Some Things are Better Left Unread.

Dido's Farewell.

The apartment was dark and bare. There laid no furniture about the room and the walls were dank; white wallpaper peeled away from the plaster and damp darkened corners. The floors were utterly void of carpet or Lino, just the naked wooden floorboards, splintering and mobile. They creaked in protest of any movement. 

"Elissa, where are you?"

There came a chilly breeze, flowing throughout the apartment. It breezed in from one glassless window and out of another. 

"Elissa, it's so dark. Please don't play games with me." 

Something emerged from the gloom of the shadows, slowly and almost as though she was floating. She dressed all in white, a long sleeveless nightgown. The flowing skirt rippled in the breeze but never bore her feet. Underneath the confines of the gown, they were bare and splintered, but this young woman had felt a pain far worse. Beneath the breast of her dress lay a fresh wound, bubbling with crimson still and staining the innocence of the white. 

"Elissa," Alexander cried, "my Elissa!" He stepped forward to her, but with the tiniest movement of her shoulders, he knew she didn't want to be touched. The boy felt tears of pity mount his eyes, threatening to spill and race down his cheeks in hot gushes as he glanced down at her seeping wound. 

"Why did you do this to yourself, my beautiful Elissa. Your hair, once golden like the rays of the sun is now yellow like the hay of the stable, coarse like your eyes. Oh, your beautiful eyes, once warm like blue honey, are now cold like the oceans you watched me sail away on and glistening like you've cried me a thousand lakes. Does it appease you that my guilt has driven to me such insanities that I see you even now after you have been so cruelly ripped from me?"

The floating Elissa did take heed of her lover's word, but could him no mind as her shattered heart forbade such a thing. Her heart, at one time a scarlet drum beating the rhythm of her life, had hardened and faded before it shattered into a million shards of crystal, now resting in the depths of her ribs. Her cerulean eyes brushed over the face of her beloved, any feeling nulled with the absence of her heart, and her cracked lips remained closed despite Alexander's plea that she speak. 

"Elissa, oh Elissa, did Fate choose you so cruelly to relive the anguish of your namesake. She, Elissa, known also as Dido, fell at the hands of her own beloved who abandoned also for the promises of the seas. When her heart was crushed, she took it upon herself to end her pain and suffering. Now, she dwells in that underworld, wandering the Fields of Mourning in eternal darkness, having died for a lost love. She is you, Elissa. Are you not my Elissa, or may you be Dido, watching over a daughter of the earth who's ties were cut before she was fated to die? 

"Pity me, oh Queen Dido, I am but a fool who is oblivious to the truth. The truth that love is the true meaning to a life. No matter what your destiny nor date may be, love must always prevail or there will be a price. You, my Elissa, my Dido, are that price. Stolen from me as Fate commands it. Do you pity me? Do you forgive me for my wrongs, wrongs that should otherwise be unforgivable?"

Elissa turned slowly, never uttering a word. He splintered feet remaining concealed beneath her gown, but a blood red trail followed in her path as she stopped at the foot of a floor length window, glass absent with wind coursing through the shallow frame. A milky palm and tortured fingers rested on the wall aside the frame and one foot was lifted to the air, catching ground on the dusty surface of the window frame. The silk-clad girl now stood upon the window, neck bent as she peered at the street far below. To have suffered the worst pain dulled any other. 

"No, please, do not leave me, Elissa. I know not of where I am, I followed you here as willingly as you led me. Please do not abandon me as I abandoned you, take me to my room, deposit me in its safe clutches and let me wallow in torturous grief for all eternity but do not abandon me without speaking. I beg to hear the softness of your beautiful voice, the mesmerising birdsong I know you hold. At least leave me with the chords of your voice, I beg, sweet Elissa."

The sweet lady Elissa turned to her last love, so wishing she could leave him with such a gift. Her mind still lived for her Alexander, begging that he stay with her now, never to leave her again, but the absence of a heart forbade her to act upon her feelings. She was doomed to walk a lonely death, pining for a love that was never to be. 

And then, just as she prepared to push her frail body away from the window's edge, the queen touched her hand with her cold and tender fingertips. They looked similar, almost like sisters, adorning that same wound below the breast. They worn the same heart-torn expression across their eyes and cheeks, ever pining for the forbidden fruit. 

Alexander could not seen the queen, but she observed him and like a mother looks upon her son, guilty of a crime against the heart, Dido shook her head. Women were doomed to love too hard, men doomed to love too little and she had witnessed thousands of stories like this, but never one so similar to her own. Together, the two women positioned themselves on the open window. Fingers intertwined, they launched from the window in unison and were suspended in the shallow night, falling towards the earth as hard as they had fallen for their loved ones. 

No words left Alexander's lips as he watched his Elissa fall from the window. He did not blame her for leaving him again. She had brought him closure in appearing to him after her untimely death, but he'd longed to hear her voice. As she was doomed to wander in the absence of his total love, he was doomed to walk an earth void of her presence. 

And in this, both suffered eternally.