Hieren Snippets

  It's been a long time since I visited the Patrons for something so personal, something specific to me and me alone. There had always been someone else to worry about, something else to want. Yes, I had yearned for things and often desperately so, but nearly always they had been within my reach. The Patrons did not need my begging for that which I could do myself with a little effort. They do not need my begging now, and yet... I feel as if an acknowledgement, a tribute, is only fitting.

   The yoke is heavy, the weight of decades' worth of memory and toil around my neck. This had been my life, after all. As I loosen the straps, I amble back through the memories it carries in its leather and wood: the warm satisfaction of knowing that I had reached my full height at last; the tools of the yoke maker as they guided me in crafting the backbone of my life's work; the rivers and bridges and fields we have both crossed; the stains and scratches, each representing an ordeal we have overcome together.

   "I can always make another," I say to the shrine, or perhaps to myself, as I lower my neck to slide my old yoke forward. "But... it would never be the same. Nothing will be, not after the river. That's the point of this, right? Leaving behind what used to be to make way for what is? My life is not my own anymore, and so... and so I forfeit it to you."

   The worn frame slides past my horns, over my eyes with a flicker of darkness, and lands heavily on the altar.

   "Goodbye, old friend."