties closed in the splinters of the broken harp, the full of fright eyes of the child, and trembling clenched fists of the man.

Fjolgir breathed, heavily, trying to put himself in order after the shock he just relived. The child, all big eyes full of primal terror, cowered under his heavy unseeing gaze -- he was scared to death, still the natural childish question 'why?' was clearly seen in those orange alien eyes -- but Fjolgir was not going to give any explanations.

"If I catch you doing this again..." he strained through clenched teeth, and the child curled himself even more, all he wanted now was to shrink -- no, to disappear, to turn invisible -- whatever, just to finish this horror, the meaning of which was utterly unclear to him.

And Fjolgir even did not consider a thought to explain. If a parent found his child, with fascinated curiosity tearing off the legs -- one by one -- of the caught spider, he would not explain what and why was wrong. He would punish and forbid.

The child would not understand the morality, but the punishment would stay remembered. Driven by their overwhelming curiosity, children never understood that killing was a thing too serious to be motivated by curiosity. Later, with the years, they would understand, and for now let the fear forbid them to make their little cruel discoveries.

Mime was not disembowelling any helpless creature, though. Fjolgir caught him doing things much more outrageous, and now Fjolgir doubted whether he could ever forget what he saw -- he, the old warrior, who experienced many intimidating things and stayed fearless in their vicinity.

From the first sight the view that Fjolgir saw did not look scaring -- on a contrary, it was almost unreally idyllic -- the boy played his harp (nobody taught him, but to be good in music was as common for alve as breathing), surrounded by several beasts of the wilderness, that quietly stood and seemed to listen, pensively.

Fjolgir stood nearby, quietly as those animals, listening absent-mindedly to simple but altogether fascinating tunes; at ease, he let the music carry him away into the realm of dreams and memories, beauty and grace, other things so superior that one had no other choice than to surrender, completely, to bend...

'To bend' was a swearword to Fjolgir, the soothed consciousness tripped on it like on a sharp stone in the middle of peaceful meadow, shaking the influence away -- and immediately, all the observations and suspicions his mind worked onto, while his soul wandered in fantasies, hit him all at once.

Wild beasts, standing next to the child of sapient creature, their worst enemy, listening to the music, the conception unfamiliar to them, and ignorant to everything around -- that was unreal. That shouldn't be. That was impossible. Nevertheless, there they were. They stood and listened.

Fjolgir came closer, driven by anxious curiosity -- openly, without any stealth, like he was used when approaching the wild animals. Neither Mime, nor the animals noticed anything, they were deeply sunken in the music. They had not even moved, nor turned their heads towards Fjolgir, those animals, they stood there like lifeless statues, like stuffed.

The eerie numbness was not the only thing that made Fjolgir to feel unreal. As a crafty hunter, he was well-familiar with the looks of animals, not once and not twice meeting various beasts eye to eye -- and he knew the damp, slightly foolish eyes of a dear; the permanent fright in always wide-open eyes of a hare; the deceptive benevolence of the brown gaze of a bear.

He saw nothing of that now, but glasslike, void surrender in those eyes. There was something flickering deep down, though -- some primal dread, knowledge of the screaming inconsistency -- too primal to be fully vanquished, but too weak to resist.

And the music went on and on...

He could not stand that any longer.

Something subconscious warned Mime about Fjolgir's presence, and he stopped playing. Immediately, all animals fled -- in queasy movements, their legs failing to catch up with the hysterical command of their mind to immediately be as far as possible -- this added to Fjolgir's determination, when he approached the boy.

Mime inherited the ability of his race to do everything graciously. That could not be fought, and there was no necessity for that. But to teach him that beauty and murder did not mix together well, was Fjolgir's duty. Mime had to discover his ability to control living beings not too long time ago, hence it was not too late for Fjolgir to fix everything, while the curiosity of the boy still had not grown into the urge to experiment how far this power could stretch.

Mime had a potential talent to kill. Fine. Fjolgir would develop it further, because there was no sense in trying to destroy it -- sooner or later, it would express itself anyway, and the untamed power was more than dangerous.

