"I would have given everything to be with you. For some endless minutes I considered whether I should rush after you, into that furious, roaring abyss, in the hope of reuniting with you in the afterlife, but in the end I abandoned the idea. I have always compared you to a falcon in my mind, for your keen gaze and the bird-like tilt of your head when you are interested, for your almost predatory habits when it comes to chasing criminals, and in those minutes I prayed that you would be one, that you would rise from the bottom of the Reichenbach Falls and soar over the abyss that buried your sworn enemy.
Somewhere in the depths of my soul still glimmered the hope that you were alive; that I, not being your most gifted student, had missed something in my reasoning, and that you would meet me with open arms and a sincere smile at the doorsteps of our hotel.
I waited there for two days.
Finally, when the owner began to look at me with pity bordering on fear for my mental health, I packed my things, paid for both of our rooms and went back to England.
Three years have passed, Holmes, and I still dream of mountains. On other nights, when a merciful Providence grants me peace, I simply fly — over the jungles of India and the pastoral plains of England, the wild Scottish moors and the green hills of France. But in the end I almost always find myself in the Swiss foothills of the Alps. The cold wind beats on my chest, and I feel an unprecedented freedom, and I want to dance endlessly with the winds, but my unusually sharp eyesight always unerringly finds that same ill-fated waterfall in which I once buried you, my dear friend. I descend and descend until I am directly above the crevasse. Then, folding my wings, I throw myself down like a stone — and always wake up before I have time to reach the bottom.
Every morning the rarefied air and the pure smell of the mountains freeze in my lungs, which cannot be confused with anything, and my hair is tousled more than usual, as if by gusts of a furious and biting wind. And every morning I almost believe that I have rescued you from that distant mountain country, that my prayers were answered, that now the door of my bedroom will open, and a familiar silhouette will appear on the threshold...
But every day I leave the house, and nothing changes, and I force myself to forget — until the next night..."
…Dr. Watson will put the letter aside, ashamed of his own sentimentality, but will not crumple it up and throw it in the wastepaper basket, and will simply stuff it into the far drawer of the table, and will soon completely forget about it, being by nature a person not prone to excessive fantasies. He will firmly decide to move somewhere where everything will not be such a painful reminder of his dear friend.
And naturally, he will not notice how the next morning this letter will migrate to a stack of papers in a filing cabinet along with a falcon feather that appeared out of nowhere. And at the very bottom of the paper will be a black three-fingered trace — like a signature, like a promise.
It was heavily inspired by a song called Korolevna (it means Princess) by Melnitsa. And though I think it can't be translated without inevitable loss of it's beauty, I found a video for you with English subtitles (turn it on) and please watch it, it is beautiful and basically has it's own fandom.
English is not my first language, so any corrections are more than welcome! I hastily translated it from my mother tongue, because it has been sitting in my notes since November, and though it is misty and autumny, I wanted to finally set it free.
