Aetheria Falling

Castaway

Six days.

It'd only been six days, and Ashe had already begun to forget the sound of his voice. Today would be another day without him, and as she'd done so many times before, she pretended the pillow at her back was her husband, Ceyx, sleeping soundly at her side.

If she moved, Ashe knew the illusion would shatter—and if it did, so would she. It was one of the last she had. All others were gone now. They'd stopped working when the memovox had. The device had done a wonderful job of recalling and displaying echoes in time throughout their home—times when Ceyx had been alive. With it, she'd been replaying her memories of him repeatedly since he'd died a year before, reliving the life they'd shared, pretending it hadn't ended. Buying the memovox from a merchant in Vyrai had almost cost her the house itself, which was truthfully little more than a cottage near the sea, far from civilization. When it'd stopped working, she'd set out immediately for the city to see if it could be repaired or replaced, only to discover both options were impossible. Magic was leaving the world.

Without the memovox, the inevitable had come like a tidal wave.

And another wave was coming.

Ashe could feel it, that impending sense of something about to crush her. It set off the alarm bells in her mind, and she tried to ignore them.

He's here... she thought. He's right behind me. He's right there, he's right behind me...

She could almost feel him breathing next to her. But like each morning before, it was becoming more and more difficult to hold onto the memory.

Ceyx's fingers brushed hair from her face, his warm breath flowing over the back of her ear as he leaned in to kiss the side of her neck.

The wave hit like a battering ram.

Ashe crumpled in on herself—fingers desperately searching the sheets for a hand that would never find her.

The pain escaped, and she screamed.

Like the breaking of a dam, devastation followed. The attack knocked the wind from her, and she struggled to breathe.

The gleam of afternoon light through the bedroom window was the only measure by which Ashe could tell how long it'd been since she'd cried herself to sleep.

A few more hours passed before she realized she hadn't moved since waking. Her throat felt like sandpaper, and as she lay there, looking out at nothing, she gradually became aware of a pounding headache. Though she knew she needed to eat, it took her at least another hour before she found the will to get up. And when she did, she didn't dare look at the empty bed behind her as she entered the kitchen.

Magic was gone, but luckily, the plumbing still worked. It'd been one of her own innovations to their modest home—something she'd picked up while learning to irrigate crops in Faehaven.

Ceyx had been so proud of her. When they'd ventured into the village for supplies, he'd made it a point to tell everyone what she'd achieved. That was, of course, only after they'd argued vehemently about the project a week beforehand. As always, her husband had been so sure he'd been right about something he only thought he understood, but she hadn't been willing to back down from what she knew.

She'd called her husband an arrogant bastard.

Remembering the look on his face was enough to threaten another fit of despair. She was thankful it hadn't been their last interaction but also reflected on how wasted that time had been—fighting each other over pride when love could've won the day. And perhaps it still had, though her conscience left little room for that belief.