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Erendis watches the wispy morning mist roll over the water, beginning to fade away and drift out to sea as the light becomes brighter. The waves swell gently, their white crests foaming impatiently. She will go to them, in a moment, and let the ocean swallow her up. She will surrender quietly to the roar of the water, and to the taste of salt in her mouth; she will surrender to her old enemy, who she no longer feels any enmity towards. She is too tired now, too old for her hate, for anything but death.
She does not feel sad, knowing of her imminent death. She is merely resigned, and accepting of this fate. There is no fight left in her, though she would have fought it once. She would have fought it to the very end, dragging out her life mercilessly, as far as she could. Now, it is different.
Instead, this looming shadow of death that awaits her reminds her of a dusty memory of a day long ago, when she had sat in the forest all alone; the day she had learnt what loneliness is. Erendis had barely been more than a girl, then, just at the beginning of those long, awkward years when she would learn it again and again. She had sat on the forest floor, her knees pulled against her chest, leaning against the trunk of a tree. The bark had felt rough and scratchy against her skin as she pressed her cheek up against it, almost as if she was listening for a heartbeat somewhere in the layers of wood, a deep thud hidden beneath the moss; any small sign of life.
Erendis had wandered off by herself that day, morose and forlorn. She had pushed everyone else away, slowly and methodically, all nonchalance and disdain. Her performance had been flawless to the point that she had even come close to falling for it herself; she had almost believed that she did not need them. Sitting there by herself, Erendis had felt a sick sense of accomplishment. She had been filled with a sense of her own power, but it had still not been enough to mask the crushing loneliness, and the aching disappointment underneath, the belief that they had given up too easily. Deep down, she had known that it was a hollow victory, and that this was not really what she wanted, but still she clung to the belief that it was, and to her pride, treacherous companion though it is.
It was then that Erendis had discovered the difference between solitude and loneliness. She had realized, with a child's foresight, unclouded as it is by the loss of innocence and all that that entails, that this was to be her life, this disillusionment, this bitter loneliness. It was also, perhaps, the first time she had realized her own mortality, that eventually, she would die, most likely alone and forgotten. She had known, suddenly and irrevocably, breathing in deep gulps of the forest air, crisp and sharp, that this was to be her fate.
And so she was not surprised, now, to find that this feeling of impending death smells of moss and the bittersweet stench of natural decay, and seems to encompass that same overwhelming loneliness that she had felt that day.
Loneliness seems to be the only emotion she can hold on to anymore, can stop from fading away just as the mist does. She had been angry, for a time, angry with herself for finally weakening and wanting, once again, the comfort of his arms; for making one last desperate attempt to free herself from the loneliness that engulfed her, a thick fog that she had been able to feel thickening and thickening until it threatened to choke her. She had felt angry, too, when she had found he was not here, just as he was never there when she needed him. Yet the anger had not lasted.
Erendis has found that she no longer has the energy for fury, and that the excitement, the wild exhilaration that went hand in hand with it once, bore her now; she has felt it too many times before. This type of ecstacy, after a time, ceases to thrill as it once did. It has become too familiar, too repeated, a pattern of broken glass and wild sobs.
She looks down at the water, finding her reflection staring back unflinchingly, a rippled portrait. One last look at herself before she is lost forever, swallowed by the sea; as if she has never been, existing never again save in memory.
How will she be remembered, she wonders? Erendis searches for something, anything, some mark she has made on the world, something that will, after she is gone, prove that she existed. A broken, lonely daughter, who she condemned to this same loneliness even as she tried to save her from it. A husband who she was not able to change, and who she has taught, also, the meaning of loneliness.
Not that she pities him, after all these years, after all the suffering he had put her through. Or perhaps she does, in her own way; her feelings about Aldarion are too many and varied to ever be properly defined, though they lean mostly towards resentment. She looks again at the rolling waves, though she does not see them.
This is, really, when all is said and done, though she is loath to admit it, Erendis's one last act of defiance; a last desperate attempt to have the last laugh. Let Aldarion think that she has done this because of him. Guilt has always been one of her preferred weapons; it is untraceable, yet pointed nonetheless. Let him know what it is like to die a little each day. Let him cry for her as many tears as she has cried for him, all these years. She is finished, now.
She leans over the edge of the dock unhesitantly, without so much as a last glance behind her. Then she is falling, smoothly, gracefully into the water; drowning in her own reflection.