Totenklage

[Nullia]

If this is fate,

then I deny it.

No matter what I do, I find my thoughts come back to her.
Like she haunts me.
With her dying breath, she cursed me with the meaning of love.
I understand now. My emotions sizzle. I tried to cast out my heart, to claim it was crushed,
but I find it still beats nonetheless.
Ah, I think to myself. Is this the human will?
To persevere when all that I am has been destroyed.

For, there was a time that I was hollow. It was not a belief. It was fact.
I was deprived by my self, of what others held most dear.
I sat where I always did, and mused on their lives.
What they were like. How they got there.
But father died before I was born, and I never knew the "couple".
The kiss, the hug, the touch of hands and what it all meant.
It just couldn't have been for me.

A girl briefly mentions that my mana "tastes like her taste in women".
I assume she is ill.
She points to a small device, and then makes some strange motion by her ear.
I stare at her like she's stupid.
I had never seen a transceiver in my life. It turns out she was telling me to call her.
I wish I had noticed earlier.

She looks at me, some longing in her eyes. She wants something. I don't know what.
Her hand is halfway between us.
I stare at it.
Very well.
My fingers touch her fingers. My palm touches her palm.
And I feel a shot of vulnerability so vile, I find myself unable to move.
I thought that I hated that feeling. It turns out I just wasn't ready to feel it.
I wish I had noticed earlier.

I fret every day and every night, about the secrets I keep from her.
I have never struggled with this before.
I feel an intense desire to tell her every component that makes me.
That terrifies me.
But I seek counsel, unable to overcome it myself.
And one day I decide that I can't take it anymore,
this feeling I am told is "guilt".
And I tell her all of me.
I thought she would reject me. It turns out she loved me no matter what.
I wish I had noticed earlier.

There is a girl.
She loves me no matter what.
I figured it was because I am pretty. Smart. Perfect.
And that she would lose interest when she found out how boring I was beneath the surface.
It turns out that she loved me for real.
I found that the most painful thing about that,
was that I didn't know how to love her back.
I told her I couldn't.
I told her I couldn't.
And she stood there,
and she looked me in the eyes,
and she said, verbatim,

"Even if it takes fifty years for you to understand.
I'll be here."

In my life, I have cried pitifully few times.
I knew no adversity.
I knew no loss.
I knew no pain.
I am a sheltered, coddled, mother's girl that was not even born quick enough to know the loss of her own father,
and therefore felt nothing of his death.
I can count the times I have cried on my fingers.
Once, when I was fed up with my lessons when I was six.
Once, when my mother passed away on my twentieth birthday,
And once,
when I heard her
say those words to me.

I have never known a more immediate, crushing pain.
It's a waste, I thought.
It's a waste on something like me.
And yet she defied me,
denied me,
and told me there that she would wait.

That she would crawl her way out of the Citadel,
just to see me again.

Well, Estel?
Will you?


I told her, then. I could not live with the shame.
That such a gift had been wasted on me.
I don't know if I meant it.
I don't know if I meant it any time after.
Not when I whispered her name—her real name—in her ear,
because I wanted her to love that too.
And not even in the last moments,
before she was off to die.

This romance was a slow-burn novel that never finished.

The producer shut down and the author died.

The pen remains on the table,

the words

"I love you"

never written.


I despise this curse. I resent this understanding.
Your final gift to me was to truly understand how much I had failed you.
I did not mean the words that escaped me even a single time.
They were selfish mockeries to keep away the guilt,
that you had wasted your time with someone like me.
That you would waste fifty years of your time.
Why...
Would you waste...
...So much time on me?
And so it is that your last words are,
"I'm sorry",
and,
"I love you".
I hear them.
And I hear you die.
And it plagues my every waking moment,
and my every dream,
to know that until your last breath,
I had lied to you.

If it is fate—
—then I deny it.

I reject this burden.
I reject this reality.
I reject this world.
I will make fate myself.

I will pen our story myself.

There was once a time that you told me I could do anything.
That you were convinced I make miracles.
And now in this time,
I fall to my knees and cry.
I do nothing.
I truly did not deserve you.

But I will become someone who does.


That when we next meet, I may look you in the eyes,
and say that which you most wanted to hear.
My unfiltered feelings, a confession unbridled;
the words "I love you", in your ear.


Very well.

May the world watch, as I make manifest,



a miracle.