Besides, there was nothing wrong in the knowledge how to take life away; on a contrary, it was even useful, the boy had to learn self-defence, which often was inseparable from the death of one's opponent. But the way of learning it had to be tough and dangerous. Because only this way one could estimate life's real value -- facing the resistance, facing the counter-attack, the mad fight of alive being for it's most valuable treasure -- the life. Only this way one could understand what a supreme value the life was itself, and would think twice before taking the life in any fight. One would think whether it was really necessary -- in most cases it wasn't.

But when someone -- or something -- surrendered to you...gave away the life easily, lured by the deceptive beauty, when you never saw any struggles, any fierce grasp on the escaping life -- how could you know it's value? How could you know anything real in this world, after all?

The death was ugly, this was the firm conviction of Fjolgir. Twice ugly it was, when compared to life, and alvish way to give it the disguise of beauty, like they gave it to everything, was, in Fjolgir's point of view, a disgrace to the world and shameful disrespect to the vitality. He was not going to let Mime be a shame.

He decided to use all his skills, all his persistence to teach the boy to distinguish beauty and death -- and never confuse them. Let Mime was an alve, but since he lived among humans, he had to become one. That was the only proper way to bring him ready for this world.

The one who took lives when it was unavoidable, was a warrior. The one who took them without concern, as a present, was a monster. Fjolgir did not want Mime to become a monster. The alvish nature could be fought and defeated, he only had to pick up proper measures.

But Fjolgir did not think whether the nature of Mime could be fought with the measures that he

chose to obey him, stranger, like I always did. And how could I not? He was my only example, only ideal to follow; he was everything that I had. How my soul was disgusted...you'd never know, and you don't want to know. But I obeyed. I thought that he knew better.

This torture continued for numerous years, you see; many years he mangled my entity, he seemed never-tiring. Unlike me; if not my secret escapades to the world where there was no violence, I'd probably kill myself...or I'd try and fail, because of some reason, I'll tell you later about it.

Anyway, that was for good that I haven't tried to make a suicide; the failure even with that would definitely crush me to the end...or maybe I haven't tried because I felt that I couldn't accomplish that. Anyway, I've chosen a different way of resistance, and I don't regret it at all.

Music was my only salvation from the day I discovered it. Initially, before my father started killing me, it was just a pleasant game; later it became a form of protest -- I don't know whether you remember your own adolescent years, when you wanted to do exactly opposite to what adults were saying -- I was normal, almost normal adolescent, so I went through this, too; music was what my father forbid me to do, so I simply was doing it.

Not openly, though. My fear to him was even stronger than a wish to resist.

I can tell you, when you live many years with a constant fear, it never weakens. It grows altogether with you, fear. Love can fade out with the years, so can hatred. Fear -- never. Moreover, there comes time when it starts growing faster than you are, and soon there is no more place for it inside anymore. Then it fights to get out, especially when there is some another rapidly growing feeling. In my case, that was music, and there had to come the moment, when both them wouldn't fit in the same room. Yet, fear hung on there for a while -- on account of feeling called love.

And love kept shrinking and shrinking under the pressure of fear. Music did not get involved in their fight, it was my feeling, and my only, while them two were tightly connected with my father. So it just watched, passively and amiably -- after all, it had a chance to go out sometimes, while neither love nor fear could.

...it is said, stranger, and we, bards, often sing about it, that when love collapses to the very death, hatred is born. And unlike love, hatred is born instantly big, strong and aggressive -- it's a child's game for it to kick, finally, fear away.

Well, that's what bards sing. I do not know whether it is true, because I have never reached such point. I thought I did, on the day when I killed my father, but later I realised I was wrong. It's only fear and love cancelled each other.

No, your hearing is not tricking you. I really said that I killed my father. Nevertheless, in front of you there sits a murderer, but not a patricide. Because, stranger, the reason why my fear and love ended so suddenly, was the truth he said to me that day.

I was not his child, he said simply. I was even not a human. Why he decided, all of a sudden, to be frank with me, I do not know, and I never will. I only know that exactly by this he set his further destiny.

I thought it was hatred that forced me into this, but I was wrong -- the explosion of my two dying feelings caused it, and nothing more. Hatred wasn't born, nor was any other feeling, as a matter of fact.

Of course, I did not understand this at that moment. It came with time, many time of thinking, and weighing, and estimating.

