The sun was aggressive, punching through the blinds like it had a personal vendetta against my hangover. It shone brightly—a "good day" for most—yet for me, it was the first morning in my life I had woken up without her beside me. The light felt like an intrusion, a loud noise in a room that deserved to be silent.
I reached for the depressing cup of coffee nesting on the table. It was cold, oily, and tasted of ash. I stared into the black liquid, my hand trembling so violently that the ceramic rattled against the wood.
Knock.
The sound against the front door was like a gunshot. I didn't want the world. I didn't want "check-ins." I dragged my heavy body to the door, twisting the knob with a slow, agonizing dread. As the wood creaked open, a familiar figure appeared in my peripheral vision.
"I was just checking on you, Allan," the man spoke. He was an old fella; his shock of white hair was a testament to his age, a map of time I wasn't sure I wanted to travel myself anymore. His eyes were full of that soft, suffocating pity that makes you want to scream.
I stared at him for a heartbeat. The air he brought with him from the village felt too fresh, too full of a life that no longer belonged to me. Before his sentence could even land, I stepped back. My hand shoved the door forward with a strength that wasn't entirely human.
Thud.
The sound echoed through the hollow house, a violent punctuation mark. I didn't lock it; I just leaned my forehead against the cool, grainy surface and waited for the footsteps on the porch to fade away. I wasn't Allan today. I was just the space where a man used to be.
The silence that followed didn't feel like peace; it felt like a predator. I stumbled back toward the desk, my knees nearly giving out. There it was: her leather-bound journal. I'd been avoiding it for weeks, terrified that her handwriting would be a fresh wound, but the emptiness of the house was finally louder than my fear.
I opened it with the desperation of a man digging for water in a desert. I traced the loops of her letters until I reached the final page. The ink was darker here, the letters hurried. It was a poem about a place she had only ever seen in her dreams—a valley where the wind sings in chords.
But the last stanza was a jagged, empty space.
"The stars are but silver seeds planted in the dark, waiting for the gardener of the morning to—"
And then... nothing. Just a cruel, white void where the rest of her soul should have been. A solitary, jagged comma hung over the paper like a hook.
"To what?" I whispered, my voice a cracked ruin. "To what, Alice?! Finish it! Please, just finish the damn line!"
I grabbed a quill, dipping it so hard into the inkwell that the glass chipped. I tried to write. To bloom. No. To wake. No. To die. I slashed the words out until the paper was scarred with black ink. Every word I wrote felt like a lie. I was a mage who could command the elements, yet I couldn't find one single word to give her the peace of a finished sentence.
"I can't breathe in here," I choked out. The walls were closing in, suffocating me with the scent of dried lavender and old memories. "The house is just skin without a pulse."
I didn't pack. To pack was to admit I might come back. I grabbed my staff from the corner—the ancient wood felt like a tombstone in my hand. I reached for her inkwell, the black liquid sloshing like a dark heart beating against the glass, and I tucked it into my tunic.
I walked to the door. I pulled it open, and the world rushed in—vibrant, loud, and offensive in its persistence. I didn't lock it. I didn't even pull it shut. I left it gaping wide, an invitation for the wind to steal the silence I could no longer afford to keep.
Stepping over the threshold felt like falling upward. My first step into the dirt wasn't a stride; it was a surrender. Behind me lay the life we had written together—a beautiful story cut short by a broken spine. Ahead lay the white, terrifying margin of the world.
I didn't look back. I started to walk, my staff striking the earth with a rhythmic thud, a heartbeat for a journey that had no map, only a rhyme that refused to be born.