The Hour of the Watch

"Mercy in the dark of night,
Angels are among us.
Say your prayers and keep the faith,
For he has come to save us.
As a cold wind blows,
Nothing grows.
But his mercy flows.

Up from the ground blooms the winter rose."*

Long after the sounds of merriment in the Great Hall were put to bed, long after kit and kin retired to intimate hearths of their own, or...someone else's....I alone walked the streets of this place I now inhabit. Actually it was an improvement on my usual status, as walking.... even if going nowhere....does lend at the very least a change of scenery to the procedure, rather than pacing in a tight circle, my usual state after such an evening.

I wondered....as I wandered....does she know?
Can she not sense some inkling of why I am here, why I show up wherever she is, and make my presence known to her? Surely there are some qualms she has about me, some knock upon the level of wherever her heart is (I would not expect her head), a feeling that something, where I am concerned, where....we....are concerned, that gives her a sense of pause, even if it is only a shadow to her footsteps, an itch beneath her skin that has no visible cause, a queisiness to her stomach that tells her something be amiss, even if she decides to doggedly ignore it? I speak not of the remembrance of actual events, or of me, but that little gnawing feeling that makes the hairs on the back of one's neck stand at attention and clues in the heart that this is a way passed before, this is something to investigate.
Does she have none of that?
For, to be sure, that is how it appears.

I was quite serious when I asked her, then....did she want me to leave, truly. Yet she answered that not, at least, not directly. And I would not, but that it come as a direct order from her, as her utmost wish. If it is to be over, then it is to be over the sooner the better. Let it lie in the past. She seems to have done that fairly well, come to think of it.
It is I who has the difficulty there.
There and somewhere else.
I touched her, I whispered words to her ear, and she bled.
Why does this go on, if truly God wants me to be here, to help her, to love her again?
It happens with no one else. I know, I watched for it. So many she spoke to, so many she touched in passing, and they in turn, her. In passing, in dancing, in standing close by, there were many, both male and female, and of none of them did she have such a harsh reaction. Even as close and prolonged as she stayed in the company of the one called Kalamere, she suffered no ill effects.
Yet I have merely to utter a word, breathe a breath, and she is hurt.
To say I do not understand is simple enough.
To say I will not tolerate it much longer, a hurt of her, even if it means my departure from these lands, never to see my precious Zoee and Zander again, is a conclusion I am fast reaching.
This cannot be for her own good.
And I will not let it continue much longer.

I should not have come.
Correction. I should not have stayed.

It is 3 a.m.
The hour that has meaning all its own.
Some say, the witching hour, others report it as the Hour of the Watch. Whatever anyone's faith calls it, there is but one thing left to do. If, after that, there is no change, then I will know. God will have given me His sign and I will take it as such.

Soon, I will know.
Correction. We all will know.

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*(from the song, "Winter Rose", music and lyrics by Bill Leslie)