As I Fall: LOK

Chapter One

Part of Haitana's downfall may lie precisely in her refusal to deal with endings.

The contemporary world rarely sees things through. Love, or life falls, and they just begin again. Their experiences were a series of new beginnings, unlike Haitana. She could not cope with the idea of something finishing, ending— that included the life of one of her favorite animals.

For years she had lived on the zoological garden, tending to the animals. After her father's dream bore fruit, Haitana was caught up in a world of woodlands and realms of spectacular creatures. But it seemed that her agglomeration of knowledge on caring for these animals would still, alas, fall short to the unruly hands of time.

Wika, the eel-hound, had been sick for fortnights, and to no avail shown any signs of returning to regular health. It had been a short trip into the mainland, to gather an array of herbs and oils to treat the creature, but when Haitana returned, it was a dreadful fate.

She approached the grassy field, and when she checked again, cautious and low against the side of the hill, she saw the eel-hound was still sprawled there, unmoving. A creature had never died in her care before. Haitana was not sure, given the logic of this place, that she had truly killed the animal on her own. At least, this is what she told herself to control the shakes. Because, behind it all, she kept thinking that she could have tried to heal the poor animal a little longer, or not taken the trip into town to visit the apothecary.

Like Cosi, the lonely raccoon-crow in the trees, she sat still, listening, panicked. The sounds follow one another, and her ear eventually discerns more and more of them. The frogs still croak in the background, without changing the flow of sounds. The light does not dim on this otherwise solum day. But at every rise and fall of the wind, she can hear a vague murmur. Like a cry— perhaps it were her own.

"I was afraid this might happen," her father's monotonous voice interrupted the endless, sad tangent that had been replaying in her head like a broken radio. Haitana averted her gaze over her shoulder to the man; his hands were folded in front of him and head was bowed in a respectful type of nature. "She was sick for many days."

Haitana did not stand from her kneeling position, and instead tore the grass up with shaking hands. Her fist was clenched shut, holding the green blades tightly before tossing them all in the air with her own frustration. "I could have healed her," she exasperated. Throwing her head back in agony, she groaned. "If I would have been quicker on my trip, I could have healed—"

"No," her father cut her off before she could continue to blame herself any longer. The enormity of this experience still did not cause him to waver. "It was her time. She is now in another world, so great that we can only hope to end up there one day too. Wika does not have to suffer any longer. May she run alongside the spirits and bask in the glory of the other side."

Haitana rubbed her grass-stained hands along the sides of her brown trousers, refusing to look at the lifeless animal that laid on the other side of the hill. "I don't understand," she admits sheepishly, grasping at her pants.

"Dead, my dear Haitana, does not mean gone," the man inquires, placing a fatherly hand on her shoulder. He willed her to her feet, and though unsteady, she obliged.

It felt like her own legs might betray her, causing her to collapse to the ground once more, but her father held her steady. "We will celebrate the wonderful life Wika lived, and not mourn those days lost," he reached a hand into his pocket, retrieving shiny coins of monetary value. "Find the greatest flowers for her memorial. We shall commemorate a life well lived tonight at sundown."

Haitana wasn't certain why she could not just pick flowers from the garden, why her father would spend money on another living thing that would just wilt away and die eventually too. But still, like it were instinct, she nodded, taking one last glance to the eel-hound that ceased to move from the grassy knoll.