Day Three hundred and thirty seven - December in Windsor

This is how it starts. This is how you begin to forget me. The ritual I now perform is ancient, complex, and dangerous. It took me a very long time to learn, and to muster the courage to forge ahead has been an almost inhuman effort. Then, it was only a question of time, and the timing had to be exact. I had to wait for the finish of the year of the Capricorn, as it turned to the year of the lamb. As it befits its namesake, the sacrificial lamb here is not an animal, but rather parts of my soul. This night, this very night, I redeem ye, I redeem myself on this night of magick. It begins, on this cold night, when the autumn moon hangs full. To the left and right of me, two thurifers clad in midnight, swinging their censers about them gently. The air is rich with the smell of something dark, primeval and ominous. The clouds above close in, the wind sighs a melancholy song of sorrow and leaving. The trees weep, and the forest whispers. 

The knife I hold, sharp and ebon and old beyond words, etches symbols and sigils on my flesh, and on the ground I trace a line before me. With this line I mark the past as a symbol of forgiveness. The incantation begins.

I say my name out loud, the name you called so many times, and it is carried by the wind. The forest whispers my name. This name is a sacrifice. I remember the first time we were together, the first kiss we shared. These memories are a tribute. I commit them to the sea, and the waves carry them far away, to lands distant and unknown. The touch of your skin against mine, my hand on your heart. These feelings are offerings, and I plunge them into the earth. The roots of the trees embrace them, and they will ever be locked behind shields of oak and fir and yew. You and me, closer than atoms, atoms that have always known each other, and now never shall again. Above me, the Pleiades, and all that I am, I cede and consecrate to the stars : their fiery tendrils immolate all remnants of me, and I am torn from you. 

Years from now, when we're both older, and I have come in from the cold, you will come across me on a street somewhere. Not a flicker of recognition will cross your eyes, never a moment of doubt. I ask you what time it is, and with your usual kindness you remind me how your voice sounds. I am just a passing stranger now, not even a ship in the night. Forgotten, forlorn, a speck of dust in the wind. I thank you, and offer you smile that had not emerged in years. Your eyes do not linger, as well they shouldn't. We say goodbye, and turn our backs, and the loop is closed forever.