YOUR NARRATOR:

My friends. I have been so eager to speak with you this week. So eager to share with you what's happened.

I must re-iterate something to you. Something that I only tell you now and then, because I want you to like me. I want you to love me. I admit it, I am weak for it. I'm weak for your approval. So, I try to hide from you the parts of myself that are terrible and ghastly. But they come out. And perhaps the things that I think are beautiful in myself, are terrible and ghastly to you. So perhaps I tell you about these parts more often than I even know about. So, I'm re-iterating today, that I have a darkness, a selfishness, a destructive part of myself. Obviously, I have made my peace with this, with my dark purpose. As I walk the world in the light and let you and your people see the blackness in my eyes and the hunger in my teeth and the cruelty in my claws, I am telling you that I have made peace with my covetousness. Some days, I love it, and some days, I hate it. And oh, how I admire and yearn for kindness and goodness. I hope I have that in me. But I know that I have...the other thing. But it is there, and you must remember it.

Because it makes this story I am about to tell you so much more strange.

This happened only last week.

I could give you the story behind the night in question. I could tell you that my Stranger and I had been out wandering, enjoying our interactions with you and the bright nighttime lights of the world, and enjoying the chaos that inevitably follows our relatively peaceful conquests. I could explain to you that I went through the night feeling completely hollow as I realized that every victory he and I achieve together is worthless if it does not drive me closer to happiness. And I avoided the deeply-hidden truth that I've known, which is that my happiness is rooted in my humanity, which has long been lost. And that I can't find humanity with someone who was never human in the first place.

I could tell you all that, and the way that night went. But it's irrelevant. Just know that I came home and I felt empty. Alone, I went to the top of Our Ancient Tower.

[A simple, pretty guitar theme plays under the following, sparse]

I wanted to watch the sun rise.

It's risky. It's not impossible.

Especially given that I am weak in the sun, and completely defenseless out in the open air. My enemies know where the tower is. Within it, we know the terrain, and we have safeguards in place. Outside of it, however....nothing.

I went anyway.

I haven't seen a sight like that in a long, long time.

The sky went from being a black sea, full of floating stars, to a warm, rich red that spread across this sea like molten lava. Like spilling candle wax after a long night with a loved one. Like blood.

And the sun was golden and triumphant. It set the tops of the green trees aflame. It rippled across a faraway lakeshore I had never seen before during the night. It woke up the birds and made them sing. I even saw people, far away, waking up and beginning their day.

And it made me feel...I belonged with them. The birds. The sun. People, even.

And it made me weep for the rejection I've harboured.

And then I heard the great, loud sound of humongous flapping wings. This is the sound that will come before my demise, I'm sure of it, whether those wings are white or black.

It was followed by a white, blinding light. My eyes already burned from the sight of the dawn; now, even more so, from this light.

When they found their focus, however, my eyes landed on one of my winged enemies. But this one...this was the intelligent, keen, cunning one. The one I had wounded. The one I had given the gift of knowledge to.

O, wretched thing he was, his golden locks of silk almost brown from dirt, his white wings muddied as well and almost threadbare for the feathers they lacked. His eyes, though still brilliant and golden, almost painfully so in the light of day, were wide and mad with distress. He wore rags instead of his usual regal fare; but he did clutch on to his signature staff, as if his last shred of  normalcy was tied up in it.

I raised my hands into curled claws and prepared myself for an attack. I drew my lips back to reveal the worst part of me, the thirty-two unmerciful fangs in my mouth. I'm sure the sneer on my face held its own in the overall presentation.

But, in response, he did the strangest thing.

He threw his arms up and hid his face behind them. He was huge in stature, inhumanly so, but he shrunk in that moment.

He was afraid of me.

"No, don't do it again. Don't do it again. Don't do it again." He repeated over, and over, shaking violently.

My own fear subsided as I watched him cower before me. His wings, twisted and frayed as they were, tried to cover himself as best they could. He was trembling and weeping quietly to himself. It hurt my heart, to see such a glorious thing brought so low. A glorious eagle, grounded, and fumbling.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I have never once understood. In all that I have done, I have found no pride, no joy, no sorrow, no hope, no rage. Nothing. And why is it, why should it be that you, some cursed, lost thing, can speak only a few words to me and change this? All at once. All at once there was fear, and ecstasy, and sadness, all of it at once. Can you imagine? Can you imagine that?"

I tried to interject at this moment. I even thought to defend myself. But, the truth is, I had nothing to defend. I had no answer. And so, I let this poor, wounded, lovely fool ramble on.

"I don't know what you've done. You spoke to me. You touched me. And I felt..." His face twisted in an agonized moment of emotion, as he couldn't describe the feeling. "I felt like a wolf in disguise, desperate to break free from my skin. I felt I had sunk to the bottom of the sea and all was dark, dark, dark...I felt like I was walking a path that would never end...I felt like a ghost no one else could see or hear. I felt the world, the world, and yet it could not feel me back." The poor creature looked up at me, his eyes almost aflame. "Except perhaps you...you who can do such a thing."

I took one deep breath.

