Between Somewhere and Nowhere

A Human Experience

The moon bathed Lilith in light as she wandered idly in Mary's garden, settling within the feelings of grief and heartache. Reaching beyond the anger she felt at the death of Adam, an emotion she was familiar with and used to manipulating to her will, she faltered with sorrow, rolling it around within her as if it were an object she was trying to discover. A curious observer, Lilith noted how it felt - the sadness settled like grains of sand in the bottom of an hourglass, heavy and suffocating. It was unpleasant but it seemed to open her up, cracking her ribs wide open to make way for a more intense experience. It floored her and Lilith found herself compelled to sit down on a bench between a trellis of sweet peas and a hydrangea bush.

Breathing out slowly, fully immersed in her feelings, Lilith winced and muttered to herself; "Humans experience this all the time?"

Struggling to understand how humanity could feel so deeply and continue to put one foot in front of the other, Lilith's thoughts wound back to Mary and how sorrow-dipped her life had been. From a childhood full of restrictive religious doctrine, to a hint of a life outside of that, and back to Greendale where she would remain until her death. The sadness Lilith felt was not just the death of Mary's parents, but the eradication of everything she'd hoped to become. Lilith didn't wipe away the tears this time, she allowed them to slide slowly down her face, feeling the wetness, the physical demonstration of her inner ache.

As she cried, Lilith felt the weight lift somewhat, as if her tears were a physical release of the pain she felt deep within; "Fascinating..."

Her icy blue gaze fell upon the purple hydrangeas, their gentle violets complimented by a soft blush of blue glowing from the center outwards, and she realized that in allowing herself to feel so deeply, she was able to perceive the world around her with far more depth than ever before. Reaching out, she grasped a petal between her thumb and index finger, rubbing its velvet softness gently, and when it offered a memory, she closed her eyes to accept....

Hydrangeas were Mr. Wardwell's favourite flowers and Mary had transported this one from her family home after she'd sold it. For the next four years after returning to Greendale, Mary cared for her father and accrued some medical debt to keep him comfortable at home until the day he died. After the first year, Mary knew she would be delivering end of life care rather than helping him to get well and she dove deeper into the Church to help her with her grief. She began volunteering at the Sunday school and found that she really loved teaching the children. Her dreams began to shift.

Mary took night classes at the community college and was able to graduate with a degree in Education. She would return home after class and spend the evening excitedly running lesson plans passed her father. For the first time, her father told her he was proud of her and that was all Mary needed to decide that Greendale was where she'd stay. When she found the cottage, it was in desperate need of repairs, only inches away from disaster, but it was everything she'd ever dreamed of owning and she knew God had put it in her path to reward her for staying and caring for her father.

Lilith pulled her hand back, "Humans are such fickle creatures. Mourning the death of their dreams one moment, then seeing new possibilities in a pile of near rubble the next."

Swinging her head to the side, the demoness studied Mary's little cottage, a humble beginning that offered hope for happiness to the spinster orphan. Narrowing her eyes in thought, Lilith realized she felt better, the wax and wane of emotion emotion a relatively quick experience. Charmed at the thought of Mary seeing a treasure out of someone else's trash, Lilith was eager to learn more, and she stood to walk back into the house. With her hand on the doorknob, a memory knocked....

The sharp edges of the cottage key bit into Mary's palm as she gripped it tightly and nearly skipped down the overgrown path in her overalls, ready to start cleaning out the place. The intensity of her happiness was just as overwhelming as her sorrow had been, she was bursting with it. As the door swung open, she took a moment to say quiet thanks to her father for encouraging her to sell the family home and use the money to buy the cottage, renovate it, and take care of any remaining medical debt once he was gone. The only thing she'd taken from the old house was the hydrangea bush, which she'd already planted in the garden.