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I HAVE BURNED MY TOMORROWS, AND I STAND INSIDE TODAY
At the edge of the future, and my dreams all fade away
Ophelia was already shattered, numb. The water glass holding the flowers had broken, spilled over the countertop leaving only time to let the blooms die. There was no putting this back together again. There was no ‘time will heal all things’. There was no getting her mother back. She stared, unmoved when Ktulu’s lips brushed her dead ear, and she wondered what it smelled like from up close. The fumes had to be burning the inside of Ktulu’s nose such was the level of decay, but she said nothing, staring vacantly into the nothingness this day had become. The fact that this was a murder did not go unnoticed, not at all. She saw the single stab wound through the chest – the fatal blow to her life as she knew it and the destruction of her family.
Torleik’s words brushed past her ears, tickling the hairs. Maybe, before, she would have been moved by this, but now, she simply nodded, her head lifting and lowering as if of its own accord. Sorry. He’s sorry. For what? He did not ask for this. He did not do this. His two horns could not have killed her mother. So, what was sorry? Sympathy? Empathy? Was sorry supposed to make her feel better?
Ktulu’s words yanked her back, and she nodded again, the bobbing head movement so familiar and yet so foreign. Fire? Burning was so final. Soleil would be nothing but ash, but that would be better. Perhaps, if they had found her sooner, she could have been preserved for eternity on ice. But, in this state, the corpse was too foul. The pale princess of nothingness had to agree, but she could not make fire. “I can’t. Neither can Tinek,” she whispered, the sound unnaturally calm. The calm before the break down.
Ophelia was grateful in an absent way that Irelyn could make fire, and she felt the soft, warm feathers press into her neck. The purring sounded like desperation, a sound to sooth pain and distract. Tinek followed the large stallion, casting a backward, red-eyed glance at Ophelia before gathering sticks in his talons and retuning. The dragon placed them carefully around her body, mimicking the actions of the large, black male. When all was done, he sat next to Eytan, looking at the fallen mare and understanding from Ophelia’s broken heart that his should be broken too. Soleil was important to Ophelia, more important than he knew she would even admit to herself, and he mourned her passing for the agony it caused his bondmate.
The griffin left her shoulder and went to stand by the sticks, and she stared at the flowers on her body, wondering why this even mattered. What would the flowers represent? A sentiment she could never understand? What gift could she possibly give to the corpse of her mother. She could read minds, protect her own, and erase memories. The greatest gift she could give was to erase another’s pain entirely, but here she was staring death in the face and knowing she was powerless against its commands. Ophelia had nothing to give, nothing that Soleil could carry on to whatever afterlife she faced, so she stared.
She did not cry. No tears left her glassy eyes, for the pain that she felt was too deep and too tragic to be expressed through any emotion but vacancy or fury. Rage would not bring her mother back, so she was left to withdraw and let the agony corrupt her from the inside. Ophelia lifted her face to stare at Torleik and Ktulu, waiting for the signal to set her aflame and put her to rest. She had no words to say but one.
“Mother.”
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