To the Woman Who Lost Everything
I watched the leaves that had fallen across the floor of the room turn brown without my noticing.
The wind that slipped through felt a little colder now.
Had last night been colder still?
I felt how his body had gone cold as a slab of ice and tried to gather power into my hands, but…
It would not come.
"Are you cold, Evan? Just wait a little longer… I'll warm you soon."
Was I no longer even able to warm his body as I pleased?
That all I could do for him had dwindled to this, that my limits had arrived so quickly—
It was disappointing.
"…Light. Please. Light, damn you…"
No matter how many times I begged, only a faint flicker trembled in my palms.
Any warmth that might have heated his body scattered on the wind and was gone.
"I can't leave him like this. I can't just abandon him like this…"
The veil that wrapped his body stayed stubbornly at his side for reasons I could not name.
Or perhaps—
Perhaps it was being held there by his power still?
Hoping against hope, I touched his face, his hands.
Even the chest hidden beneath his clothes.
Though it had gone pale, it still felt like the skin of someone living.
The scent that remained still called back the nights I had fallen asleep held against him.
If I drew a deeper breath, the memory of him nestled in my arms, holding his own breath, rose vivid and whole.
He would bury his face against my chest in flustered panic, then quietly loop his arms around my waist and simply take in my warmth, so tense he could barely breathe properly—right there in front of me.
And if I tightened my hold and drew him closer still—
…Ah.
A sudden question rose.
What had my body felt like to him?
What of me had been reflected in those clear eyes that never held the darkness I saw in everyone else's?
But the more I touched him, the more I rubbed my face against his skin,
the more I lifted his arms that no longer held any strength of their own,
the thing I had never wanted to understand became clearer.
"Uh… heh heh… heh heh heh…"
The thing I had tried countless times to forget.
"Hic… E-Evan… Evan…"
His death rose before me with merciless clarity.
For a long while I held his body and let the dried corners of my eyes grow wet again,
even though I knew perfectly well it would do me no good at all.
In the end there was nothing I could do.
Only the fact that I had taken two lives with my own hands,
and that for countless mornings and nights I had clung to his body and spoken empty words, remained beside me in lonely silence.
It was cruel beyond bearing.
I wanted so badly to let go of my mind again, to walk back into that world of delusion, to warm his cold body while remembering our time together and keep saying he was only sleeping—
forever.
Until the very end of whatever life I had left.
"Everything's dead."
Outside the window—no.
I had already been able to see it through the cracks and holes that had opened in the walls of the house.
The crops no hand had tended.
The trees we had planted together.
All of it.
Turned to ash-gray, withered and twisted.
I had wanted the place where he would be buried to be beautiful, at least.
Only now did I see that the house I had lived in had become a hideous ruin as well.
Holes punched everywhere, walls caved in.
Dirt, dust, and leaves scattered across the floor,
and the bloodstains from that day still held their place, hardened and dark.
…The size of that terrible pool of blood—
"Hhk—"
Had I eaten anything?
Drunk anything?
I had taken nothing in, so why was my stomach heaving like this?
Because I was looking at his blood, turned black?
Because only after I finally saw with clear eyes everything he had poured out could I face his ruined body with a sober mind?
Because the golden veil had only hidden him, and now I could see his face still locked in pain, never having found rest…?
My stomach turned. It churned.
My head was a mess of tangled threads, so chaotic I wanted to vomit on the spot.
Why did I keep holding on to a mind that felt ready to shatter, when all I wanted was to let go?
What attachment could possibly remain in this world when my love, Evan, was already dead and gone?
I let the strength leave my legs and collapsed face-down onto the floor.
I no longer wanted to stand.
I resented this stubborn thread of life that still forced me to try something more.
If only on that day I had driven the blade into my own chest and gone with him,
would these cursed sensations have stopped tormenting me?
I missed him.
I needed the one who had always been the guide for every choice I made.
I had always received his help, yet when he needed me I had been powerless—and that fact felt like a brand that would never fade.
