Reunion
No matter how often death is called fair, how many souls can truly accept it when it arrives unbidden?
Shameful as it is to confess, when that moment came for me, I rejected salvation with a desperate, ugly ferocity.
And... how much time has passed in this place?
When I first arrived here, the absence of sensation left me hollow. Everything was dull. I pinched my own hand and felt only the idea of pressure — no pain. I struck my own cheek and my head simply turned. If anything still managed to sting, it was the simple fact that I was dead.
Because her face kept flickering before me — the way she had wailed. The way she had clung to me, begging me to stay, tears streaming down her cheeks. Even twisted with grief and despair, she had been beautiful. I remembered that face. Would she go on living happily somewhere without me? She had already laid down everything she was just to be with me. All I could do was worry.
She had cut off her own ear. She had abandoned the path of a priestess. And now, if even I were no longer there to stand beside her — how was she supposed to go on?
Or perhaps, I thought, she would manage just fine without me. She was of a long-lived race. Time spent with a short-lived creature like me might pass in the blink of an eye. I had been twenty-seven. She had lived so long she herself might not even know how long. Forgetting a man like me might take her no time at all. Even if that span felt long by my measure, to her it might be nothing more than a moment. The boy who had once looked like a child in her eyes — perhaps erasing him would not take nearly as long as I imagined.
...The thought left me a little desolate. And yet, somehow, it was all right. However brief those days had been, every moment I had spent with her had been happy. They had been beautiful. I still remembered the days when flower petals drifted on the air. I could still see her — golden light, smiling in a field of blossoms — hovering at the edge of my vision. Even as the darkness swallowed me, her radiance kept lighting the way ahead.
Those four years. And the half-year before that, when I had first fallen for her in secret. Every last one of them had been radiant and glorious.
Thinking of it only made the injustice burn hotter. We could have had so much more time. I could have put so many more smiles on her face. Had loving her been such a crime? Had abandoning the priesthood been so unforgivable?
I wanted to see her again. If I could only look once more upon that face — platinum hair streaming, eyes curved in a smile... If I could hold her in my arms just one more time, how wonderful would that be?
It hurt. It was so sad. Dying filled me with a regret so deep I could barely breathe. If only I had been stronger. If only I had gone out to face those outsiders sooner, more ruthlessly — then maybe I would not have died. Maybe she would never have been taken.
...While I drifted in those thoughts, I saw something hazy streaming past me. Pale, contorted faces shoved me aside as they rushed onward. There was no pain, only the sensation of my body being pushed steadily backward. As if fleeing something, they all shoved me behind them in their frantic scramble forward.
I stared blankly ahead at that strange feeling — and then —
A voice that raised the hair on my neck rang in my ears. Behind me, it was watching. Watching me alone. While countless beings shoved past me and fled forward, I realized too late that I had been caught. My waist, my arms, my legs — all of them bound by something like thread, being reeled in. I could not even resist the sensation. I did not know where this place was, and the overwhelming presence it radiated was heavy and terrifying beyond measure.
A deep, resonant hum shook my body. Something gripped me hard, pulled, pushed, shook me. It did not hurt, but it made me dizzy. The sensation was unnatural, turning my stomach. For a while I nearly gagged under the relentless feeling — and then something else began to register.
"Wh— what...?"
Light. For the first time since coming to this place, something bright began to appear before eyes that had never once seen light here.
"Thralls? What do you mean by—"
I realized the words were not meant for me only a moment later — when I heard the voice of the one who answered.
"Thank... you... Thank you... Truly... Ahk— ahh—!"
It was the voice I had longed for so desperately — her soft, silken voice. But it was cracked and dry, thick with grief.
"Who are you?"
Still shaking my blurred vision, I kept turning my head, searching for the one who had spoken to me — and for the presence that had received Thea's thanks.
The voice still offered no comfort. It trembled. It was uncanny. No matter how I turned it over, it did not sound like anything a living being — a person, a human — could produce. I could only swallow hard.
"...You are not the one I serve."
The presence I had once felt in a dream had been far cleaner than this, far quieter. It had not made me dizzy. It had not been murky or unpleasant. The pressure this being exerted was truly immense.
"Why did you... bring me back?"
It answered without hesitation. No pause. No deception. And that made the answer land all the heavier. The reason it had refused my death and returned me to this world was solely because she had asked.
...There had to be something deeper than that.
As if it already knew my thoughts, it laughed. I heard no sound of laughter — and yet, for all the voice's utter lack of feeling, it was smiling.
"You speak as though you know her very well."
In public, she could be even more brusque than I was. She treated her patients without sentiment and focused entirely on the work. She always chose the best path available.
Before I could even form my next thought, it went on, almost teasing me.
Again it laughed. With satisfaction, shaking my entire body.
"...When will I be able to wake?"
Speaking in riddles, it circled me. Beyond the edges of my vision — blurred as blood blooming in water — I could hear footsteps. Heavy. Squelching. Something I was not meant to look upon was walking through the room where I lay.
Come to think of it, the hollow emptiness in my chest was gone. In its place, a quiet pulse was slowly returning. The helplessness that had claimed my body was beginning, little by little, to loosen its hold.
At those words I abandoned any thought of moving at once.
It praised me and stroked me. Warm, and yet cold. Clinging, and yet somehow smooth — a touch that raised gooseflesh even as its words carried a strange kind of warmth.
"Is Evan all right?"
The door opened with a soft click, and she slipped inside, carefully closing it behind her. From her — radiating an unusually bright light — I saw black haze rising like heat shimmer. It suited her and did not suit her at once. And yet it was unmistakably Thea. The one I loved.
"R-really? Is that... true?"
I felt the vast presence withdraw from the room. The thing that had filled the space around me, making me so sharply aware of myself, vanished — and in its place I could sense her far more clearly.
"...Evan. Can you hear me?"
Her voice calling my name. That complex tremor thick with so many things. The way she was on the verge of tears. I wanted to answer her. My throat still felt wrapped in a thin membrane, too tight to make a sound. But if I could just push a little — just a little —
At the tip of a finger I managed to stretch out, I felt the heat of her skin.
"Kh— kkh— uh— uhaaaa—!!"
The sound filled the room. Great drops of water struck me, pressing down. Our parting had come with tears. And so, it seemed, did our reunion. But the two could not have been more different.
...They were different beyond all measure.