I don't own the rights to a great and terrrible beauty or its sequels
It is a routine.
She comes once every year because the memories are too painful to deal with, and the loss is so clearly etched into her skin like freckles upon her cheeks. So she tries to forget it for the rest of the 363 days, but she always comes back.
He is there to greet her, ever consistent, always on time. Hello, she seems to hear him say, and greets him with a smile of her own; then she sits down and cries.
She cries for hours.
Sometimes she cries the whole day then gives him quick peck, as lovers often do. It is routine, and then she leaves, but most often then not, she begins to describe her life vivid with emotion and a passion. Behind her voice she thinks he can taste a taint of sadness. So she tries harder and smiles and laughs, always a touch to hard and cold to be genuine, but it is a try nonetheless.
"Gem-ma, Gem-ma" he urges her on.
She tells of her neighbors, her studies, her new friends and life, and of how she is happy but still misses him, misses him all the time, and sometimes she cries again. Blossoms fall, and the sky dims. "I love you," she whispers.
It is always spring when she visits, always May, always the 6th, and it is always night when she leaves.
She comes back the next year, and the next, and the one after that until it is routine, and all visits seem to blur into one, into a lifetime.
She grows.
She falls in love again (though not quite the same way as before) and tells him of it, of her daughter, and then of her son. She speaks of work and toil, of deaths and marriages like an old friend. She speaks of old age and aches and pains where there used to be none. She speaks of loneliness.
He is not jealous, she tells herself, because one thing will always remain true; that some part of her will forever be his. Sometimes she feels guilty, she confesses. Her husband has never understood that she does not love him fully, and she tries so hard to hide the magic from her family that it feels like some deep dirty secret. She tries to laugh it off, "My husband will have a fit," she says, "when he finds out I am having and affair with a tree."
The air fills with laughter.
Her smile is bright, but he can sense the tears as they fall off her face. The drops give growth to life around him, and she finds it funny as a rose shoots up form the ground, that her sadness should birth life.
She falls asleep for the first time there and stays the night. She leaves in the morning.
"I love you."
"Gem-ma, Gem-ma"
The next time she stays longer.
Her hair is grayer and she is much frailer, but the branches still trail gently across her cheek.
"I miss you," she cries.
"I love you," and falls asleep.
Her body never leaves her lovers' side again.
"Gem-ma, Gem-ma" the tree mourns.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed...all 3 of you... xD. It really means a lot though, and im so glad that the sadness came through. I just finished reading the book before i wrote this and i was like crying cuz it was really unfair, i really wanted the happy ending, but... so i just thought what would it be like for the rest of her life... and tada! And again.. THANKS... reviews are just soo fun! (they just made my day, srsly). Check out my tdk fic hero, and twilight fanfic he lied...its really short...but i'd love to hear what you think about it!:D