[alt text - Digital painting of Riley and Tikah gently kissing on their bed. They are surrounded by plants and pillows, and a sunset solarpunk cityscape is visible through the window behind them. A winged calico cat and tiny dragon rest by Tikah’s legs, and the bed is filled with plushies and pillows.]
A forest masquerade. An invitation to dance. That was the beginning. A sword sealed the proposal.
The transience of dawn and dusk make the dance no less beautiful, and the ocean always returns to kiss the shore. Sunflowers float on the waves and poppies reach out from the earth to embrace the sea.
Tikah looks down at the grave. It’s a simple thing. A light-colored stone- almost white with a tinge of green. The color reminds Tikah of seafoam, but the similarities stop there. The stone has none of the airiness of seafoam. None of its lightness, none of its life. It’s cold and hard, even in the summer sun. Carved in its surface is a delicate design and a name she’d spoken more times than she could count in the decades since they’d met.
Riley Atherton. Beloved to all those who knew them. Never without a story to tell.
The inscription feels just as cold as the stone. A sense of unreality with the words, even though Tikah had been there when Riley’s parents had chosen them.
Luka and Eraseth had visited the grave earlier that day.
They hadn’t talked about when they’d show up. They hadn’t needed to. It was the first anniversary, but it felt like a wound torn open anew. They’d all embraced, but it felt like there was a space between them that Tikah couldn’t fill, no matter how hard she squeezed. A space that felt like sunflowers and light and smelled like the ocean breeze.
Tikah had thought that she’d gotten stronger, that she’d be able to hold this grief, but waking up alone in the bed she and Riley had shared was all it had taken to start the day with tears. Seeing Riley’s parents grieving? It was all too much. But still, she had wanted to be there for them, so she had trudged her way to the gravesite.
Cerhei arrived a little after, to be there for both their descendants- alive and passed. Even their usually unflappable countenance was laid bare by grief. All of them were no strangers to loss, but still they mourned
Luka and Eraseth had asked her if she wanted to stay at their place tonight. They’d always been kind like that, treating her as one of their own. But they had their own grief to attend to, so she’d politely declined.
Other friends trickled in through the day. Caspin bringing letters full of things Riley would have loved and warm sentiments, as well as a hand-sewn cape befitting the adventurer they’d all known and loved. Keel too, recounting tales of their adventurers together. They’d shared a laugh, then a hug. Morgan is the only one that is absent. Tikah doesn't blame him, but she misses his presence all the same.
Night falls and still Tikah doesn’t move. Now that she’s by the side of her love, it feels wrong to leave. A transgression. Every time she thinks about going back- thinks back to that empty bed, she finds herself anchored in place all over again.
The wind passes through her black shawl. She half expects Riley to come up behind her and bundle her in one of the quilts they’d bought at the fair the year prior. Riley had been delighted when they’d found them. Tikah can practically feel her love’s lips on her cheek, ephemeral warmth living on in memory. The whole day had been like that. Wandering between past and present, dwelling on warm memories- a warmth which Riley had shared so much of.
———
Tikah must have fallen asleep at some point, because, when she wakes, her body is cold and stiff. Her neck is sore from where she’d leaned against the gravestone. It’s pitch dark, and she can’t tell how much time has passed. In the quiet cold of the night, she finally finds her words.
“I miss you, Love.”
The words come out as a whisper. Curled up like this, somehow the words are easier to say. Like if she doesn’t look at the gravestone, she won’t have to face the fact that Riley really is gone.
“I know you wouldn’t want me to feel badly. But you’d allow me the space. You’d want me to grieve, not for you but for myself.”
She feels the tears building again, even though her eyes are already puffy and sore from crying. She kneels in front of the headstone, long hair trailing onto the earth. The flowers on the grave fill the air with a mellow scent and the wind caresses her gently, but it’s all too much. Too much to hold on her own.
Her words are interspersed by soft, hiccupping sobs. Only one or two at first, then a steady stream.
“I’ve grieved for you, long and deep over the past year. I don’t think it’s enough, I don’t think it ever will be enough. But, sometimes- sometimes there are days where I don’t think about you at all.”
The words are spoken quietly, shame hanging off of each syllable.
“I’ll make breakfast. Go to the gardens. And then when I get back in bed, our bed. When I’m alone in the dark, it’ll hit me. You’re gone. You’re gone and you’re not coming back.”
She hugs her shawl, head pressed into the hard stone of the grave. It’s gritty and rough, but that’s better than the ache she feels.
“It’s scary. I don’t want to forget you. To forget all the moments that we shared.”
She sobs, loud and long, in front of the silent grave. When she speaks again, it’s in a hoarse whisper.
