It is a simple and given fact that almost all men and their spawn hate the cold. That since the dawn of their primal existence they have shunned and detested the dark and cold night. But, Gabriel Rüdiger was not most men. He cared not for the cold, but he did not despise it. If anything, Gabriel was used to ice in his veins ever since he was a boy. He leaned back into the cushioned leather seat at his worn desk, running a hand over the chipped sea-green paint. He shrugged off the cold, as was his way. He learned to be strong, stoic, and stern, and to shun adversity when it came. But here, in the pale hours late at night when he was finally alone, did the frost gathered about his soul part before the flickering candle. There behind his eyelids as they closed awaited his ever constant phantom. All day he ground out his load, raised above the toil of the commoner, but not above the trial. Every morning he went out to the light and drove away the ghost of his life, and every night he returned to its embrace. It varied in form day to day. Sometimes he closed his eyes and found himself back in the solitary room of his childhood. He could even hear the faint echo of a soft voice singing in the distance, even though the woman’s song had long faded out of his life. Sometimes the specter of a brass music box would clatter to life and play to him the tune of a simpler life. The music could almost drown out the rest of his phantom. Sometimes he could fool himself that all his life had ever composed of was the song. Even through the blackness though, he could hear the bark of a disgust. The waves of a father’s disappointment crashed back down on the night’s tide. The crescendo of Gabriel’s own voice, defiant, defensive, rose and fell in reply. He’d tell himself that he never need anyone, that his spirit had triumphed over the adversity alone. Some nights, he even believed it. As it all began to fade, the woman’s song drifted back to him. Sometimes he could make out generous words. Even as he held onto it, it began to fade like the dark. But, even after all these years he learned to accept that the song would never leave, just like his phantom. It would remain with him to the day he lay in his grave, when it would sing him to sleep for the last time. So he hummed out the final notes and bade his phantom goodbye as the light spilled into his room and banished it once more. He buttoned his woolen coat and slung a black silk cloak over his shoulders, the ice flowing through his body again, eyes deadset. With a flourish of cloak and a fasten of brass, he assembled himself before a mirror again. Another day, another load, another life. He stepped out into the unforgiving light and set about to his daily trial, and in so bade his ghost good light.
