"Farewell, mother!" she said with tears in her eyes. From behind, I could see her shoulders shaking. No matter how much bravado she could muster, there was no hiding this. It would be the last time she said goodbye to her mother, her only remaining family. I knew just how painful such a parting could be, no matter how frayed the relationship. The pain in her voice spoke to the depths of her rejection — to how deeply the woman we called The Witch wished it could be different.
But it never could, now. She wanted to put a period on it, and she had brought me up to this lonely hill to help with that.
I took her long, long hair and gathered it up in one hand. "You're sure you want to go through with this?" i didn't think it would turn out well, but I bit my tongue. I knew this was about something deeper, to her.
"Do it. I'm done with it."
With my right hand, I drew the sinister blade that indicated my role as The Witch's bodyguard. It was this sword's sole purpose to cut down her enemies — I never needed to say it, but at some point this had become obvious to me. I unsheathed it and held it below her gathered hair.
I thought long and hard about it, while she quietly sobbed. I thought about those gorgeous locks, shot through with silver, spread out beneath her in bed. I thought about her ponytail swaying to and fro as she walked ahead of me.
In the end, it took just one swift movement to part it from her scalp. There was nothing to it - the blade was so sharp it hardly made a noise to cut through a sheaf of hair even this thick. And I was left holding onto the tail.
How long had she been growing it? How many memories were woven into these strands? It felt heavy and sad in my hand.
"Tsubaki, thank you," she said and touched my hand gently. She turned to face me and I hardly recognized her with the rough cut that fell around her ears. In time... Oh, with time... she would clean it up and that pixie-like cut she favors now would become familiar to me too. But in that moment it felt like she had lost so much - become so much thinner, less real somehow. And the smile on her face, marred by tears, never left my memory after that.
Nor did the gently pleading way she held my hand, still clutching her hair. As if to say "throw it away, it's time." And even though they were not *my* memories, I couldn't bring myself to part from them for some time.
But even that moment had to end.
We cast away the lock of hair off the hill that overlooked her hometown and hit the road. But this time we walked side-by-side. And till we met up with the boys, she quietly held my hand. No looking me in the eyes, no. But I could sense a trust in her that wasn't there before.
That was enough. Where before I followed behind her without ever expecting her eyes upon me, now I strode by her side. If I was her sword, then it was a fine place to be. I could ask nothing more than that.
