Thanks for the reviews guys! Yep, last chapter was white! This chap is hella easy too, but hey, I never said they were gonna be hard! Enjoy!
Part 4
Insanity is Indifferent
Quite abruptly, it stops raining.
The sensation is so startling that for a moment Freya thinks she might have died, for surely a corpse cannot feel the drum of a thousand droplets? Cannot feel moisture making lines through fur, soggy and slick?
She blinks away these thoughts and stares at a sky burdened by heavy clouds, choking the unseen blue like smoke from a forest fire. Even under Freya's scrutiny they withhold their watery showers, shuffling past with a burly wind, as if they think Burmecia is too lowly to receive their heavenly freight. Not that it matters, she thinks, because the dead can't feel the rain anyway.
Freya lowers her gaze once more and awes at the gloominess of her thoughts. She is not surprised though; her task is not an uplifting one.
She stoops low to retrieve what she had put down: a newly carved gravestone. She does not recognise the name inscribed on its grainy face, or perhaps she does? She has been through so many gravestones now, the names are no different to the raindrops that have momentarily ceased to fall upon the City Of Eternal Rain: indistinguishable.
During the war, there was no time to create gravestones. The bodies were buried hastily and granted metal plates with names and birth dates etched upon their brittle surfaces. Now, in a time of peace, they can finally bestow upon the fallen the headstones they deserve. And it is Freya's task to plant them. A perverse kind of gardening, she thinks.
Freya had not been alone, initially. Others helped, but their hearts are frail. They cannot stand the act of finality, the morbid ache that gnaws their bones. But Freya can; she thinks her soul is quite numb.
Digging hard with the shovel (the rectangular hole must be deep lest the gravestone tumble beneath its own weight), she does not hear him approach. The stodgy mud muffles his footsteps; but still, she finds it odd because her ears are attune to most things. She thinks her senses must be numb, too.
"You have been working hard," he says, and his voice contains traces of hesitation. He had not known what to say; he spurted the first, useless observation that had popped into his mind. Freya does not know whether to be angry (lovers shouldn't have to think of things to say – is silence not enough?) or grateful (he has come to see her and that is enough), but in the end she just feels indifferent about the whole thing, and finds that so much worse. However, she decides to be polite, and stakes the ground with her shovel. It sinks easily into the mud then topples over like the mast of a sinking ship. She turns to him but cannot quite make the smile warm.
He's looking at the grave. He has a steaming cup of something in his hand. He notices her stare and his ears prick forward expectantly, but she says nothing, so he feebly extends the china cup and says, "I brought you ginger tea."
She can't help herself; it's out before she thinks of the consequences. "I hate ginger."
His eyes look stung, like one who looks directly into heavy rain. "Oh," he says. "Oh. I… I'm…"
"It doesn't matter," she dismisses, not because she genuinely doesn't care (she does) but because she can't bear to hear him say 'I forgot' or 'I'm sorry'. Not again. "I'll drink it anyway."
They sit on a grassy null, unperturbed by the mud. The absence of rain is unsettling; Freya feels naked without it. It is so quiet! The rain's chorus has fallen still, as if the clouds wish to listen to words exchanged. She glares up at their saggy burrows, but they bustle on obliviously.
He's fidgeting, and it irritates her, because she knows he's just looking for something to say. She spares him the task.
"How are the castle's repairs?"
He looks relieved that he doesn't have to start a conversation and again the strings of her temper are plucked. He hurriedly replies, "They fair well. The masonry is quite fine; finer perhaps than how the castle looked previously… though I cannot quite recall…" He trails off awkwardly, embarrassed, because even though Freya has said little of his amnesia, he senses the leaden lump of irritation, cool within her depths. "And the town is looking splendid. The people have worked so hard to rebuild it, and those who fled are returning in profusion by the day!"
Freya casts her gaze west and considers Burmecia sprawled below. She feels how a god might feel considering a thundercloud, for it is still grey and slick with rainfall. A gloomy sight, but she cannot apprehend the surge of affection anyway.
"I look forward to the day it is complete again," she sighs. "Though I suppose it will never truly be the same, as it was years gone."
Frately clears his throat and Freya realises he must think her comment directed at him.
"I am sorry that it will not be quite how it was," he remarks ruefully.
She curses the cobwebs in his mind, and the way he tries so hard to make things right, and the love she feels that refuses to diminish no matter how much she hates herself for it.
But outwardly, she just shrugs, then rests her head on his shoulder.
It begins to rain again.