One day, I might ask what played through her head during those seconds she bore my burden. I might ask what of her memories my feelings evoked; if they were as painful as my heart, to her. One day, I might ask, and I might care, about the burdens Elena bears. It seems, strangely—and in a way that feels too much like something broken, the wrongness of a bone through flesh—as if I will care, a sort of inevitability. 

(I had once believed her naive; but I cannot believe it any longer, not in the way she rips from me my own monster, not in the way that she holds it within her as one does a flame, or a secret, or their own pain. No. I can no longer believe her naive; not after seeing the fearlessness with which she faced the island, and my own rage). 

One day, I might ask about everyone she ever loved. I might ask about what pieces of them she took to hold; which pieces she had to keep, and what pieces—

I have to give it back now. 

She is wearing tears in her eyes. She is wearing them as if they belong to her, but I know they are mine. 

I only nod; at first I do not notice the transition. The sensation is too much like observing a stream; the sensation is too much like staring at water that always moves and somehow remains the same, with silver-bright fish flitting beneath the surface. I don’t even see them at first, I don’t even feel it at first—

And then it is as if my eyes focus; as if the world is brought back into the same painful clarity. I close my eyes; the rage at my center has returned. The fury warped from pain warped from love; it lives within me as steadily, as constant, as a heartbeat. 

She is wrong to think it suffocating, however, in that moment. Perhaps it will become that, again. 

I say nothing at first. 

You can sleep here tonight, wait out the storm. You will leave in the morning, before my daughter and her father return. I appreciate the offer; but words do not find me as I watch her take her leave. The soft close of her door is an aching sound; it does not span the distance between people, but enlarges it.

But, I cannot stay. 

I have never been able to—and yet, was that not her confession to me, on the island? I leave. 

I  also leave, I had said. And now I do. I leave her cottage and the homeliness of it, and step out into the rain. Damascus is waiting for me; he casts out a tremendous wing and we walk side-by-side away from the cliffside, through the rain-choked field. It comes down in cold torrents; in screaming wind; and—

It does not seem so bad. 

The storms were never forgiving on Oresziah. The buildings were too old; the masons too overworked. When they hit, everything leaked. They were standing in ankle-deep water within twenty minutes. 

“We’re gonna get sore feet for the march tomorrow—“ I complained, trying to find a bucket to toss the water out. We slept on the floor as first year cadets, on minimalist pallets. Those were floating, by then. 

He was laughing. “C’mon, it’s kind of funny.”

“How can you think this is funny?”

“Its just—when someone says worst case scenario, you can always think of something worse, you know?” It was dark. The only light came from the occasional cracks of lightening outside; but when he flashed a smile, I could see it, and it was like coming up for breath.

I couldn’t help the laugh, quiet and dark, that started in my chest and rose. In those days, I never laughed. “I—I guess it’s funny… I can’t think of anything worse than this.” 

I could hear other boys cussing down the hall, in other barracks rooms. The entire corridor was flooded.

“I can,” he said, that smile still gleaming. “We could be sharing worse company.” The next day, we completed the march together, in record time. 

We both had sore feet. 

It is not until I am well beyond the field, into the trees of the Viride, that I begin to cry.