You see, since no new emotion was born, music could have all the space for itself. Even if I wanted to plant some emotion again, it wouldn't allow me -- but I didn't. And I still don't.

It was exactly music that triggered my mind, now free of any feeling, to work. It is very special, that music which fills me, and it awarded me with many features I wasn't expecting to attain. First one I discovered right after my impost-father's death...

What? You don't want to hear it anymore? What a pity, because you will have to -- it's not every day I suffer from such a bad form of word diarrhea, and if I chose you, you won't escape. So be here and listen.

You have no other choice anyway -- you cannot move, am I right? Of course I am. After all, I did that myself. How? Later, my friend. Later. I'll explain for sure, but now, don't interrupt me.

So what I was about again? Ah, music. Like I said, being the only inhabitant of my mind from then and now, it endowed me with some special features.

First one to discover was the ability to see the minds of the others. I found out about it right after...well, I won't repeat myself. Usually, the crime and the punishment are separated by some time, but I wasn't granted with any. My punishment didn't take too long.

I remember like now...at first I thought I was going mad. But as it went on, I started to notice that this madness was far too single-directed, too purposeful. It had a system, and the madness with a system is not the madness at all.

And I was right, it was something much worse...what? Are you serious saying, that mind-reading is a gift, not a punishment?

But of course, you never knew it yourself. Never experienced the invasion of alien thoughts into your mind, never fought them desperately, never sensed how they try to occupy just everything in your soul...never had to protect your inner self from the dirty, filthy, repulsive stream...

Your, human, thoughts are so disgusting. Some are the penetrating cruelty, some -- vicious desires, some more are puny reflections of the environment -- but most of all they are boring. And as well so...identical, so lacking of true vitality, of something fresh; but all as one they are sneaky and persistently annoying.

So this is what I had to learn to live with. Do you still think this is a bliss, stranger?

As I realised later, every alve more or less has an ability of mind-control, and from their childhood they learn how to put shields against it -- but remember, I had no such luck. I was already nearly mature, when my uninvited trait declared itself, and even if it was not a madness like I initially thought, it would finally lead me to it. If not the music.

When a man gets into the dirt, what does he do? He washes himself, correct. And what such a poor being like me shall do, when not the clothes, not the face or body gets filthy, but the soul itself? And that was when I discovered another fascinating ability of the music inside me -- it could clean.

For some time, I was fairly content with such situation, music was always there when I needed to heal the defiled myself. But then, stranger, I started to lose my patience, and this was reasonable, if you ask me.

For what sake must I be tortured without guilt, I asked myself?

Redemption, you say...you really know where to hit me to cause the worst pain, don't you? Congratulations -- but you don't know how many years there passed after my crime. Well, that's perhaps my own fault, I hurried the storyline -- but that's because there was nothing interesting in those decades, trust me.

So, years passed, I got worn and irritated, and the thought about changing my situation began to harass me more and more persistently. After all, if a man has a source of filth somewhere so near that he can't avoid getting into it, he rather wipes it out than dumbly keeps washing himself, right? Then why can't I?

At that time, I was already fairly known musician. I was welcome and expected in countless houses, castles, towns -- in the parts where nobody could know me, I was careful. I met many people, the broad variety of them; however, the effect of my music on them was always and everywhere the same.

Ah, you want to ask why I did not flee away into wilderness and loneliness, where I could prevent myself from mind's suffering; very reasonable question, and again I must say: later. Be patient, my friend, and you'll be awarded.

I am going to tell you about my music and it's influence on people. About that special, amazing influence.

It made the minds go silent, that was the most delightful part. While listening, people stopped -- step by step -- ploughing my mind with their thoughts. Every single thought-intruder stepped away, giving up -- and giving me a break. While the music lasted, I was the master -- it was me, who filled their souls and minds, instead of usual opposite way; with my art, I could control the herd of their thoughts, I could guide them to any direction, and they obeyed me completely, submitted to my irresistible music. They were hypnotised by the sound like the rodents by the eyes of a snake, those people; all whom I met in my life.

And what is the most important -- they were doing that willingly. They liked.

I have to admit, it was just the plain curiosity at first, that drove me: how far could I take them without facing the resistance?

