Rags To Royals (Royal #1: Book 1) | ✔

3

-• lost •-

Lost among the dead.

Sounds scary, right?

It is my mother's reality now. And strangely enough, mine too. The difference being I am lost among the living. And that's, that's much worse. Because you've people willing to hear you but you're unable to speak, unable to share. There are people able to hold your hand and get you through the crowd, but the touch feels foreign. I have eyes on me, in concern and in pity, but it is a new world to me.

I wasn't prepared for this. I would have never been if not for my mother's unfortunate, abrupt demise.

The concept of life and death is so easy, it's the living that's fascinating. Because one moment you're alive and breathing, and the next, cold and dead. What matters is the between, the thread that was tied to both the ends. How much it stretched, endured, experienced the seasons, and yet still held on strong. That's what makes the death meaningful.

When my mother died, I had this question lingering in my mind for a while.

Did she make her death meaningful for anyone else besides me?

Now as I watch my biological father kneel over her grave and cry his heart out, I realise my question was answered.

I don't know for how long he was here, how much he has cried until now, but considering he hasn't noticed me yet when I'm standing right behind him is enough to hint me about the depth of his grief.

I thought no will be sadder than me, no one's pain can be compared to mine.

But I was wrong.

His cries might have not crossed the threshold of the gates, but I'm sure they reached my mother's grave. I've never seen a person cry so heart-wrenchingly before, so heartbreaking that it was beautiful. He gave meaning to my mother's life. His tears, his grief, it settled me, it accompanied me. I was not alone. Someone else missed her, bereaved her, just as much as I did if not more. And that, that was reassuring to my lonely heart.

I smile watching him lean in to gently caress her name on the tombstone. He did it so fondly I could imagine at what great lengths their love went.

My sniffling catches his attention and he stiffens. I step back a little, worried if I disturbed his moment.

"I-I'm sorry- I- I just- I'll go back-"

"Tara?" He doesn't turn, but his way of addressing me comes out as a question. As though he's guessing if it's really me.

"Ye-Yes?"

That makes him look over his shoulder. My breath hitches in my throat at the sight of the man in flesh that's supposedly my father. He has the most beautiful onyx eyes I've ever seen. They were sorrowful, not only by emotions, but by the way they gaze at you. As if the regrets and resentment towards the world have exhausted them, worn them out in an attempt to steal their beauty but in the end got trapped in those dark, endless depths.

No wonder my mother fell in love with him. She rarely spoke of him, rarely mentioned him, but every evening when I watched her admire the sunset, I knew she was remembering him. The only thing I've ever heard about my father from her was that, he was her most beautiful sunset. One that started before time allowed, existed in a few fleeting moments and then ended too soon, leaving her with the painful memories that were rather painless if not accompanied with regrets.

He lowers his head and looks back at the grave. "She resembles you." He says to her.

I unintentionally touch my cheek, wondering where he found the resemblance between me and my mother. Because whenever I asked her who I look like more, she always said my father.