Amortal Song

18.Alone

Calypso

The darkness felt overwhelming, choking, strangling the life out of me. I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed, or if I was moving forward or standing still. I tried to take several deep breaths but the looming black seemed to take the air right out of my lungs. My skin crawled and I impulsively tried to squeeze Arden's hand...

But he was right.

I was alone.

My skin began to itch, cold sweat trickling down my hot skin. The room- or whatever place I had stepped into- went from sweltering, stuffy heat to frigid, bone-chilling cold. I couldn't tell it if was real.

Was it real?

No...it couldn't be.

I was here alone.

No one.

No one.

No one.

"There's no one here with me." I couldn't tell if I had spoken the word or had thought them because the darkness seemed to swallow them.

And it sent back a reply.

Why, Calypso, of course, there is. You just can't see them. But they're there. All around you. Waiting until you're at your most vulnerable to strike.

I shook my head fast. There was no one with me. No slithering voices speaking and talking to me, trying to scare the wit from my bones. I was alone.

I was always alone.

And with that thought, the darkness began to lighten, shifting from the darkest black to a grey, then to a light grey, and finally, breaking the darkness. Pure light surrounded me, allowing me to suck in a grateful breath as I watched the mirrors come to life. Dancing scenes from my past lives, mixed with scenes from my present. All of them were seen through my eyes.

And all held the person I had fallen in love with, bright a vibrant, almost like I was there with them again.

Except for the current, nightmare of a life, I was in.

Arden was there. Except it didn't seem to be him, instead more of a blurred form, like I was looking at him through a pane of frosted glass. I saw when I had first met him, the day in the forest chasing down that honking goose- Spruce, I think it was. I watched the night we had locked hands and had fallen into Umbeunter together, not prepared for any of this. The time when the tower had fallen also flickered into view, when I had screamed his name as the place collapsed around Odysseus and me, sending us tumbling into Vespera's realm.

Vespera's realm.

The thought brought a tidal wave of images to the mirrors. It showed the flowers, the gazebo, Vespera herself, Arden...and Odysseus. Except it wasn't his ghostly form.

No, it was him, the skin and flesh version, the one I had lived with on Ogygia.

The images shifted again, showing us on the island- spending time skipping stones as the days drew to a close, sitting under the shade of the trees that lined the white sands, pulling an abundance of fish from the sea, sitting around a fire and watching the embers lift way to the stars, carrying our prayers to the gods with them.

I had lived all of that.

Listened to him talk about his Penelope.

Watched him draw careful drawings in the sand.

Saw the way he carefully placed the smallest creature who washed up on the shores back into the waves.

Heard the way he prayed to the gods.