It occurred, that as far as I wanted to, to the same point where I could return from -- but they could not.

And when I took them away for the first time, I must confess that I was very

scared he stood in the large room, hastily adjusted for the hall of wedding feast, in the house of some village's, the name of which he didn't bother to remember, monitor -- his name he couldn't recall, too -- as well as names of his daughter and her future husband...now, a former monitor's former daughter's former groom, altogether with about a hundred of former guests, invited to this never finished wedding.

It was not the feeling of being all alone, surrounded by a hundred of dead people, that scared him, nor it was the knowing that this mass death was his and his only deed; after all, he wished so hotly them all go silent, eventually, and now they were; there could be not any regrets, when such an incomparable feeling of relief was present.

Neither that ease, with which he managed to put so many people to death at the same time, was scaring; he always sensed that music was very powerful, and he was sure, somewhere deep inside, that it was able to do things even more astounding.

What scared the youth with ancient eyes and harp in hands, standing in the middle of freshly appeared cemetery, was the overwhelming wave, coming from inside, the wave of humiliation and defeat intertwined.

He not just fulfilled all the hopes of the man he thought like about his father -- he overfulfilled them, becoming not just a skilful murderer, but an ultimate weapon of mass-destruction. How that man had to laugh, maliciously, from the whatever place he was now, seeing how all his plans and investments returned with a ten times bigger profit; that his false son, who denied him and rejected his influence so drastically, now displayed all then rejected skills -- and even more.

After so many years of self-fooling, that he would never kill like his father wanted him to (he didn't count the death of Fjolgir itself; this was a major flaw in his self-defence theory, thus he threw it out of his mind, pretending that this had never happened), all that he achieved was exactly the same thing his father forced him to become: the undefeatable assassin. Only in much higher degree, that his father might not even imagine...how he had to laugh now...

He fled away, the humiliation driving him forward without seeing his path -- the feeling which took the place of wiped away alien thoughts, but it was even worse -- because it came not from outside, but from his own soul, the same one he believed unable to give birth to any feeling; the humiliation, the crush of dreams were there, but no remorse about the village behind, the village turned into the cemetery.

But there was enough, those two feelings, to turn him almost insane, and this time he was even closer to the total mind eclipse; if not the

old crone that I met, thankfully, soon after the first declaration of my new power, the who knows, stranger -- perhaps you wouldn't have such a misfortune -- you would not ever meet me.

She found me in the forest, although she did not live in it, like most people believe old woman of wise do; this one had a comfy cottage in the village, and she looked like a perfectly ordinary old lady.

We met in the forest...I'm going repetitive, what a shame. But don't worry, stranger. It would be over soon. Sooner than you expect.

So, what she was looking in that forest, I didn't know, and frankly I didn't care. What about me -- I chased myself there, but I wasn't particularly looking for death, like you think; nor I wanted to die, but if Hel's messenger would show up and take me to the awesome mistress, I wouldn't mind. It was, you know, one of those moods, when you are too tired both to live and die...

Whatever. Back to the wise woman -- there she is, hunched in front of me, neither fascinated nor afraid, like most people feel about me -- and she says, 'You can't die here'.

'Another golden-hearted lady, who's heart overflows with excessive sentimental compassion to the cute hurt creature', I think, because I met such type of ladies not once and not twice, and not all of them were old and ugly, mind you...but lets not get carried away. So, I think that, and all of a sudden I realise that I cannot read her, which makes me to get involuntary interested. Such thing has never happened to me before, so I get interested enough even to answer.

My answer was 'Why not? Of course I can', not the smartest one in the world, but considering my state...anyway, she shakes her head and says 'No, you won't' -- and then she simply walks away.

Right after that...wedding, I thought that nothing could surprise me again, which is a proof how really immature I still am. She shocked me alright, that old woman, not the biggest shock that I survived, but yet big enough -- and you know why?

Because, though I couldn't read her, I was -- and still am -- quite sensitive about the intonations, emotions, words' meanings; another trait of the race. And in her words there was no rhetorical exclamation, the emotional baggage which always crowds phrases like 'You can't die here!'. No, what she has uttered, was simply the situation. She stated, matter-of-factly, the fact that she encountered. That's all.

