Are you happy?

[Only Sane Meranthan]

"Are you happy?"

"I am!"

You were.
Happier than you'd ever been, it seemed.
Everyone noticed.
Some thought your body stolen.
Some thought it an act.
Some thought it no more than a second wind.
You no longer held a connection to the Abyss. You no longer tortured yourself to cling on to another's power.
Even the helmet was gone.

I was so different.

A month passed.

"Are you happy?"

"Of course!"

A year.

"Are you happy?"

"A few headaches to deal with, but I am."
"You're asking that a lot. Is there a reason?"

Has it really been a decade?
"Are you happy?"

"... Less."

The usual ghosts.

The ones you were meant to be past, when you learnt to let others in.

Down and down it sinks and falls.

You changed your heart and now it stalls.
How much did you lose when she changed you so?

You've lost so much, it's time to go.

Would that this could be blamed on the Weaver.

She cannot hurt anyone anymore.

You're safe, Aricles.

This is how you've always been.

You retreat. You put up walls. All because-

"Death, disappearance, departure."

"...I still don't get it. Speak plainly."

"Most of the people I have ever cared to know fall into one of those categories."

You were meant to be past this.
The first sixty years were wasted in a cage of your own making; the hands of others reaching in time and time again, while you refused to take them.
Up until the day you were meant to die.

An end of your own making, once some of those hands had enough.
And still, so many tried to save you.

Right until your final moments,
When they dragged you out of that cage.

When I became an Aerodyne.

But you are back here, again.

Why was it, that-
It only took a few more deaths to set me back. 

You weren't even that close. A King and Queen, who just reminded you of Marfons and Rio.

Two more left, by choice, but you claimed you would celebrate their journey.

Then you kept your distance, even when others reached.

But I don't feel a want to know... Anyone, right now. 

A decade can pass. More faces will vanish, blur, appear. It won't feel different.

"... Are you happy?"

"..."

"... I think she saw something I didn't, from the first day."

I was so different after everything happened. Energetic, happy, excited for the future.

Everyone noticed.

I think I've slipped. Or never really made it out.

Everyone noticed.

They just don't bring it up, if you don't.
"I thought so too, you seemed so happy at first. What changed?"

"Okay, that right there is your problem."

"You think of having another child and immediately go 'To have a child is to suffer loss'."

Because mine was murdered in front of me. 

... I always think of the worst possibilities. It is how I've stayed alive. 

"That pessimism is why you remain miserable despite leading a life that many envy, would kill for even, would describe as nothing short of 'perfect'."

Nearly fifty years, since that first conversation.

You were there for a different reason, but you don't remember it.
You remember speaking to her, and being given that book.
Someone who was willing to throw away their life, for even a chance at stopping your execution.

When you had kept them at a distance, as all the others, for all the years before and since.

You didn't even read the book.

There comes a point where others stop trying, if you never take their hand.
The last time brought you to the Cleansing Oak.
It was meant to be the last.

You still have the book.

Maybe it's time to open it?

You need humans, little Aricles.