“I don’t want to lose you a second time. I can’t do that.”
She still feels the cold, but she doesn’t care anymore.
“Riley, I miss you. You brought joy to my life. And I can still find joy, sometimes, but- but- ”
She lets out a sound somewhere halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“It hurts too much without you.”
She wipes her eyes.
“I don’t want to move on. I don't want to wake up alone in the bed we shared. I don’t want to hear a song on the radio and have it all come crashing down on me again. But more than that, I don't want to forget you.”
Her words fall away, and she weeps beside the grave, body trembling with all the grief that she holds.
“You won’t forget her.”
The voice rumbles through her head, soft yet deep. Tikah’s eyes widen and she turns around. Meters above, five glowing red eyes gaze down at her. Each is easily as tall as her, but there’s a gentleness to them as he blinks slowly, waiting. The red glow illuminates parts of him- fur, scales, feathers, all dark as pitch.
“Morgan?”
Tikah hadn’t even heard the clicking of his claws on stone, or the rustle of his wings.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to intrude.”
“Why are you- why didn’t you-?”
As she’s trying to form a question, it clicks. The reason why he hadn’t come earlier. Too distressed to maintain a human form. He lowers his head, meeting her gaze.
“I didn’t want to stain a day that’s dark enough. She loved the sun. I didn’t want to take that from her.”
She can’t read his expression in his glowing red eyes, but she can feel the sadness in the words. She shakes her head.
“You’re not intruding or darkening. They were your sibling. You deserve to grieve as much as any of us.”
Silence, then a quiet rustling of feathers.
“Come here. You look cold.”
At the words, she shivers, realizing just how uncomfortable she is. The night chill had seeped into her. It seems that even a grieving body can’t forget its need to live.
Tentatively, she steps towards him. He envelopes both her and the grave in his wings. She sinks against him, all of a sudden aware of the exhaustion that weighs her down. His fur is coarse, but his warmth radiates through her.
“She wouldn’t want me to be like this.”
Tikah murmurs the words into the quiet dark of the space.
There’s a rumble in Morgan's throat. Tikah can’t tell if it’s laughter or discontent.
“They would want you to be what you need. To do what you need for yourself.”
Tikah presses her face into the black fur. “Aren’t you sad?”
She feels him shift.
“Emotions are… odd for me. I am built of pieces of her. Not all of me, but enough. It feels like they’re still with me, in a way.”
Tikah stays silent, waiting for him to continue. She wonders what it’s like, to be a creature made of memory. Finally, he says,
“I miss talking with her. And I don’t want to forget them either. But you are alive. And as much as living hurts, I don’t want her memory to strangle you.”
She closes her eyes, tears dripping down her cheeks.
“I’m not okay. I don’t know when I’ll be.”
Another rumble.
“That’s okay.”
She curls up against his side.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to go back to normal.”
“You don’t have to. She was a part of our lives for a long time. The world is changed with her gone.”
At this, Tikah looks up.
“She mattered?”
The words are soft. Some half-formed fear finding an outlet in the words. Morgan curls his long, bushy tail around Tikah.
“She mattered to us.”
Tikah closes her eyes and wonders if that is enough, at least for now. She decides that it is. The grief isn’t any less, but, sharing this space with another who cared for Riley, Tikah feels a little less alone.
She becomes aware of the sound of rain. A gentle pitter patter on the canopy of feathers that Morgan has made.
Tikah rises and steps out of the shelter of flesh and bone, gently pushing the feathers aside. He pulls back his wings, folding them neatly behind him. Even in this form she can see how tired he looks. The way he tucks into himself.
She takes his beak gently in her arms and kisses the tip of it, sharing the love she feels Riley would have wanted him to know. He freezes, then leans into her touch. The rain is heavy on her skin, soaking through her hair and clothes. But it feels warm.
They stand there, grieving together, sharing the warmth of this person that both of them miss so dearly.
Riley curled Tikah’s dark hair around her fingers. It was like a river of satin that tickled their fingertips and cheek, and, though Riley feared the water for its strange call and capricious ways, she thought she wouldn’t mind drowning, if it was Tikah’s lips that stole her breath.
They buried their face in Tikah’s hair, breathing in the smell of herbs and citrus. And when Tikah’s arms curled around them- warm and soft and yet as anchoring as the feeling of the earth on one’s bare feet, there was nowhere else they’d rather be.
They placed their hand on the small of Tikah’s back, the other still entwined in her hair, and pulled her closer. Tikah leaned down into Riley and placed a kiss on their lips- none of her usuals nervous flutter present in that soft insistence.
They were at ease with each other, there in the small space of the bed they shared.
