Battling Ghosts

I stand embattled. My armor is quality, boiled-hardened leather to protect against the sharpness of enemy swords and daggers. Yet, it is the demon and ghost I battle today. I am a lowly rogue with some fighting skills, but powerless to combat this ethereal being. My only defense is my meager will. My best weapons have been to sneak and avoid detection, and to run when necessary. Unfortunately, as this ghost attacks upon its discovery of me within its boundaries, I am stunned by the sudden shock of icy cold pain and frozen in its hellish agonies. I am lost eternally and weakening, and I can not seem to cry out. My voice is muted, stuck in my throat. I have fallen and curled myself as if still in the protectiveness of the womb, yet hellish agony flows through me and over me, and I fall into an eternity of anguish.

Then there is a warm touch, seering, flaming hot, in its burning discomfort. I instinctively focus on this outside agony and flee toward it like a child to her mother's embrace. I can hear my sobs in my own ears and realize my pain was being cried out and I had not realized it. The hot touch soon soothes as the iciness of the demon retreats and the warmth spreads quickly, soothing and thawing my frozen and curled limbs. There are tears in my hair that fall upon me like a loving rain, and I realize a friend has chased away the demon and protected me with her love. I find a refuge in her protective shield, and the ghost is turned for this time. I am exhausted by my ordeal, as I lay in the protective embrace of someone with the power to strengthen me against the attack of my ghost.

Some battles just cannot be fought alone.