Lost Song
βThere is an ache in my heart for the imagined beauty of a life I haven't had, from which I had been locked out, and it never goes away.β
The water devoured her lungs, crushing the strands that intertwined to create her being. She choked on another gulp of liquid, her eyes burning, her lungs burning, her heart burning, everything burning, burning, burning, and she prayed that she was on fire, so that the flames would devour her and release her from the torment. The water she swallowed streamed from her eyes but there were not enough oceans for her to cry and not enough of herself to encase the agony. So it flowed from her eyes like blood from a wound.
She heard the hiss of her father, asking her why she would not cease her breaths and cease her existence and turn back time. Give me back all that you have stolen, he screams and the water does not deafen her ears to his voice. Or maybe he's a bird, nesting in her brain.
The tear of his hands against her scalp, pushing her beneath the surface, is as foreign as the thumbs on her fingers and the shattering ricochet of her heart. It holds her beneath the surface and pulls from her what can never be returned. She is a bullet at the mercy of the trigger, a pup at the mercy of its owner, a child in the mercy of her father.
The water engulfs her and she is sinking into the blue oblivion. His hands have vanished and she is a lone leaf abandoned by her tree, floating down into the unknown. The light runs further away until the darkness is complete and she should wonder where is up or down but she does not wonder, she does not worry. She does not think at all.
Until, finally, she returns to her mother's arms. Her name has never been spoken with such love before. She does not even struggle when the hands encircle her neck, instead she sighs and thinks, yes, she was entered the world with a cord around her neck, and it was fitting that she leave it the same way too.
But the flesh bleeds from the hands until nothing is left but bones and that, too, becomes dust, and it is devoured by the ocean.
Death does not come, rest does not come, relief does not come. Instead she hears a familiar voice calling her to tea. "You must eat. The servants made lithacakes, your favourite," and all she can think is, no, they are not my favourite. They are yours. Her body is ripped from the drowning world and she swallows the dry air. She is momentarily blind before crimson lights burst through the shadows and she is met with the world before her. Immediately, she wishes that she truly were blind. Was their unseeing world lonely or beautiful in its obliviousness?
Bodies were scattered around her like pieces of a broken dollhouse, their eyes the glassiness of a hollow, porcelain doll. They rested in their own lost life, their bodies long dry of blood and soul. She stumbles through the wreckage and finds her King, his body twisted, his flesh flaking from its bones, as his crown, ever glistening and ever gold, burrowed a dent into his skull. She fell to her knees and she fell to the ground, fell and fell and fell until she was sure she must have been in the lowest depths of hell.
"You are back," the King called. Even in death, it seemed, his voice held every star in the universe and every beat of the sun. She clutched his white boned hand, as if that might anchor him to existence. "Too late. Too late," he mumbles before even his voice leaves her delusions.
Guilt, you see, was not a quiet grey cloud. Guilt was a drowning man that clawed its way on top of you, scratching and tearing at your skin, pushing you under the surface. She saw the years of her life stretching out like an aurora that stretched on for light years and she saw it for what it was, agony and cowardice, cowardice and agony, and there selfishness thrived like a spider that spun its web from the skin of its victims. She saw the future and the paths that stretched before her, and she saw in all of them darkness, like a cliff or a song that stilled before its time.
Still she took a step, and she took another, and she crawled into her coffin. The world, the light, the paths and all disappeared as she returned to the blue oblivion. She was Sleeping Beauty trapped in an eternal slumber, she was a girl fighting to escape the body of a corpse and she was the flowers that sprouted where she lay. She was the wind that breathed life into the lungs of those above, the trees that stretched their arms in prayer, the birds that sang in praise of the selfless one beneath the earth and the sunrise that painted its colours on the fields of silver and gold.
Once upon a time, there was an Elvish Queen named Keressia; she was fierce, she was lost, and she was flawed, but my, was she beautiful.
The illusion ebbed away in weeps and tides, gentle and determined as they unraveled from the crying girl. Tears flowed from Keres' eyes like blood from a wound, but there were not enough oceans for her to weep. The markings on her body had not protected her from the illusion, sensing that no harm would come to her. Never had she felt more lost and devastated than at that moment, as she stood on the platform, suddenly realising all of it had been an illusion and a lie. She swore she still felt the dirt that buried her skin, and the ocean that devoured her body, but she was dry, clean, and back where she'd always been.
Keres wondered if perhaps this was an illusion too and eventually she would awaken to the cry of her own child whom she would love with all her heart. She imagined her own love beside her, brushing a kiss over her lips to awaken her from slumber. She closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment of dreams and when she opened them, she did not know to be devastated or furious. She felt too much and never enough, straddling two sinking boats as arrows searched for her heart.
"I am unfit for this task," she said finally. Her tears pooled at her chin and shattered on the wing of a butterfly engraved onto her dress. "I apologise for the inconvenience and I thank you for your time." She spoke without meeting Aizen's eyes, for fear she would strangle his head from his shoulder or worse, rest her head on his lap and weep until the end of time. Her voice was at odds with her eyes, formal and monotonous where she clearly was not. "Good luck," she added before spinning around. Her shoulders drooped slightly as she realised exiting would indeed require effort, effort she could not bother to exert. She did not care about Apocalys or the Nameless then, only wishing for a very, very long hibernation.