Ripples of grief

Chapter 21

The lake glistened behind her, waves cruelly whispering those white lies into her mind – those that you tell a child as they wander around, their path only downward into the depths of hopelessness. They were meant to console a poor, wondering soul who didn't know what not to ask; but perhaps, when the viper's fangs pierced all veils of fog, it was too late. The white curtain had hidden a rotting corpse, and all they could do was weep for their lost innocence. The mirror always showed a twisted reflection that no white lie could conceal; in a strange, eerie light, one that seemed to shine upon the ground yet never show a shadow, perhaps blissful innocence was twisted. She saw glistening hints of it in the wind, fangs and thorns, tendrils that choked poor dreams to death until their carcasses fell – the light of a candle only lasts so long, and in the dark, with the moon's murky glow, perhaps she simply saw the tides of a river churn in rage and despair, twisting every word and every child's joy into something more sinister. She remembered a few words from a better time, scrawled in scratches upon the fabrics and a scar upon the wood, soft as flesh and just as delicate as the skin that a bullet pierces; the skin of innocence – there had been smiles of a laugh – one that echoed in the flow of light among a cavern of doleful dread – it was marked in the shadows in her mind – those of where his arms had lain. Limp. Powerless to stop it. The mark they had left perhaps was a melody that fled from truth – no white lie could cover the eerie glow of gloom lurking – among that river lurked cruel words of sinister, insidious whispers. Those that the river snatched away in a choking, cruel grasp. The last, wavering, sickly breaths as the light died down. Then the apparition of life peered through, and the corpse of joy was left limp. When you gaze into a mirror a while, every blink and every small, glinting shiver of light in your eyes – in the eerie light, somehow the river twists it as it churns. Only small flecks of truth were scattered throughout the dull, pulsing echo of light as she looked upon the shelves, whereupon lay books. Revelations that left the decaying innocence to fall under the weight of sudden truth. The golden yarn amid a woven tapestry that was as light as the crow's white feather, yet shattered the mirror, and left the face twisted, the spirit it once had replaced by hollow dread.

Every scratch bled melancholy and left the slow wander through the house bleak, full of lingering sorrow that seemed to ripple and fade into nothing, before wavering and stumbling through the cruel, wicked tides to ripple through once again as the tears fell, the thorns among the cold biting and scratching like an animal freed from a cage, only to miss the security of the gloom. Of not knowing, she supposed. Of not seeing. But the tides tossed every shred of earth before her, every truth that could cause the bookshelf to sink beneath the shores of light and joy; and surely, she whispered to herself, this was the very image of woe in its purest form – not blotted out by tears or drowned out by the wretched sobs of heartbreak and grief – not diluted in the river of bittersweet sorrow. Everything stripped away, all residues of feeling left to weather in the cold and the rain – this felt as if it were simply the image of a chamber of hollow winds, bleak agony scraping away the shell of flesh as the joy inside slowly decayed, devoured by despair. Even in those cushions upon the ground, which had once seemed so full of elegant, fleeting comfort; crows always haunted death and grief, remained unspoken as such woes as this were lamented by the wretched soul. As the river of cruel light beamed through, churning, a carcass was carried. One which left the crows to run toward it, their beaks leaving scars upon all comfort – leaving even clouds a bed of nails and thorns. Now those cushions were simply silken threads, frayed and hollow in the cold, dreary glare of moonlight, full of menacing dread of that looming threat. Every word she heard was just an echo passed downstream by a hand of such graceful writing, leaving serpentine ink to flow across the page, delivering to her just a false, white lie, twisted by the tide as it was passed downstream. Placid faces never once wavering, the shadows seemed to call for her, pull her toward them; their faces were that of a child – innocent, pure, so much so that the shadows the light of their joy left appalled her as she fled their vile complexions. They seemed to beg her from the rotting, weary wood. Then she saw it – a single book upon the shelf; she had sold all the others but this one lingered, a reminder of better times.