The End of Eden

XXXV

He can't be real.

I saw him burn, I saw his body hollow out and become ashes and cinders in the wind. I saw his perfect face damaged with cuts, his beautiful ocean blue eyes plucked from his head, his tongue separated from his body.

He is dead.

"Please don't torment me anymore," I gasp, pulling my hand from his. I tuck myself smaller still, and I hear him sigh as he stands, and speaks quietly to the others after he leaves the bathroom.

"What could have possibly happened?" One of them says.

"She said she saw us burn you alive."

"She told me that Sleep joined her in a dream that she felt was real..."

"She is seeing things that we cannot, feeling them."

I press the heels of my hands against my ears. But it doesn't drown out the next words.

"He is punishing her. Either she breaks, or she doesn't."

It's the smooth, even voice of Vessel floating into the bathroom and I can feel every set of eyes turning towards me, because my neck starts to burn. I slowly turn my head to see them gathered in the doorway of the bathroom that I am hiding in.

"And right now, she is breaking," Vessel finishes, and I feel his eyes meet mine through his mask.

The face and eyes of Sleep, blinking and not blinking, looking down at me from the corner of the bathroom, the robes falling to the floor.

I turn my face away.

If I am breaking, what will happen to me?

If I am breaking, who will seal the cracks with gold?

If I am breaking, what will I be remade into?

You are breaking.

I am breaking.

I don't hear what else Vessel says after, because I am covering my ears again, and thinking of anything else except for the fact that Sleep is tormenting me to punish me for disobeying him, for fighting against him at every turn. Is it to prove myself? Or is it just that he enjoys it? Or maybe... I deserve it.

"Why?"

I don't realize I have said anything until the muttering has been silenced for longer than a few seconds. I pull my ash covered hands from my ears again.

"Why test me? I am already his, I am already yours. Is that not good enough? Why torment me with this? Why not be kind and loving and caring?!" I shriek the last few words, and they ricochet around the bathroom as I sit up and look at them finally, the vessels gathered in the doorway, including the ghost of my Four.

"Why not?" Vessel responds, slinking into the bathroom. "He is a god; he can do with us whatever he pleases. And if it pleases him to cause you pain, then that is his choice. He cannot love us; that is why he has given you to his vessels, to give us the love we want that he cannot give us. He tests you, because faith must always be tested. But he torments you, because you have upset him."

I do not dare say what I have done to upset Sleep.

It was my secret to keep with Four, and I will carry it until the moment of my death. It was the one thing we only shared between us, something that none of the other vessels would understand, and something that they would never share with me either.

So I simply nod my head. It isn't that I am agreeing with what Sleep is doing to me, nor is it an agreement of what Vessel has said. My nod is simply an acknowledgment so that they can all leave me alone to mourn Four.