I stood on the red Utah earth, surrounded by mountains stretching to meet the milky grey sky. Huge rock monuments towered over the thin strip of faded asphalt, which sliced a pathway through the otherwise barren desert. The afternoon sun shone feebly over our humble little house as she came slowly down the front steps, sadness on her thin face. She looked so beautiful, with amber eyes and flaming red hair, the buttons of her coat straining to contain her swollen stomach. Her tiny steps broke the silence which enveloped us, each footstep crackling on the icy path. I opened the car door and she paused, buttery eyes pleading.
"It's only for two months," I consoled her, "You need to be near a hospital, not just for you, but for the baby as well." She was uncharacteristically sulky, and I knew why. The baby was due in a month but every year, when the first snow drifted down like icing sugar, we would play like children, and then settle down with steaming mugs of rich hot chocolate in front of the fireplace. It was our own special ritual, and we were going to miss it this year.
Even as I spoke, small white specks were lodging themselves on her fiery hair, the upturned tip of her nose. The sudden uplift in her delicate features warmed my heart, and the car, the hospital, even the baby were forgotten immediately. We galloped and ran and rolled about all afternoon, as the few tentative snowflakes increased into a downpour of white, and the stunted trees were coated in a fine layer of sugar-spun snow.
Her glowing smile shone like a beacon, illuminating the air around her in an aura of golden joy, contrasting with the feathery down blowing over the sky and trees. She smelt like the gingerbread cookies she loved to make, dancing and singing with the mixing spoon in our eclectic kitchen. The afternoon slurred into a watercolour dusk, her enveloping ambience of joy slowing time.
The fireplace spat golden sparks at us, the flickering flames mesmerising as we sat huddled together, rosy-cheeked: content. She was curled up on my lap, small hands wrapped around her mug, when it dropped. As if in slow motion, the shards of ceramic daggers sprung across the pockmarked floor, brown liquid gushing over the unpolished wood. Her amber eyes glazed over with pain, and her face contorted in agony.
"It's happening," she wheezed, "I'm ... in labour?"
Those last few hours were a blur, memories overlapping and merging, confused thoughts rattling against each other, a constant state of fear. The once-gentle snow had morphed into a ferocious beast: no car. Pick up the phone. Muted humming in my ear: no phone. Fingers scrambling across the computer keyboard. Wi-Fi error, could not connect. Re-load? Yes, clicking the mouse furiously. I held her cold hands in mine, wishing the colour back to her cheeks, the light to her eyes. Her pale lips fluttered gently as she tried to piece words together. Almost translucent eyelids fluttered, slowly closing. Porcelain skin: fading to dull grey. Small hand in mine: grip loosening. Soft, rasping breaths: fading.
Darkness envelops me in its icy grasp, encompassing my heart. Without her luminescence I am lost; a wick without flame, a room devoid of light. The flame inside my chest is fragile; flickering and fulgurating in its struggle for survival. It flashes pensive blue one moment, vehement red the next.
I am despondent, heartbroken, melancholy.
I am furious, impassioned, tormented by my anguish.
I am disorientated.
I am drifting.
I am disappearing.
I am dissipating.
I am
...gone.