I must take a moment to explain. This creature and his kind were never alive to begin with. Whatever they are, they were born as such. And they were born with singular purpose and little room for weakness and emotion if it didn't serve them and their cause. This includes my Dark Stranger. Now, he found me and made me like him by merely touching me. And now, I had made this creature a little more like me from my touch.

My touch can kill a human.

But with this one...one touch made him alive.

A little more mortal.

Closer to it, anyway. As close as I ever will be again.

I exhaled.

"You're right. I do see you and I do hear you, Angel," I said, calling him what he was for the first time. "The world does feel you back. It just can't tell you." I knelt to him as he crouched there. "I am not your enemy. I meant it when I said it was a gift." I looked over the horizon, past the trees and across the sparkling lake, and the morning breeze came across the both of us. I smiled. "See that?" He turned and watched it with me. "This is the World. The World you are not allowed to fall in love with."

An airplane even flew across the sky, at a distance.

It should have ruined the image, but it didn't. It made me smile. On that plane sat hundreds of people, people with families or business or lovers to travel to and to travel from. I knew it was almost impossible, but perhaps one person was listening to my voice speaking to them, letting me travel with them to a far-off place. I waved my hand in its direction. "If it makes you weep, you must let it," I said, despite the fact that my own eyes were dry.

The creature beside me did indeed let himself weep. He wept, he laughed, he babbled again. I reached toward his wing, a little afraid of what might happen if I touched him again...but when I did, he just calmed down and breathed a little more deeply. The feathers were soft and fragile under my fingers, and I let myself pet him gently. "May I tell you a story?"

His silence was enough for me to have my answer. This is what I told him.

[The following is spoken and then fades to a quieter level, so that it can overlap with the paragraph after it. It is the first paragraph of last week's story, The Wishing Well]:

"There was an old man who lived in an old town, and the old town was steadily beginning to forget about him. You see, long ago, they knew him and knew him well, for they owed much to him. He was the Sheriff, a long, long time ago, and he was a good one. He lived on the edge of town in a little house; he had no wife, no children, no family; everything he had inside of him, he gave to being the best Sheriff he could possibly be. He saw to it that everyone in town was safe, and that everyone within the town followed the law and lived in peace and harmony."

I began to tell him the story I had just told you, dear listeners. The story I told you last week. I told him the story from the week before that. And the week before that. I told him the things I've seen and heard, and of the people in these tales...people, creatures, ghosts, all of them. And he grew calm and peaceful.

"I don't know what I'm meant to do," he said finally, after having his fill of stories. "Where do I go from here?"

[The same sparse guitar theme from before plays under the following]

I turned to him and answered, "You have to decide that. You can hide, as I have. Or you can walk freely, as I am. Either way, there will be beauty and pain in equal part. I cannot protect you from this. In fact, I have made you more vulnerable to it." I looked again to the beautiful sky, and to the spot where the plane had crossed my vision. "But I think the beauty is worth it."

"This is why they are so afraid of The World," he said, and I noticed that his golden eyes were threaded with black veins now. He stood still as a statue as he spoke, and a chill went through my veins, frigid as they were to begin with. "The pain of a predator, the loneliness of a ghost, the warmth of another's hand, the longing for an embrace...it is too beautiful to bear. It is a fearsome thing."

I simply nodded and agreed, "A fearsome thing."

His eyes were now as black as mine, as black as my Stranger's.

How do I explain what happened next?

He left. I saw him take off into the sky, but then my eyes followed him over to the lake. I watched him walk along the shore, his wings stretched behind him, his eyes on the water around his toes. It was as though he'd never really felt water before. I could see his smile from the tower.

I do not know if he's walking openly. I think he is. I watch from my tower sometimes, to see if I can see him. I imagine he would know how to find me if he needed to, if he was in trouble.

I don't know if we are allies, this thing and I. But perhaps one day we might be friends.

It is the time of year for giving, I'm told. For enjoying the company of loved ones. But "to love" is a strange thing. A strange verb. One I have tried before in a few different ways.

But this time, I tried sharing something.

I've shared this with you. Why? Was this as good as a story? Was this not a story, in its own right?

There was no twist. There was no scare.

I don't know what I'm meant to do. Where do I go from here?

I'm afraid.

I curled into my bed under the floor. I moved slowly and quietly.

My stranger does not breathe in his sleep. I suppose I do not, either. So, I don't know if he knew how long I was gone for, or if he'd slept the whole time.

It doesn't matter. Let him ask. Let him sleep. Let him be.

I've told you this, my friends, because...because I need to.

It's not for you. It's for me.

I'm sorry. That is my story this week.

A story for me and my heart.

Goodnight.

Hi there everyone. Thanks so much for joining me this week for Episode 44 of On a Dark, Cold Night. This is Kristen Zaza - your writer and friendly voice in your ear. I hope you're having a lovely week.

This week I have a bunch of news...first, I'd like to send a huge thank-you and shout-out to my friends at 8mm Podcast Network. This is a fantastic Irish podcast network, and specifically they have a great podcast called Broken Pieces, that specializes in strange and often horror-related short audio stories. I was fortunate enough to record a story for them called ALARM...it was just released last weekend, and it 's really awesome. If you're looking for more audio horror fiction, please head over to Walter Kane - Broken Pieces Podcast, to listen to ALARM and other great stories. Thanks so much for having me on the show, friends.