Cold

“No, no, no, no!”

The girl runs towards him, not believing everything her senses tell her. Her frantic footfalls echo dully around the room off the walls, floor and ceiling, all lined with hard, cold stone.

She falls, weak-kneed at his chest, her whole body trembling, unable to support her any longer. One of his hands falls across his chest, much like his hair, prematurely greying, sweeps across pale, closed eyelids. Her hair, opposingly vividest pink, falls in front of her as she tilts her face downwards and reaches out a long arm, gracefully. She uncovers his eyes in the hope to look into then one last time. For moments she just looks into his blank face, willing it to make some motion, anything to reassure her that he was still there, was still with her. But it stays frozen, emotionless.

Clutching the hand across his front with both hands, clinging on for life, she begins to rock gently on her knees.

Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…

The rhythm seems to calm her slightly, for she is too overcome to produce tears. Tears could not bring him back.

Nothing could.

Light treads behind her cause her to start. Turning her head to the right, she sees a dark woman standing behind her, a curtain of black material hanging from her waist at eye level, and curls sweeping round her frame. Their eyes meet, and when they do, she laughs – high and cold, finally triumphant.

She realises what is then going to happen.

And against everything, she doesn’t fight back.

Instead she allows a wave of emotion to fill her, everything she’s ever felt. And the memories come with them.

Running away, not wanting to face anyone, after he told her he couldn’t love her.
The feel of her son’s warm weight in her arms.
The excited thrill of the unknown when entering the Department of Mysteries.
Crying into her mother’s shoulder at the loss of her father.
Everyone smiling at her when she first joined the order.
The exhilaration when dancing with him underneath a star-strewn sky on their wedding night.
Collapsing into darkness and toppling down a set of high stone steps.
Hands running across a swollen stomach.
Warm lips brushing against hers by the lake.

There is no denying her fear, but there is something more there, something stronger, something even more powerful.

She closes her eyes, and falls, as if already hit, until she lies across her husband’s chest, before raising his hand to her mouth, and pressing her lips against it. Speaking in a whisper through a constricted throat, she tells him,
“I lo –,“

She’s broken, mid-sentence, by a flash of green light that penetrates even her closed eyelids.

She’s falling.

Falling alone.

She’s falling.

And this time there’s no one there to catch her.