The Shadow That Smiled At Me

Chapter twenty eight

Meadow flowers swayed in the breeze. A line of trees in the distance separated the earth from the heavens. Ebony clouds covered the sky. Silence. An unnatural silence filled the country. No birds chirping or wind whispering in the grass. Everything seemed so idyllic. Beauty and melancholy in one. However, there was a bone-chilling sadness in the air.

And there, in the middle of the meadow, sat Samael, looking somewhere in the distance. I saw him. As I walked, the skirt of the long dress caught on the blades of grass and the heads of flowers. I sat down next to him and stared into the same emptiness as him. We were silent. We just sat there in silence for a long time.

In the end, it was Samael who cut through the void between us. "You're dying, Arya," he said.

I looked at him. He was still looking somewhere over the horizon. He had a dead look on his face.

"I am human, dear Samael," I said. "We are born and from that moment all we do is die slowly."

He finally turned to me. The golden spark in his eyes was extinguished, there was only darkness in them. "You don't understand, Arya. You are dying. Right now. At this moment."

"Yes, I was hit by a car." I laughed lightly to myself.

"That's not the funny, dear Arya. I saw what happened. I saw it all. You can't live in both worlds at once. Your body can't handle it. It's killing you." He stroked my cheeks gently. There was sadness in his eyes.

"No, Samael. Don't even think about that. You can't do that."

The corners of his mouth lifted into a fleeting, sad smile. "You don't even know what I meant to say."

"I'm not stupid, Samael." I pulled away from him. "I know what's going through your mind. And no, you can't do that to me."

He pulled me closer to him. I sat astride his lap. He gently kissed my lips, my neck. "You know I don't want to do that, dear Arya," he whispered against my skin. "You could live a nice, normal life. Like with that Jace or I think Vincent would definitely welcome you back as well."

I punched him in the shoulder. I stood up and turned my back to him. I don't believe he even thought of such a thing, not that he even suggested it to me. I felt so alone after those words. I was hugging myself, digging my nails into my skin.

"And what if I don't want the so-called normal life? My whole life without life, I would trade for a single day with you, dear Samael." tears welled up in my eyes. My stomach was churning. My heart hurt. It was tearing me apart from the inside.

"It must be so, my dear, dearest Arya. I don't want to be the reason of your fall." He walked up to me and took me in his arms.

I rested my head on his chest to hide the tears. Something inside me was breaking, breaking like never before. I was cracked, broken. I glued the pieces back together and now he was breaking me again.

"You promised you'd never give up on me." I sobbed. My voice was shaking. "You said you'd never leave me, and yet you do."

"I don't want to, but it has to be."

"You won't change anything about my damnation anyway. I was falling years before you and I will after you too. You're just going to throw me off that cliff again. But this time it won't be just a nightmare. It will be a hell to which I will be forced to return every night."

I got ready to leave. Something in me finally broke. It shattered into a million pieces like a mirror whose shards mark years of misfortune. It hurt. It hurt so bad. But then it remained empty. Something inside me broke and I was left empty. Somewhere inside, somewhere in the depths of my soul, it was still there. The pain still sounded in me, but it was kind of distant, muffled. I felt like I was under the influence of opium. Out of my consciousness.

"Arya." he grabbed my waist and pulled me back to his chest. "Oh, dear Arya." his voice held the same pain as my heart.

I had nothing to begrudge him. He did what he had to do - or at least what he thought he had to do.

"Do what you have to do," I said nonchalantly. "Don't apologize and don't say goodbye."

There was a deafening wail of wind. Those dark heavens as if they would swallow this world. At that moment, everything became a blur. Darkness engulfed the land. The last thing I saw was the golden sparkle of his eyes, in which sadness was reflected, the sadness of the whole world, and I was falling.

I was falling.

And I fell.

⸸

I woke up in a hospital room. I recognized it by the whiteness of the interior. The parents were sitting by the bed. My ribs hurt badly when I tried to sit up.

"Arya, you're awake," the parents breathed in obvious relief. "Don't ever do this to us again."

My mother hugged me. It hurt badly and I moaned in pain. In a flash, she pulled away from me in fright. "I'm sorry," she said.

I had two broken ribs, which, judging by the impact, were minor injuries. I would have expected worse consequences. But the pain from the broken ribs was nothing compared to how broken I felt inside. Broken. Torn. Crushed to dust. Totally destroyed. Dead. I felt like a corpse forced to live.

A single tear rolled down my face. "Let's go home," I said.