Chapter 13. A party for two. for me, and you.

The machine gave one final sputter, a faint hiss, and died.
No more beeps, no ghosts left to speak through the fish.
Only silence—and the echo that lives inside it.

He stood there a long time, the key slick in his palm, the black box heavy against his thigh.
Then, slowly, he lifted his head and spoke into the still air, his voice hoarse but steady.
It wasn’t recitation; it was confession.

“But as I turned to walk away, a tear fell from my eye,
for all life, I’d always thought I didn’t want to die.
I had so much to live for and so much yet to do.”

The words fell softly, like dust shaken from a book long unopened.
He drew a breath, let it out slow.
A single tear gathered at the edge of his chin and fell, staining the snow at his feet a deeper blue.

“It seemed almost impossible that I was leaving you.
I thought of all the love we shared and all the fun we had.”

He looked down at his hands as though they held something fragile, something he dared not drop.
His fingers curled inward, palms cupped around nothing, yet he cradled it all the same—
the shape of a child, of memory, of someone too small to still be remembered.

And then—like an answer—another voice joined him.
Light. High. Clear as wind chimes under snow.

“If I could relive yesterday, I thought, just for a while,
I’d say goodbye and hug you and maybe see you smile.”

His breath caught. His knees nearly buckled.
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere—from within the box, from behind his ribs, from the snow itself.

He closed his eyes.
Let the words continue, half‑spoken, half‑remembered.

“But then I fully realized that this could never be,
for emptiness and memories would take the place of me…
And when I thought of worldly things that I’d miss come tomorrow,
I thought of you, and when I did, my heart was filled with sorrow.”

The final line trembled out of him and vanished into the frost.
He stood very still. No sobs, no anger—just the slow cooling of something once burning.

The cabin listened with him.
Snow drifted against the windows like a curtain lowering at the end of a play.

He whispered to the empty air, to the child, to the memory that would not fade,
“I remember you.”
------
He remained on his knees long after the words faded.

Hands folded, head bowed, the weight of silence pressing gentle and terrible upon his shoulders.
The tear that escaped his lashes fell without sound, vanishing into the snow like a promise finally kept.

Then—somewhere beyond the cold—came a sound.

Faint at first, no louder than breath sliding through a keyhole.
A single string drawn by a trembling bow.

A violin.

Not mournful—rising.
A note that climbed slow, deliberate, patient as dawn fighting through night.
Each vibration filled the air with light that wasn’t light, with warmth that wasn’t heat.
It gathered around him like the hush of wind across mountains.
It carried the weight of distance, the memory of sky.

He closed his eyes.

And in the dark behind his lids, he saw it:

—Fields of golden wheat bending beneath invisible hands.
—A bird breaking its cage and vanishing into blinding blue.
—A river twisting through the plains, cold and fast and endless.
—Hooves drumming the soil, the wild heartbeat of the earth returning to him in thunder and foam.

The violin swelled, filled with majesty and grief, the sound of a sun lowering itself into the sea.
Every note shimmered with color that no longer belonged to this place: rose, amber, gold, the faint pulse of life unforgotten.

And there—in the heart of the music—he saw a single bloom.

A pink rose.

Growing in darkness, luminous and defiant.
Around it, the sick and the cold—the shadows of the dead—lifted their heads.
They looked toward that fragile light with awe, with yearning, with something like hope.

He breathed in, whispered through the ache in his throat:

“It is still a beautiful world.”

For a moment, the music trembled brighter, like the sun hesitating before it sets forever.
Then the final note fell, slow and low, and the sound dissolved into air.
The light retreated.
The frost crept back.

He opened his eyes.

He was still in the cabin.

The snow had stopped falling.
Only silence remained—soft, fragile, sacred.

And in that stillness, for the first time since waking in this monochrome prison,
he was not afraid.
----

The world had changed again while he was lost in the music’s afterglow.
He didn’t see it happen—perhaps it had been happening all along.

The Forever More flower was gone.
Only its husk remained, wilted and gray, its curling stalks hardened into something brittle as bone.
Depression or hope—he couldn’t tell which had killed it.
But from the crushed petals a shape had risen: a small stone platform, round as a dinner plate, smooth as river rock.

And at its center, as though grown from the decay itself, waited a shallow hollow—
perfectly fitted to the black box.

He approached slowly, steps careful on the frost‑slick boards.
His breath trembled in front of him, the faint echo of a heart that wasn’t sure it should beat.
He knelt and placed the box upon the pedestal.

It settled into place like destiny finding its notch.

A sound followed—a soft, metallic click.
The lock released, the keyhole gleaming faintly in the gloom.
The message was clear.

He lifted the key in his shaking hand, hesitating only long enough to whisper something that could have been a prayer—or an apology—and slid it home.

The turn was smooth.
Too smooth.
Like something that had been waiting centuries for this exact motion.

Pop.

The lid rose on its own.

And inside—

A ballerina.

Tiny. Porcelain. Arms lifted to an invisible sky.
Her paint was faded, her face half‑cracked, but she still turned with grace, as if remembering a life before dust.

Then the music began.

A twinkling melody, gentle and innocent, the kind that once belonged in nurseries and daylight.
The kind his wife used to play when she was a child—before the world hurt her, before kindness became a luxury.
He could almost see her small fingers pressing broken keys, playing this same tune for comfort when no one listened.

But here, in this room of frost and rot, the melody changed.

The oppressive air bent it.
The notes warped, slowed, dipped sharp where they should have risen.
Each rotation of the dancer twisted the sound further, until it was no longer lullaby but elegy.
The sweetness decayed into something aching.

He stepped back, heart stuttering, eyes locked on the tiny figure as her dance continued, even as the air around her froze solid.

Crystals crawled up the sides of the box—first delicate, then thick—encasing the ballerina mid‑twirl.
A crown of frost sealed over the keyhole, binding it shut.
Within moments, the whole mechanism was trapped inside a cocoon of ice.
The song played on from within, muffled, suffocating, desperate.

He pressed his palm to the cold surface.
It bit his skin instantly, but he didn’t pull away.

“Save it from the darkness…” he whispered, the words a ghost of breath across the frozen lid.

He closed his eyes, forehead resting against the frost, and for the first time realized:
the thing he was trying to save wasn’t the music at all.
It was the memory that came with it.

And memories, once frozen, rarely thaw.