In Stone

35: "Okay."

35: “Okay.”

Home. Caia was...

...back at home.

She was looking at the front door of her house, not at all sure that she even recognized what it was anymore. There was a phone book there now, and her mailbox was nearly overflowing. The place looked deserted and empty.

Which matched exactly how Caia felt inside.

Slowly, almost as if she was unsure of how to do it anymore, Caia walked up to her door. It wasn't until she put her hand on the knob that she remembered that she didn't have her keys. She had left those in her car, parked some place away from Simone's house. The car had been towed away since, and she had walked all the way here.

She supposed she should have been tired.

It wasn't, however, the first time Caia had forgotten her keys. She simply stepped off of the porch and moved around to the back of the house. Just like always, the backdoor was unlocked.

She slid it open and the sound echoed in the silent house. The air that came out of the now open door was stale with absence and stillness. Walking into it, realizing that she heard not a single sound inside and she knew that the electricity must have been turned off.

Which made sense. She hadn't been here to pay the bill. The only thing her mother paid for was the house itself. All of the utilities were her responsibility. Which reminded her: she was no doubt fired after all of the work that she had missed.

Walking into her darkened living room, the cold faces of her art stared back at her.

“I...I'm back...” she said to them. Her voice, already soft, broke while saying it.

No response. There was never a response.

Caia dropped onto her sofa.

The shopping bags full of Caspian's clothes that she had bought him were still sitting, mostly untouched, in a corner of her living room. The sword cleaning kit she had purchased for him was still on her coffee table. There was a thin layer of dust on it now.

Why was she here? Had she done something wrong? Did the goddess hate her so much that she had to send her back home? Was she so displeased with her marrying Caspian?

Caia knew what the feeling was now when she lost her mind. She knew that it meant that the goddess had apparently called out to her. She hadn't questioned or even thought to question a single step in her journey here. So of course it was the goddess that made her do it. She could still even hear slight echoes of the voice that had spoken to her.

No words could be understood though.

A single sob escaped Caia's throat. Then, like it had broken the floodgates, Caia let out a loud wail of abject misery as the reality of what had happened set in on her.

She fell over into her couch, hot tears running down her face.

She was home! Goddess curse everything, she was back here! Why? Why?! She already knew that she couldn't use the stones, at least not without help from the goddess apparently. Did that mean that she wasn't going to see Caspian again?

The thought came with a ripping pain in her chest. Like someone had grabbed her heart and was just tearing it right down the middle. A jagged blade slicing through her chest. Burning pain that hurt far more than any physical wound she had ever received raged through her.

She didn't want to be in this horrible world where the air smelled like car exhaust, where the was never a single moment of silence, where even the food tasted different. She didn't want to be back in the place where she felt so completely and utterly alone.