He never goes in the reading room. He doesn't like books. His only interests are legends and fairytales and nobody writes them anymore.
And no one can cry for a long lost happy-endings.
His violin is in the living room. Abandoned next to the window, right where his music sheets are, where he used to play. He liked to play with the window wide open, in a strange egocentric impulse that doesn't really fit him.
The cello is right there, too, lying on the floor, in the dust.
Denmark never tried to play it again, he never felt the need or the will to do it. The cello can just produce sad sounds, melancholic melodies. A violin can make you feel every sort of sensations and emotions, so playing just the cello doesn't make sense.
The sound is useless, incomplete. Denmark is incomplete.
So many things don't change, still.
The territories do, they can change and become something else entirely, but there is always a memory of what it was, of the place they existed and were linked together.
They never had real boundaries. The sea was always in between and the territories never touched. But there is a place, between Denmark's ribs, at the opposite of his heart, were he can't help but feel his loss. And it is like this from the moment Norway went away, the first time.
There's a void, an emptiness he can't fill, a place were he used to feel what Norway felt. The pain of a war, the sensation of being powerless in front of the agony of his people, the fear of dying and cease to exist as a Nation.
When Norway choose independence, those feelings disappeared, but Denmark felt this loss as a void, wanting again to feel and hear, to know what Norway felt. He missed that pain, the link to the man he loved.
He learned too late that the place where he felt Norway was the one he used to feel his heart beating when he hugged him.
.
"I don't care, I want to stay with you. I promised, remember?"
.
.
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Author here!
I am so sorry for the delay. As I was translating, I started to become unsure about this work. It's one of my favorites, but still, seeing it in english makes me think it's unworthy. Perhaphs because it is so short!
But then I started and I want to finish it for the people who read it and want to know how it ends. Thank you for reading, commenting and following the story, next chapter is the last one! :)
