Writing prompt from the Reddit Fantasy Writer’s forum. Based on this image:
He places the flowers on the ground to the side of the door. Blue tulips, white roses, daisies freshly picked. Her stony eyes stare at him, unblinking, unforgiving.
“I miss you,” he says, not daring to look at her. He straightens, shifting the heavy bag that weighs him down, the strap digging into his collar. The books inside are heavy, old. The price he pays. The burden he carries.
The door opens silently. She opens it for him. She who once brightened his chambers with her fair presence, her lips like honey against his. She who smiled, and in smiling dimmed the beauty of all that surrounded her until only she shone bright against the dark world. She whose eyes were only for him, and for whom his eyes would never stray.
Master Tolwin stands inside the doorway, glasses low on his nose, one hand pressed inside the edge of a tweed jacket. “Mister Cooperton.”
“Sir,” he says, bowing at the waist. The books shift again and he winces when they smack against his knee.
“She fair graces our doorway, don’t you agree?”
He dares not answer. Not here, in the light of day. Not under the very features he once stroked with affection and desire. Not with her listening to his words as the winds scatter them like drops of rain upon an empty road.
“Well, never mind. We accept her as our new door ward, and the spell you wrought brought you much in the way of the literature you need to become the magician you desperately crave to be. Well done, Mister Cooperton, and a fine piece of work you are. Welcome to the Deepening Dark.”
Tolwin steps aside and he walks beneath her, and he feels the world shift, crumbling beneath his cursed toes.