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I don't remember exactly when it happened. I suspect it took many years, possibly lives of this life, incrementally dimming to utter darkness.

Looking back I recall the occasional fairy light, self contained orbs dancing in the inky charred stillness. I followed them, one after the other, each just out of reach. They seemed like hope. I did not realize how enclosed I had become, shrouded in that tunnel of single mindedness, following those lights into the enveloping wilderness. Even now I dare not recall how lonely I was in that cold wasteland, no voice to soothe, nor arms to comfort, but the damp feathered brush across the skin, by companions unseen, as I pursued those lights ever deeper.

Now as I sit here reflecting, the light of the crescent moon seems like clearest day. In this brief lucid moment, like the passage from life to death, before the shadows again close in to receive me as their own, and even my brightest memories lose all meaning in timeless existence. For this flickering thought, this blink of the eye of some ancestral god, I see unraveled that which has tied me up for so long. Whatever could have possessed me to follow that dancing hope, to where I dwell now. As clear as it seems, as simple the convoluted spell upon my soul, that tells upon my state, I am far adrift from what I claim as sanctuary. I have no sure path back from where I came. The best I can hope for, is when the darkness returns, that I will find hope, shining like a dancing child, singing rhymes that have no meaning, whom I can follow to my home.