From rowan@mail1.wolfe.net Wed Dec 25 00:04:28 1996
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 01:17:12 +0000
From: rowan@mail1.wolfe.net
To: b5-creative@lists.best.com
Subject: b5 prose/poem

This is my first try at B-5 fiction.  Please... all feedback is 
welcome and requested.  I can't work at writing better if I don't get 
feedback. :}

Post replies to me at: rowan@wolfenet.com *or* rowan@mail1.wolfe.net 
[my provider is adding a new mailserver so I'm not sure when the 
addresses will change.  Both should be okay.

Inspiration: "Z'ha'dum" Season 3. Sheridan's 'leap of faith' from the 
ledge..

			"Shadow Mate"    
                                                                      
by Jari L. James					[draft - 11/13/96]
***********************************************************************
Shadow partner to a shadow lover: that's what my fate has decreed. 
A man alone in the darkness with a shadow mate behind me. 
I look back at her: each strand of hair, each glance, each sound are  
      those I have known for a thousand years.  
But from her face there is no welcoming light: her eyes,  those of a stranger. 
To look deep into those eyes is to see past the threshold of this life and into 
     another world. this new world that she has embraced.   
There is no joy, no touch of humanity there to look back at me. 
Only cold, hard purpose.  

What did she see, when she stood before me on Babylon 5, 
     this Anna who was once my life? 
Did she see in me the shining dawn that drives away the 
    darkness before it? 
Or was it the dusk - the darkening that settles over the world 
    before the death of the day? 
The me that was before or the me that is now? 
And I with no knowing which one she truly hoped to find.

Strange to be so far away from the one who stands behind me. 
And to be so close to the one who waits so far away.  
Why is it that I find more comfort, more humanity in the face of  a former enemy 
    than I can in the gaze of one who's life I've shared for years. 
It is of this love that I think. here in these last minutes,
    bringing the memories out of darkness and into light.
The warmth of her embrace, the scent of her hair, 
    the starlight that gleams in her eyes.  
The only concern I have left is that my actions here will see her safe. 
That is worth any price, paid in any coin, even that of my life,  
    if it keeps her from living this hell.  

`You stand in the middle between the darkness and the light.' 
`You stand between the left hand and right.' 
In between such extremes I walk, not of one or the other, but of both.  
What does this mean. Kosh, damn it! 
What does any of this mean? 
Any answer?  Any at all? 
No matter.you were right. You were always right. 
To go to Z'ha'dum is never to return. 

Now all I have left to do is to die. 
Here. 
In this place. 
Standing on a ledge jutting out into oblivion, between high and low, 
    dust and sky, the sunfire  that will cleanse this hell shining bright above me.  
All that is left is the fire . 
    and the shadows..

Jari L. James
Lt. Jari "Puma" James, MC
[unassigned]

It's not just a job, it's indenture.