In the Pursuit of Death| ONC 2024

9| Without

*

AKUL HAD NOT returned so Eris held Daya's funeral alone.

She dug the grave beneath the oak tree, where Daya had climbed and sat in its branches, drawing things she saw, and knew, and others she had only heard. It took until sun down. Afterwards, Eris went to the field to pick daisies. She wove their stems and blossoms into a crown of sunlight. 

Eris prepared the body, wiping down her daughter's arms and legs, cleaning the blood from her chest and face. She dressed Daya in petal-pink, her favorite color, and ran citrus oil through her hair, smoothing the strands until they laid flat along her back. Outside, the world was dark.

She placed the crown of daisies on Daya's head and wrapped bedsheets around her as a makeshift shroud before lowering her body into the grave. Eris collapsed next to the hole and bawled until it was morning. Then, long after Eris's tears had dried up, and her fingers were numb with cold, she tossed dirt on top of Daya's body.

Eris had buried her daughter with flowers; she had buried her mama and papa without. She had buried a hundred and six friends and neighbors in twelve years, and sadness, that overwhelming, crushing sadness, returned.

She went to bed hungry, and hoped to never wake again.

*

Each day after, Akul returned to their hut, never daring to step inside. But he left a basket of fruit and vegetables and left it on the porch. Occasionally, Eris heard him speak:

"You need to eat."

"At least drink."

"I will not let you waste away."

And every time, Akul spoke, Eris scoffed. For he had taken her heart and with it all the love she had for him, and he'd left her emptied. She was already a husk long before the lack of food shrunk her muscle and sagged her skin, and the thirst left her mouth burnt and dry.

Two moons had passed and Akul had come again, delivering food and water on her doorstep. Eris hadn't gone outside since Daya's death. She slept in Daya's bed, curled beneath Daya's sheets and clung to the last of Daya's scent. She sobbed every morning, and hurt every night.

She stared at Daya's drawings, tracing and re-tracing Daya's lines until her fingers were smudged with charcoal.

She'd thrown her vials into the fire pit and watched as the glass shattered. What use were they, these ingredients that could heal and sooth and calm, if they had failed her in her time of greatest need.

Eris wanted death, was hungry for it. For Akul to walk through the door and extend his hand, and she, like a starving carrion, would snap it up, and feast.

She'd be with Daya then in the Greenworld. And that's what mattered.

More moons passed. And Eris paced the hut, visiting Daya's room, rummaging through her clothes, staring at Daya's drawings. 

Another moon came and went. Eris moved through the house, a specter, disturbing nothing, watching as dust gathered on Daya's bed, on her table, her clothes. She held a scrap of petal-pink fabric to her heart always. 

She stared at the ceiling and remembered: dark hair, muted brown skin, her eyes, but rimmed with gold, his gold. Round face. Smiling. Always smiling.

Mama! A bug!

Mama! A flower!

Mama! I drew a waterfall just like you described.

Soft hands, small fingers. Warmth. So much warmth. And then Eris would crash onto the bed, and sob anew.

She barely ate, and wretched whatever she had forced into her stomach. The food had no taste, the world had no color, and Eris's life had no meaning.