It's been said that human memory is like a sieve. Every moment lived, another moment is forgotten, and by forgetting, loss and pain are dulled. Time heals every wound a human might acquire. But I am not human. I do not forget.
I was different, once. Memories as clear as her eyes remind me of this. I was cruder. I was angrier. Years of living within a holocaust of whirling fire, years of knowing the loss that echoes into eternity, have stripped me of that, of everything. Nothing remains of who I was but memory and my reflection in the dark waters of this place.
It's been two years - two long years, while every beat of the heart seems to ooze the blackness, the tarry ink of forever through every vein, every pore, every breath. Six years of pain that has my mind screaming, straining to be heard, hour after endless hour while I should be sleeping. And I stand and scream, shriek and writhe within, knowing that no one sees, no one hears, because no sound passes the lips that now peel and bleed with high fever. I cry out my agony within, because sleep is worse.
At night, when at last my cries quiet and my shaking stills, my eyes close, and I pass behind the amber light within them, to memory. This is why I fight to hold myself to the raging burn of the furnace, why I cling to my torture - because no pain could be worse than seeing her, loving her - when the light of day chases her away again.
But every night, my efforts weary me, and I fall again. Every morning, the cruel lance of the sun pierces the inky shadow of her hair, the clear, strong sound of her voice.
And she is gone. But now, finally, rest comes. Rest comes, and the inferno of every moment knowing that she is dead will finally quiet.
I stand at the dark waters, the river that no living man can touch, and I finally allow myself to remember, remember my last days with her. I remember how it came to be - from wailing ululations of the first mother to lose a child that illness had reduced to a pale waif, to the roaring, ravenous fires of the great pyre that burned the dead.
I am dying. And I will join her at last.
This is the twilight of our story. May your memory hold strong what mine can no longer touch, so that in you, her last days will echo forever.
Kagome.