A KINGDOM OF DEAD HEARTS [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER 3: TEARS & JADE PENDANT

Grief was heavy precisely because it was so weightless.

Its weightlessness and shapelessness allowed it to just tag along and bleed on everything else, and that made everything else heavy. Taste of food – any kind of food – that seemed to get bland, air that seemed to just sit on one's chest, pressing it like a thousand-tonnes weight, making the act of breathing truly a chore.

There was something about grief that made it obvious like a hanging, thick, towering grey cloud in the middle of a room, yet so elusive that it simply could not be described properly in words. When one tried to describe it, it always felt like there were these black holes that could not be filled, explained, because the correct vocabulary simply did not exist.

Grief was like a grey cloud that was obviously there, but noone could touch it, explain it, let alone do away with it.

Not a drop of tears was shed, the weeping all happened within, away from sympathetic, peering eyes and the "you will be okay" statement.

Maybe it was better that way – if grieving happened in the privacy of one's own mind and heart then one did not need to explain it to the world out there. That was a relief when grief itself was so impossibly difficult to explain.

Grief became somewhat a nuisance when a seemingly random object, insignificant, small, may possibly lead the world to come to a screeching halt – a pendant, a hairclip, an old dusty wallet, whatever it was that had once belonged to the one who had left – one glimpse at it and the grieving seemed to start all over again, fresh, stubborn, and stinging like hell.

For Airin, it was a round jade pendant attached to a silver necklace that used to belong to Mom.

She woke up that morning, opened her eyes, pulled her blanket closer to her chin as the cool weather of late autumn got to her. She turned her head, and there it was. The necklace curled limp on her nightstand.

Her heart skipped a beat. She closed her eyes, turned her head the other way, and her tears, fresh and warm, glided uncontrollably down her cheek.

A barrage of memory came back into her consciousness, an onslaught of what she had wanted to forget but failed.

That day last year, Mom handed her the necklace."It's for you. It has been owned by the women in my family for generations. My mom got it from her mom, and her mom from her mom. My mom gave it to me on my seventeenth birthday. It always reminds me of her. Take it, sweetie. It'll look good on you!"

"Are you sure, Mom?" she hesitantly took the necklace though she knew she had failed to hide the excitement on her face or her voice.

Airin had loved that necklace since she was a little girl watching her mom, with that necklace around her neck, doing chores around the house.

Its festive green color glistened in the morning light as she prepared toasts for breakfast, it reflected the last glimmer of light from the sunset when she washed dinner plates and Airin stood next to her drying the just-washed plates.

Mom always wore it, and it did look fabulous on her, she looked like an angel with the glistening pendant following her everywhere.

Mom took her shoulders, shook it gently, and nodded. "I am very, very, sure. Remember me when you wear it, and take care of it well. Ok?"

She nodded a few solid nods, and caressed the jade necklace with great care.

"Jade protects you from evil spirit, and brings calmness and healing. You are half Chinese from my side, you should know this too."