Chapter 18
The Rivers Cried Have Dried
Witch
For a moment there I lost myself, truly lost myself, in a way that I hadn't in over a decade. I woke from a haze when morning light slanted through curtains carelessly left parted and fell right across my eyes. I hadn't slept. I hadn't even moved since I crashed through the house after my flight from the Goddess. Hell, I felt like I hadn't even taken a breath since then. The light stung my eyes but I didn't bother with squinting as the dust motes started to glow golden. Birds would be chirping if they weren't still scared out of the area by my rampage. The room lay in shambles, books torn from the shelves and papers strewn about. Three different shattered inkwells were soaking their tinctures into the wooden floor. Aside from the couch I was sitting on, every piece of furniture was upturned. And I didn't care.
I didn't care.
Not caring wasn't exactly like me. I felt things deeply, I was a passionate person and I allowed my emotions to have sway over my actions. Perhaps too much sometimes. My explosion when faced with the Goddess reflected that. Sitting listlessly on the couch did not. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to stand up, change my clothes, and go about my day the way that I knew I should.
"Witch? Are you home?" Kasey's muffled voice called from beyond the door. He had attempted his customary two-knocks-then-enter tactic and been stopped, for the first time, by my door being locked. I looked around the room, which was now in a much better state, and placed a hand on my hip. The books had found their ways back onto the shelves and my notes and papers were returned to some semblance of organization on the table. The organization of my home did not reflect the state of my mine. I could hardly compose myself enough to speak in modern English, let alone open that door and humor Kasey. My breath left me in a slow whoosh as I raised my hand to rub at the migraine building behind my eyes.
No, I decided simply, I wasn't home.
"Witch?" Kasey called out again, the sharp sound of him rapping on the door echoing through the room for the third time. I could feel him standing at the door for just a few more moments before he trotted back off through the forest, to do whatever it is that Heroes do.
Hero. What an odd word to apply to anyone in this day and age, but he seemed to fit the archetype rather flawlessly. Mister Tall Dark and Handsome running about with his lofty ideals of altruism and doing selfless acts for selfish people. Selfish. That's all we really are in the end. Running from our problems because it's easier for us. Living in denial because it's easier for us. Who are we to hold the future of the world in our hands when we act so carelessly with the futures of ourselves? I squeezed my head between my hands, desperately urging the aching in my head to stop, before I moved across the room to undo what I never should have done.
When I pulled open the bottom drawer of my dresser, I was halfway expecting to find years' worth of dust. Instead I was met with a jumble of pristinely preserved keepsakes. All of the things that I told myself I couldn't stand to look at for one reason or another had been tossed into this drawer when I couldn't bear to just do away with them. Pictures and portraits, framed and unframed, lined a drawer filled to the brim with gifts and memories. Cara stared back at me from many of them, but other memories had been confined to this drawer as well. The migraine I had been trying to ignore for the past few minutes pulsed behind my eyes and I gripped the edges of the drawer tightly as my vision blurred and my stomach rolled. "You need to do this, Vivi." I whispered hoarsely, my knuckles going white as I squeezed the drawer even tighter and fought to settle my stomach. "It's time." I asserted firmly as I reached into the drawer to, for the first time ever, take something out instead of put something in.
At the end of the hour, my house looked the way it always should have. Walls that had stood bare for years upon years now held countless portraits and pictures of my friends, the people who had supported me like family throughout the centuries. The knickknacks and gifts that I had been given littered the surfaces of my shelves and dressers. I wrinkled my nose at the way it almost looked cluttered, but ignored my misgivings in favor of the way this eclectic chaos of memories suited me in a way I had been ignoring. I found my way back to my couch and sat down to take in all the faces staring down from the walls. These people were who I was and, like many other things, I had ignored that. This mess of prized possessions meant so much more than my childish feelings of betrayal at the loss of their lives and friendship. I chose my immortality, but they didn't choose the imminence of their own deaths. It was time to grow up.
It was dark by the time I heard another knock at my door, and I hadn't moved from my place on the couch. I'd taken the day for myself, to spend a few hours living in the memories I had only half-honored in the past. "Witch?" Cara's son called out from the other side of the door, so much louder than Kasey's had been earlier in the day. His voice lacked a certain quality that I'd come to expect over the past month; the exuberance that he had inherited from his mother, a trait that may have unconsciously kept me from simply sending him away when he got on my nerves, had been replaced by a sort of tentativeness. Luke, unlike the other times he had come calling, almost seemed like he was hoping I wouldn't answer the door. I rose from the couch, my joints popping in a sick arpeggio, and made my way to the door anyway.
Author's Note: HOW DARE I TAKE THIS LONG A BREAK. I'm sorry guys, things have been really ridiculously crazy with school lately, and they aren't going to be letting up any time soon. I just want to say that, having relocated my brain and taken a step back from everything remotely artistic that I've been working on – this story is ass. I still like the core concept and direction but it's heavily in need of revision, elaboration, and a little bit of reworking. That being said, I will still attempt to finish and post a final first draft before I try to do something ambitious like those changes. Sorry for the delay. I honestly didn't even get to start writing these two chapters until like 3 hours ago. Update schedule is going to be a bit erratic for a while, as I have to get through all of my finals for this semester and then attack Organic Chemistry over the summer semester.