She Gazed

She looked up into the open sky and wondered: 'would life ever be the same again?'

It stretched above her, the clouds and azure and space beyond, as the endless expanse that it truly was, the blue atmosphere fiendishly disguising that there was more than what one could imagine. For one who sat beneath a thicker cloud bank they might assume that the sky really did stop at the stratosphere, that beyond the heavenly mists there was ... Well. That was it. There was nothing. Or there was no nothing, but also not anything. There was just an end of reality. Whereas in reality space and time just kept on going, as the light blue faded to indigo, the indigo to black, the black to ... Only the gods knew.

Only the gods knew.

And she was no god.

No, she was just a mortal - a simple faun, or really half faun, travelling across the many-trod paths of the old land, through the mud and trees that many before her had had plenty of adventure. Yes she was blessed, her existence given a beautiful meaning by a minor diety, but that did not make her a hero. It did not make her a god. It did not make her anyone of significance. She was still just Celandine. Still just the same girl who had walked into Alerar and stolen the heart of a proud drow and somehow, no one knew how, sealed the demon portal.

And as she gazed into the glory above she wondered what difference it made. What had changed now she had altered the fate of a nation. For in her mind, anyone could have done it. Anyone could have ended up taking that sword and thrusting it into the well. Then they would be the hero of the legend, they would be the name whispered upon lips so delicately.

Her individuality did not matter. Who she was, what she was, it did not matter. What did matter was the fact she had ended up doing what many others could have ended up doing and now her destiny had forever been told. She didn't want the attention, she didn't want the looks. But they had come anyway.

They came anyway.

But the sky - that was still the same.

Life had changed. Forever for her. Life now would never. Ever be as it had been.