The stag hunt with the scarlet heart

Chapter 32 " I'm a basilisk on its own that started a forest fire "

I believe in ghosts. More specifically, I believe that ghosts are bound to grief. I believe that they are doomed to wander in houses with dark corridors because their memories wouldn't allow them to rest in peace. I believe that people are those empty houses full of gloominess, haunted by sinister visions at night. I believe in the echoes of this reality, which stains things, darkens them, repeating in a loop everything that went out of our hands. I believe in it because the moment I released Atlas from my head, a parallel plane was created where the Saffron that made things right couldn't converge with the Saffron full of hurt and resentment.

But for now, let's go back to where reality split and everything changed.

Fridtjof Nansen said that if there is no other way to move forward, you have to let it go. That's probably what pushed me to let him go. Even though his shadow is still fading in my mind and, Callum's eyes only made me want to cry more. Out of fear. Out of pain. Out of sadness. Those are the best words I can find to put a name to this deep sorrow that is pounding in my chest.

Callum bent down and took my face in his hands, his hair messier than usual and his eyes and mouth were all puffy. He was... haggard. Shattered.

I understood many things in that instant, so much so that if I could have felt more pain I'd have felt it right then, I just wanted to close my eyes and tell him that I didn't want to see him under those circumstances, but I could only click my tongue against the roof of my mouth and cover my eyes with my hands.

He sat next to me, carrying me in his arms, holding me so close that I felt like a second skin, while I curled myself up into a ball, I was struggling to find the words to explain to him why I was crying, but how do you explain to someone that a wrecking ball has come back for a second round for you? How do I explain to him that when Atlas died I couldn't mourn him the way I should have, how I explain to him that his ghost has been following me all these years and I could never let him go.

How do you explain it to someone who's never understood what it's like to hold on to something until it completely consumes you?

Minutes or seconds passed by, I really don't know, only that when I felt his fingers in my hair, a gasp escaped out of me, a hoarse, scratchy hiccup held back in my throat by grief. I couldn't speak. Then I heard the sound coming from inside his chest. Something in there had been broken.

It was a different pain than mine. But there it was.

Have you ever in your life seen a man cry with so much sadness in his heart? It wasn't pretty, Callum wasn't sobbing. He was overwhelmed. He was overflowing with grief, too.

"What a pair we are..." I managed to murmur against his neck, swallowing saliva as if it were solid. "Callum... This is your moment to escape this mess..."

"No." he said firmly. He squeezed the hand I left on his knee, revealing his soggy eyes. "You're not a mess. It wasn't your fault. You're not broken... you didn't deserve it."

"I'm dangerous, I told you. You have to leave. Please." I begged him, my voice filled with both desperation and sadness. "I killed him. I fucking killed him. Atlas..."

"Saffron. Don't." He said again, firmly, "Don't do this to yourself. It wasn't your fault. Tell me what I have to do to make you believe me."

"Atlas died because of me and..." I said adamantly. Nothing can change the past. Callum wasn't there. "You have to see it, I'm like a wrecking ball. I'm a basilisk on its own that started a forest fire just to watch people burn inside their homes. Atlas missed the signs and that's why he died..." I looked up and stared at him, I had to make him understand that somewhere within these comparisons of the Basilisks and the Catholic Inquisition, somewhere amongst so much torture and murder, my kind of evil fit. "So don't make his mistake again by coming near me."