Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. Those were the only sounds that could be heard as Nebula, High Queen of the Earth fairies, walked down the long, barren corridor underneath her palace of Tir Nan Og. Unlike the higher levels of the castle, which were always bustling with the activity of her subjects -from warrior fairies making their rounds to messengers hailing from the realms of the other Major Earth Fairies hoping for an audience, the underground levels rarely saw visitors at all, and seemed to maintain an air of if-not-eerie-at-least-unusual silence at all times.
This hallway, in particular, crossed Nebula's mind as perhaps the least-visited corridor in all the corridors of the castle, fittingly named The Last Hallway. There was only one reason anyone, fairy, wizard, or magical being, came here, and that was the reason she was there today.
Finally reaching the end of the hall, she stopped and turned to the figure beside her, who was so completely enveloped in her navy blue cloak that from the back it looked as if the night-blue swath of fabric had been gliding itself alongside the Fairy Queen.
Nebula reached her hand out and set it gently on her guest's shoulder. "You're sure you want to do this?" she asked again, one last time. Unsurprisingly, she received a resolute nod from underneath the hood.
"All right, then," Nebula nodded back, turning on her heel with a regal swish of her cape. "I will be waiting for you at the other end of the hall."
Just like that, she left Princess Layla of Andros to enter the Garden of Asphodel all by herself.
…
There were many words one could use to describe the princess of Andros –warrior, athlete, leader, girlfriend, and at times just your average insecure and lonely teenage girl, but weak had never been one of them. Even now as she approached the raised circular platform in the center of the garden, Layla kept her footsteps even, her breathing calm, and her eyes free from tears.
It wasn't until she was close enough to read the inscription on the podium did she release any audible sign that her breath had hitched in her throat. Subconsciously, she realized her hand had balled into a fist, tightly clutching onto the fabric of the inside of her cloak, and she slowly moved to regain a calm possession of her hand.
Pulling the hood off of her head, she stared at the flower that was planted at its center –beautiful, fragile, eternal. "Nabu…" she began. "On one year today, you proposed to me, and—and I know I promised I would shut the sorrow out after that day you," she choked on her words. "But—" She was unable to go on.
Suddenly, she fell to her knees, and it was as if a whole year of sorrow and sadness that she hadn't let herself feel was crashing down on her at once with all the force of a tsuamal tidal wave. Heaping her arms onto the concrete edge of Nabu's honorary gravestone, her shoulders began to heave up and down beneath her old, weathered traveller's cloak, her breathing hitching and catching at uneven places. All the inexpressible pain that she had been keeping inside of her for too long came tumbling out in the form of her hot, messy tears, and she let it. She didn't care who could see her now; she didn't who could hear her now. But, of course, there was no one in the entire courtyard besides herself and the unfeeling flowers that swayed listlessly to the beat of their nonexistent wind.
As Layla sobbed her heart out, she was completely alone.