✓ | TOUGH AS THE IRONWOOD (A.FORRESTER 2)

Dear Asher. Chapter Seven.

 Cynthia's head ached, her throat burned as did her eyes, her chest thumped in agony, her limbs felt numb beneath the heavy weight of unbearable anguish - and she could hardly make a sound. She'd failed to get even the briefest moments of sleep, everything in her head keeping her awake until all she could do was sit and sob into the only comforting thing she had left, her pillow. Tears stained everything, her face, her hands, her pillow, and they wouldn't stop. Water continued to expel from her exhausted eyes and there wasn't anything that could be done. All she could do was resist the urge to scream that was building in her stomach - her insides coiling and knotting with the pain and desperation to let it all out somehow. But she knew better. Rodrik was hardly staying strong as it was, the last thing he needed was to be woken up from what little sleep her could gain, at the crack of dawn, to someone as pathetic as Cynthia crying over her childhood crush - he'd care at the time but the longer this goes on the more he'd wish he hadn't bothered to check on her, Cynthia was sure that's how he'd feel. And she dare not wake the children, they needed to sleep too, and their older siblings were the ones keeping them strong - seeing one of them break would surely make it harder for them to get over such a loss. 

No, Cynthia couldn't make a sound if it meant bringing attention to her heartbreak. She just needed to such it up, she was never very good at that, but then she'd never faced such horrific circumstances before. And never before had it hurt this much - she'd thought it had when Asher was exiled, but then there was always something that kept up the optimism in her. Now there was nothing. 

"Have you slept at all?" A familiar, warm, voice spoke quietly from the doorway, causing Cynthia to breathe deeply, which felt like the first time in forever, and look solemnly at the woman that looked more like a ghost in the pale, dawn, light that trickled through the thin curtains and shed a blue/purple haze across the silent, gaunt room. Cynthia sniffed, desperately wiping at her face and trying to rebuild the cover she'd kept up terribly over the last day and a half. "No," She sighed, honestly, burrowing her head into her sleeves and trying to prevent the tears from continuing; not that it made the slightest bit of difference. 

Elyssa perched onto the side of Cynthia's bed, wrapped in her nightgown and robes, her hair falling in naturally neat waves around her aging face. "Neither have I," She whispered, brushing hair that stuck to Cynthia's damp cheeks back behind her ear in an affection way. "I miss him too, terribly. I have not seen him in years, and now I never get to see him again. My second son..." Elyssa breathed heavily, speaking softly but her lower lip quivered anyway, no matter how much she tried to conceal her pain. "It is worse for you - I at least saw him before he-" Cynthia's voice fell, she couldn't bring herself to say it, weak as she was she'd never be able to say it. Say that he was dead. She wouldn't admit it, not yet. "But I did not love him as you did," Elyssa chuckled, knowing she'd caught Cynthia off guard with her statement, "Young love can hurt more than imaginable - but you must bear through it. One day, not today nor tomorrow or next week, but one day - it shall not hurt as much. It'll get easier, I promise you, my dear." Elyssa placed a gentle kiss atop Cynthia's head and trying to calm the mess of a girl now cuddling into her side. "But it hurts so much now - how can I bear it when it is so unbearable?" Cynthia cried, still wiping at her face, but not nearly as much as she knew it was a futile attempt at covering up her sadness. "When Asher was exiled, I found myself feeling the same, as though everything I held dear had been pulled from my arms and dragged away; I'd lost my son. There was so much I never got to say to him that I often found I'd write it down. No one ever read the letters, in fact after a year I burned them - because it had gotten easier to bear. You should try it, write a letter to him, tell him all you never got to say, it may help you feel slightly better about all you never told him." Elyssa kissed her head again, and stood. "And try and get some sleep, if you can. These days ahead are going to be the worst. You need to have your wits about you." And with that, the only mother Cynthia had ever known had left the room, leaving her sorrow to consume her again.