Her father stepped down from the podium and gave me a look that told me he couldn't go on any longer. His eyes were red and ringed with dark circles, indicative of too many tears and not enough sleep. She haunted his dreams the same as mine. He was broken from grief, exterior exuding my interior. I stepped up to the podium quickly, allowing him to escape the room humid with the tears of every acquaintance she'd ever met. She'd laugh at the fact that she sold out her own funeral. She'd think it was hilarious that we were skirting around the death. No one could muster the strength to talk about how it happened or the condition of the body in the casket beside the podium.
I glanced around the packed room, a sea of sobbing black. She would have hated all of these people sniffling at memories of her. She would have hated the empty hollowness that was suffocating me, swallowing me whole. I could hear that laugh of hers now. Tinkling, roaring, howling, all of those descriptors for laughter that any good journalist would use. None of that fit her laughter. It could only be described as the sound of coming home after a long day.
"There's a quote I once heard when I was young that said that we were the universe experiencing itself. If there was ever any truth to that statement, it was seen through Victoire. She'd burst into a room full of grace and full of chaos and in her wake there was nothing but awe."
I tried to ignore the memory of our first Yule Ball together scratching at the back of my mind. When she descended the stairs and the violins stopped playing in the background. A palpable anxiousness to see her filled the room, a collective gasp at the sight of her. She was the most beautiful woman in the world without even realizing it.
"She was an explosion of wonder and pandemonium. The only thing I cannot forgive myself for– the only thing I regret through every bit of this heartbreak she left me, was that I did not fall in love with her sooner."
There was a lie there. I could hear her laugh again. She knew I was in love with her since we played together as kids. The love was a different love though. A first crush, a first dance, a first kiss, a first date, a first everything. She'd been my everything for as long as I could remember.
"You hear phrases like 'she was fire and ice' but that's not enough for her. She was erupting, devastating volcanoes and violent blizzards claiming the lives of many."
Her kisses were never soft or gentle. They were turbulent waves slamming against the shoreline of my lips.
"Her smile didn't brighten a room, it irradiated it. The emission of the waves of her happiness, no matter how temporary, caused all my cells to rupture in desire."
"She wasn't just the love of my life. She was a force of nature. Today, we will mourn the loss of Victoire, but we must also celebrate her as she'd celebrate us."
Through the unwavering sniffling of all those that knew her and the violent sobs of her mother, I could make out murmurs of agreement. I saw her brother, almost a mirror image of her face, a void shell of who he once was. That was something that she wouldn't have laughed at. She'd have wept endlessly at the sight of him. I left the podium and assumed my place in the sea of black, sniffling with the rest. I could still hear her haunting laughter ringing in my ears and I wished for nothing more than to hear it for the rest of my life.