Love never happens the same way twice

I slipped into the soft silk of the dress. It was old, obviously second hand, but amazingly comfortable. Slowly my fingers closed around each button and slid each on individually into the correct hole. I reached to the very top of the screen I was standing behind, on which lay a simple crimson ribbon. Delicately I tied my hair up so the bow was resting on the right side of my head. I looked deeply at my reflection in the mirror opposite me. I couldn’t recognise the person staring back at me.
The person staring back at me was not Rosalind. She was someone else, someone that would make you weep to see. She had big purple blotches around each eye, from sleepless nights and sheer exhaustion. Her hair was thinning, matted and loose around her shoulders. Her features were old and tired, as if they just wanted to sleep. She looked thin, her cheeks looking as if someone had sucked all the air from them. She clearly looked malnourished. And her eyes, her eyes were sour, bleak and hollow. They were dead, cold and flat, unlike any other eye could be. They looked empty.
I was scared by the person looking back at me, and scared for them at the same time. They looked close to death. I felt more at ease, although that wasn’t very at ease at all, to think that this person giving a dying look at me wasn’t in fact me. It was someone else who had lost their husband, someone else who was suffering. Suffering was easy when it wasn’t our own. We could watch it all day, pretending that we care when really we didn’t, and letting it carry on for eternity. However, when this same suffering, or a small fraction of this suffering, happened to us, then we were always puzzled and upset when people didn’t treat it like the world had ended.
Footsteps sounded as they came closer to me and stopped. My heart paused with them. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I recognised those footsteps. I shook my head, no, it couldn’t be. But I didn’t think that for long, because thinking that hurt far too much. I listened closely, to see if I could match the identity of the person to the footsteps. There was silence for a few moments before a voice spoke, “Who’s behind the screen?”
I fell to my knees, gripping my heart as it started pumping and pulsing unexpectedly. The hole in my chest was gone; something had carelessly stitched it back together and forced it to function again. Each beat caused me even more pain than the last. My shaking white hand flew to my brow, pinching the top of my nose. I shook my head; I didn’t want this. It hurt, it really, really hurt. I sucked in my breath as it suddenly started flowing through me far too quickly. I fell against the wall, catching my breath desperately. Tears, hot wet tears sprang to my eyes. I hadn’t cried in so many days, so why now, why now? I suffered in silence for the next few seconds until the voices kicked in, causing me even more agony.
“Oh brother you’ll never guess! You’ll be so excited to see her again, and I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you again. It’s been so long.” Viola was excited, clearly smiling the words. How could she be? How could she still be excited when Sebastian was dead?
There was a pause while he gathered his thoughts and managed to work out what she was talking about, “Wait Vi, do you mean…”
He was cut off by an overenthusiastic Viola, “Yes! It’s Rose, she’s back!” No, she wasn’t. A broken twenty-three year old woman who looked vaguely similar to Rosalind was back. Rosalind was gone. The tears flowed even more rapidly as I said that to myself. I tried to stop them but continued to be unsuccessful.
What he said next was confusing. Viola was so excited about my appearance but rather than excitement, he said, “What went wrong?”
I could hear in her voice Viola’s questioning, curious look, “Excuse me?”
I heard him furiously shake his head, “Vi, do you remember the last thing I said to her before she left?”
I heard two shoulders shrug, “Um… Goodbye I suppose…”
I heard an angry sigh, “No Viola, think! What did I say?”
I heard her take a step back, “Why are you so angry brother? She is back with us, isn’t that a cause for celebration? I know she’s not Rosaline but that’s no reason to chastise her.”
I thought back to the last thing he had told me. I couldn’t remember. My mind was filled with white darkness. Memories of happy times had been lost long ago. I listened closely, hoping their words might relight the fire of my past. I listened, silently, “If you are ever in so much pain that you can’t face life anymore, and you are wearing that necklace, you will return to us.” I heard a sigh, “Something very, very bad has happened.”
They continued talking as I slipped silently out of the tent, where the two sides joined and were tied together with simple rope. I walked along the dirt, the pebbles getting caught in the groves of my feet and between my toes. The tent was at the edge of the camp, so soon I was surrounded by nothing but the age old trees, which never shed their leaves for the thousands of years they stood for. My dress trailed along the ground also, catching pieces of twig and rock which began to tear at its rich material. I didn’t care, let it be torn to shreds, it wouldn’t bring Sebastian back. Let the branches of the trees tear my hair from its roots; it wouldn’t matter in the long run. When I was dead and buried underground, who would care? What impact would I have made on the world? If I didn’t even leave the slightest finger print, then why did I even bother? In two hundred years time, not one person would care whether I died at that moment or if I died in fifty years time. I wasn’t important, and even if I was I would just be a set of dates. What was I if I was I if I was just numbers? I was dead to all but memory, and dead to even that. I was dead.
