Regina Saxony

She was freshly eighteen and bright eyed as she strolled hand in hand with Ilya along the docks. This time, they strolled right on the edge of the water, the ocean roaring so that they wouldn’t have to speak to each other. His lightly red skin contrasted with his chocolate hair, it contrasted with his blue eyes as well. “You need more lotion!” She yells, trying to override the loud clashes of metal and the breaking of the waves.

“I’ll be fine!” he hollers back. Ilya’s palm is perspiring onto her own, his striped uniform showing a slight sweat streak trailing the crevice of his back. He trembles in her grasp and she fights back her own tears.

“You’ll come back to me.” Regina projects her voice, their steps becoming smaller and smaller as they begin to see the variety of uniformed men at the end of a dock in the close distance. The orchestra of mechanics seem to fade as they trudge so humbly forward. “You’ll come back to me.”

“I’ll do my best.” He readjusts his grip on the duffel bag he holds with the other hand. Satin tails of his embroidered Sailor’s cap trail behind him in a furious gust of wind. Regina wipes the stray tears falling to her cheeks, not wanting him to see for the fear of making it worse, she clutches the knot of her silk scarf with a free hand. “I’m not going to be in a damned trench, that’s a plus.”

She stops in place, and he stops there as well. Stroking back his hair with her trimmed nails, she cusps the side of his face—his flaking, sunburnt face and stares him straight in his gray eyes with a flaring conviction. “I don’t want my Ilya anywhere but here,” She declares, removing her hand and pecking his cheek with a passionate subtlety. Unlike before, she didn’t get the girlish butterflies that ripped through her core and stimulated her veins in a coursing heat. It was a sorrowful kiss.

Something that sent cold chills running the course of her colorless skin.

A tear runs down Ilya’s freshly shaven face and Regina’s fragile glass heart fractures into a thousand jagged, unbendable pieces that gather in the deepest pit of her abdomen. The sharpness of this reality cuts her open, it exposes her, it stings. “I’m sorry.” He chokes and the pieces divide even further.

“It’s just something that has to be done, right?” She strokes away his tears, ruffling his hair as she forced them to continue walking towards the toxic destination. “You’ll come back to me Ilya Volkov, and I will put you back together,” Regina declares as strongly as she can, but she only manages to sound like a chirpy little girl.

“I’m scared,” Ilya admits with a blush on his teary face. He was a boy going off to war after all.

“You’ll come back to me,” She’ll reasserts herself, knowing he’ll miss the departing ship if they don’t hurry.

They walk in silence for the remainder of their abridged forever, which was honed down to three minutes of walking in the ever-present wind in reality. “I’m going to write to you every day,” He promises her.

“You’d best,” Regina grins, trying to feign a happiness so that he would not cry again and break her spirit.

He leans down and kisses her on her unprepared lips on an impulse. Her silk scarf falls to the ground.

“Volkov! We’re boarding!” A decorated man on the ship calls out.

“Go on.” Regina brisks him away. “I love you, you know that?”

Ilya stoops over and retrieves her silk scarf that she forgot all about. “You keep it,” she rejects it in haste.

“Volkov!”

“I love you, Regina Saxony!” He calls as he sprints up the bridge. “And I’ll come back to you.”

And he waved goodbye until couldn’t see the skyline of the city any longer.

And she sat at the ledge of the water, head in her hands, and wept into the equally salty ocean.