She turned over her shoulder exactly at the same moment when I was going to call her -- and although she never confessed to me, I'm firmly sure that she could read minds as well as I -- only better. Deeper.

Later in her house, she explained me everything. My true race, why I am what I am -- many things. Also she told me about my race's greatest doom.

No, that is not immortality, here you are wrong. We, the alve, are mortal, at least we can be killed like anything. Only if nobody touches us, we seem unaging -- right up to the fulfilment of our doom.

I meant fate. We are predestined from the moment we are born, someone else writes lives for us, and we cannot step away off the path that it chosen for us -- but not by us ourselves. That's our price for eternally young looks, mind-control and other things that humans envy to us. You, humans, can choose your own ways of life; you are allowed to do your own mistakes, then fix them, or maybe do another ones, learn from them -- or not. You are free.

And you cannot imagine how it can be different way, since it's your natural trait. That's why you could never understand the bitter situation of being predestined. Yet, can you imagine the knowledge worse than the one about how you will die? No? Well, this time I'm not surprised.

So, with all the news about me I received the indispensable information about what my death will be...what? No! I do not know the exact time, or any details -- that would be too merciless price even for us, save us Frey! No...such news comes in different way. I don't know the proper word in human language, but 'the prophecy' is somewhat close.

I will die from the hand of a man -- or woman, or any other living being, who will be completely untouched and unaffected by my music, that's what she told me. There is someone in this world, who has the most amazing ability to resist, and when I meet that someone, I will be finally set free. I don't know when this will happen, and though I am predestined, I can search for it, can't I? In every single being I meet on my way, I try to recognise my saviour.

With you, I tried too; both we know that I failed again. Well, tough luck...for both of us. Pity.

I often think about the one who'll bring me the death; and often I catch myself that I sincerely pity him. What kind of soul that must be, to be untouched by such a marvellous thing as music? How pathetic such a life must be, without the sense of beauty, what kind of an unbreakable armour such soul must build around itself...and what kind of life must force the soul to be so morbidly protective...but whatever, I'm not a judge to that. I'll be dead, and that suits me fine.

You'll be dead soon, too, but I see it doesn't suit you. Well, I can't help it. Sorry.

Why am I killing you? Maybe because that's the only thing I am able to do...or maybe it's that curse of mine; when I found about my fate, killing became much easier. But, whatever the reason is, let it not bother you. It's unimportant for you now, believe me.

...are you dead already, stranger? What a stupid question, really -- I know that you are. Then, I can tell you yet one more thing. I never tell it to the alive beings, even if I intend to change that status soon; one can't be too careful. I don't tell that to every dead, even; just today I feel I can't hold it.

The reason is, that I lied to you, stranger, telling about the reasons that killed my ability to feel. Yes, there indeed was the collision of love and fear -- but this was not a true reason.

Remember what I told you about my mindcraft, when it declared itself? On exactly the same moment, when...yes. But it happened in a split second before my father -- I still call him 'father' for myself -- died; and that was time enough for me to catch his true feelings. They hit me all at once -- his emotions, his thoughts, his reasons. I understood everything then, all the meaning of his ways, his nature, his attitude towards me. Everything -- and it took me just a few puny seconds to understand, but he was already dead. Leaving me not a slightest chance not only take my most terrible mistake back, but even to say a simple 'Sorry'.

And then I shut everything down in my soul. I wiped, thoroughly, every weed of emotions from wherever I could reach; I was not strong enough to live with it, neither I am now.

Still, I fear that I could accidentally leave some roots, because sometimes it hurts so bad...I rather stop it. No need torturing myself even more.

All that I can add is, that if there really are some remains left, I feel the supernatural horror about the possibility of them to grow and bloom again, one day. I know that I won't withstand it anymore. This will kill me -- despite the prophecy, despite fate, and I am psychotically terrified by this possible kind of death.

I'm finally done, stranger. Feel free to be relieved. Just one more thing, if you don't mind: may I ask a favour from you? In Valhalla, if you meet a man, named Fjolgir -- he's hard to miss, you'll find him for sure -- tell him that I...on the other hand, don't tell him anything. Forget it.

I will find enough courage to tell that myself. Soon, I pray.

The end