The trees never stopped, they never finished. I didn’t want them to finish. Sometimes I wished that things would never end, because the end was always painful, whether it was for the better or for the worst. My legs failed me without warning. Before long I found myself leaning against a tree, gasping for air from the tears which rolled down my cheeks. I couldn’t control my body any longer. I couldn’t even feel what was happening until it happened. The tears which rolled down my eyes were uncontrollable as they fell.
I fell onto my knees, lightly hitting my head against the bark of a tree. It wasn’t fair. I continued to bash my head silently into the tree. I wasn’t hard enough to cause any damage but it was hard enough to give me a terrible headache. My head was throbbing and yet I continued to hit it against the tree, oh-so-lightly. The bark, although it really should have, did not fall of into my hair. It held strong, gripping to the tree with all its energy. It was pathetic, hanging onto life. Life wasn’t meant to be held onto, because however tight your grip was, you always fell of eventually.
My head hit the tree one last time before I couldn’t do it anymore and let my head fall onto my knees, turning around so my back leant against the tree. Nothing mattered anymore. I might as well have sat against that tree and died of hunger or dehydration on some terrible disease for all I cared. But I didn’t. Soon my feet were leading me further and deeper into the forest. I didn’t once look back.

I had been walking for many hours. Or at least it seemed like hours. A minute knowing Sebastian was dead was like an hour to me. So the hours pasted in the blink of an eye, and in a few days. It didn’t matter how, but they pasted, and it was midnight as I fell against a tree.
Blood trickled down my cheeks. Was I crying blood now, or had my tears mixed with the hundreds of cuts that decorated my face. The crimson liquid trickled down to the bottom of my chin, where it dripped lightly onto my fingertips. Why was I bleeding? Sebastian bled when he died. As his rip cage had shattered, puncturing several organs, he bled a plentiful amount. I was hardly worthy to do the same thing.
I smeared the blood across my cheek, wiping it from my hands desperately. It was blood. It was Sebastian blood, smeared on my hands. I had his blood on my hands, decorating them, clothing them. Because I had known had I not? I had known my world would fall and I had known my world was him. So why had I not saved him before he had fallen into an early grave. I should have saved him.
I fell onto the dirt, covering myself in the leaves and other such dead things that lay on the ground. I just wanted to become the ground, watch as others fell around me but never have to take the hit myself.
I reached out on shaking white finger, and another. I pushed them deep into the soil, pulling all my bodyweight with them. I pushed the other fingers from the other hand further ahead into the dirt, repeating the same agonising ritual. My pain didn’t matter, not anymore. I pulled myself along the dirt for several more moments before I was in a small clearing.
I head the gentle swoosh of the river as it flew beside me. It was the only sound. The wind was silent. The moon refused to show its head. The stars were covered by the angry hand of the clouds. No-one showed their pitiful faces.
I stood up by pushing against the bark of a tree only a few metres high. I staggered over to the large stone tablet that stuck a metre out of the ground. I ran my fingers over the letters several times. On the third time my fingers rested on the single cutting word. It was cutting into my soul. Yes, he did fall. But why did it happen in the first place. Because it was written in stone, was that why? Did they predict that he would die because it would benefit them? Did they not think of the amazing things Sebastian could have done? Did they think one life was worth less than a whole civilization? To me, Sebastian’s death meant that he could never be a father, a grandfather. In the long run, his children and their children and their children could have been a whole civilization. But not anymore. In killing Sebastian they had killed a whole civilization.
I hit my fist lightly against the hard, hurtful rock, “Damn it.” I hit it harder, causing myself more pain, “Damn it! DAMN IT!” I punched the rock repetitively, not letting the pain halt me in anyway, “Why? Why!? WHY!?” My fist slowed as it gradually gave up, “Why…” I whispered, so low I could barely hear it.
“Sebastian! Do you hear that? I think she’s over here!” A voice shouted from behind the trees. It was Viola’s voice, and it was scared. Why was she scared? It wasn’t her brother who was dead. It was Viola, with the short hair and the deep chocolate eyes, who was suffering, not her. Why was she scared?
“It’s fine Viola.” said a voice, a metre behind me, “I’ve found her.”