Empty Memories of a home Long Forgotten

A Feymeran Funeral

Never have I been more thankful that last rites in Feymera have always been a relatively simple affair. Echo and Adrian agreed that I should be buried near to where I lived on Earth, since Safeira held far too many painful memories, but that the funeral would be a traditional Feymeran one.

My parents, unsurprisingly, didn't show. But everyone else did. Ignis, Yarrow, Eden, Ceres, Delta, Ronove, Sophie and Angelique. Adrian and Echo had brought everyone back together from the good old days to say goodbye to me. If I had had the physical capacity, I would have been an emotional wreck. Everyone spoke such kind words. Even King Helion and his parent-in-law Digitalis showed their faces. I remembered them from the wedding, and I supposed that Angelique had convinced them to fly out for the funeral.

After everyone finished speaking, Echo came to stand beside me. Delta/Ronove had taken it upon themselves to officiate the funeral, being that they were an inhabitant of Erebus. Thankfully, my soul wouldn't be flying there anytime soon. Echo squeezed my hand as Orias placed a silver coin under my tongue, speaking a prayer in an ancient language that Safeira hadn't heard in centuries.

I thought I felt Echo tense up a little as she held my hand, and wondered what she was feeling.

"Ronove?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you mind if I have a moment alone with my best friend before we send them off?"

"Of course child, call me when you're ready to proceed," the daemon ushered everyone out of the area, leaving Echo and I alone. I was expecting her to say something, but she didn't. Oddly, she lifted my eyelids, shining a little torch into my pupils. Then, I felt her place something damp under my tongue, where the coin was beginning to grow uncomfortable. Litmus paper? I vaguely remembered having to do something like that before I could announce a patient dead back at the hospital. She was checking if I was still alive.

"I know you're still in there Raeln. Why would you leave me like this? Why- I don't even know," she started to cry again, and the guilt welled up inside me worse than ever.

"I never even got to tell you that I love you. Not in the way we always said it though. I love you for real. We've been through so much together. Why would you abandon me now?" Her voice seemed to turn to stone as she spoke. "I guess you just never really felt it. You never really felt anything though. You had the least emotion of anyone I ever met, and I was the database for a hot second. You covered it up by always helping everyone, and crying all the time, acting like you were all open and vulnerable, but don't forget I knew you better than anyone. You tried and tried, but you never felt anything, did you!? Just like you never loved me!" I heard a door slam as she left the room to fetch Ronove. I wanted to tell her how wrong she was, that I had always loved her, I was just never sure how to tell her, and that the reason I acted as though I never felt anything was because I felt everything. If I didn't cover up all those emotions, they were impossible to manage. That's why I spent my life helping others; that's why I always cried. I wanted to hold her and to look into her eyes and to tell her that I loved her too, tell her that everything would be ok. But I couldn't. She felt abandoned, and nothing I could do would change that.

"Raeln, it is with a heavy heart that I now send your soul to Erebus. May you rest in paradise for all eternity," the feeling was starting to return to my arms. I really hoped he would hurry it up a bit.

Thankfully, Adrian came forward, cradling me as he had when he found me, and carrying me towards a hole they had laid with a wooden box in the ground. Time to say goodbye, for now.

I got the strangest feeling that this wouldn't be my last time seeing Echo. Some things are better left unsaid, but I finally realised that "I love you," is never one of them.