On my hands,
on my clothes,
on my body,
it remained like a stain that could never be washed away.
"The… a?"
A voice.
Someone else's voice, one I had not heard in a long time.
I scrambled upright and found a familiar face there.
The elves who had given me my hair, my kin,
the people who had given me the blood that ran through my veins.
"Thea… is it really you? Are you truly Thea?"
Familiar, yet not warm.
It felt strange to see people who had always been indifferent staring at me with such shock.
That the ones who had cut me away so cleanly the year I turned twenty had come looking for me now was deeply unsettling.
"We've found her—oh, good heavens."
Two more elves hurried inside.
Those in priestly robes all froze the moment they saw me,
just as the ones who shared my blood had done.
"By the gods—"
For a long while I had to endure their terror-stricken stares.
Even though I had done nothing wrong.
Even though I was not the one who had committed any sin.
Evan was the one who had lost his life,
I was the one who had lost my love,
so why did every person in front of me look at me that way?
Why did I have to look like a monster to them?
"Thea… can you hear me?"
I wanted to curse the way they looked at me—as if I were a patient, or something worse.
Their manner of treating me as some other kind of being was the worst of all.
They would not look even at someone who had lost an arm or a leg with eyes like that.
Or would they?
Aside from him and me, had there ever been anyone who truly treated the wounded with care?
Had there not been those who wrinkled their faces in disgust at blood and wounds and cast patients aside as if they were filth?
"Can you look this way for me?"
Snap. Snap.
Fingers clicked.
I shifted my gaze left and glared at the ones who stood rigid with tension.
Yes. They were afraid.
Of me, of all people.
How utterly rude.
The way they flinched and edged backward.
"…Don't look at me with those eyes."
I spat the words into the face of the priest who had come closest.
I wondered for a moment if I had spoken too harshly, almost rudely,
but perhaps the reins inside me had simply snapped.
Or perhaps, now that he was dead, it no longer mattered what became of my life.
"Ah… dear gods…"
Had they seen the room where he lay?
A gasp reached me from beyond the wall I could not see.
If they dared touch him without leave, I felt I might truly do something terrible to them.
"Move."
It seemed better that I stand beside him and keep watch before anything else happened.
I had to move first, before I did something worse.
"No, no—we've already been told not to lay a hand on your lover… You need to rest and recover first."
"What are you—wait, what…?"
"We came because of an oracle, Thea. What happened is truly… regrettable."
But the words the priest spoke as he laid a hand on me to keep me from rising
tore my mind completely apart.
"The god has been watching over you. And… the miracle that occurred to your lover was a grace bestowed by Him personally."
The two who stood before me slowly helped me up.
Then the remaining two who had come out of the room joined them, all folding their hands and closing their eyes in front of me.
"We have come to comfort you, who have been wounded by all of this."
"We give thanks for His eternal mercy."
"Thanks."
"Thanks."
At this sight,
at this grotesque scene unfolding before me,
at everything they had said,
I felt my heart twist once more.
I clenched my teeth and drove my fists shut so hard that my lengthened nails bit into my palms with a sharp sting,
and I had to swallow the rage and grief that boiled up inside me.
From their mouths they said the god had watched all of this.
From their mouths they called what had happened to him a miracle—no,
they called what had happened to his dead body, to the empty shell of him,
a miracle.
He was already gone.
The one whose life had been stolen.
And I, who had lost the one who had lit this terrible world so brightly.
They had taken everything from me,
stolen even the last happiness I could still have known in this world,
and then called it a miracle, a blessing.
"Um… Thea?"
Don't speak to me.
If you touch me I'll kill you,
I'll tear every one of you to pieces,
get out of our house right now—I should have said all of that.
But my body had already reached its limit; I could not even manage that much.
"Thea? Thea!"
If I could die like this and go to his side, that would probably be the true blessing.
"Prepare treatment at once. It looks as if she hasn't eaten or slept in a very long time—"
Leaving their fading voices behind, I sank into deep darkness.
Into a world filled with nothing but silence.