Fear of losing a piece of yourself

I could say with an assured heart that there wasn’t a moment I failed to enjoy with the playwright.

Maybe that’s why I had grown a little complacent, and taken for granted that times would always be filled with joy.

In the quiet theatre when I had looked over towards her, Theresia had been lying upon the ground, making no noise apart from her arrhythmic breaths; soft pants that fell hot against the wooden-plated floor.

My eyes shuddered in the same way they would had my heart been gripped by the anxiety of my past.

Although now, it was a feeling of the present.

I rushed over to her side, kneeling beside her as I felt her gentle skin. Against my touch, it was hotter than the sting of the sun.

In the heat, Theresia had worked too tirelessly.

She had worked tirelessly for my sake, at the behest of my suggestion, and poured the whole of my passion into my purpose.

I wondered then if it was something I should have felt guilty about, but I knew she wouldn’t have wanted that for me.

So I held my heart back from wrapping itself in thorns, and I carried Theresia gently out of the theatre.

I walked through the bustling stone streets of the bronze city, staying close to the shade lest I enrage her skin which already seemed to boil and burn up against itself.

I made my way to the alcove within the pipeworks where a familiar door of oak lied, and opened its hinges that lacked oil with a resounding creaking sound.

In the silence of her home I stepped gently, and in her room where her bed made of clouds lied, I placed her down softly.

“You fool… you often forget that I’m here now, don’t you?” I whispered quietly. “This workload doesn’t have to belong to you alone, so you shouldn’t tire yourself to sickness…”

Gently in her bed did I tuck her within silken sheets. Her hair that was unbound by lace fell past her shoulders; spilling down her chest like a midnight waterfall, so I moved the locks away from her face to spare her the annoyance.

Pulling the curtains of her room shut, it was bathed in a sudden darkness that chilled the air around us in an instant.

I sat in a chair at her bedside, and as I stood in the solitude of watch over her, I felt my eyelids grow heavy, and fell into slumber beside the playwright.

—

“I appreciate you.” I spoke simply.

There were no embellishments to my words, and my sentences were not offered flowery poeticism, for I feared it would distract from its meaning, which had been spoken purely from the surface of my heart.

“And I you, my friend.”

The towering giant Shirakawa sat next to me as we gazed upon a field of emerald that had been littered with a blank canvas of glimmering snowfall. He had a smile that stretched the entirety of his massive face, pushing his cheeks up against his eyelids in fashion that made him look like an amusingly happy statue.

“Why do you call me friend sometimes, but in others instances ‘Lord’?” I asked of him.

“When you remember me, you are my friend. When you forget me, you are my Lord.” Shirakawa spoke gently. “In either instance, I still appreciate and respect you as a person just as much.”

“What is there to respect about me?” I laughed nervously. “My wealth, my infamy, are those all not material things?”

“All of those things are not you. I would never say as much.” Shirakawa smiled. “I respect you because you are gentle to all others, even if your mind and heart do not feel like it. Your wealth does not belong to you in your own mind, but to others who may need it more. Day by day you commit yourself to others, and still you act as if it is nothing to you. Your humility is overwhelming sometimes.”

“If I were to let my ego free, I think it would consume me.”

“I think you would be just as fine, because you are not alone to face all of your negatives.” Shirakawa assured of me.

“When you count on others, how do you fear them not leaving you behind…?”

“You love them and you trust them in parallel. Isn’t that all you can do?” Shirakawa replied with a smile. “You could sit here in your lonesome for the rest of your life, but without that risk, would you ever be happy?”

“Is loving someone worth that risk…? I asked of him.

“That is for you to judge. If you ever fall in love with someone enough, I think you will be able to count on them. I know you this much, to speak so plainly.”

“Then, for the rest of my life, I will trust your word, my friend.”

—

I shot up within the waking darkness, eyes wide with shock and surprise as I glanced around the neatly-cleaned room of the playwright.

In front of me, muffled sobs cried out into a pile of sheets and covers.

Getting up from my seat, I sat at the edge of her bed, covers ruffled underneath my knees as I held her gently in my arms.

“It’s alright, my dearest.” I spoke softly, my softened hands caressing gently a back that shuddered with aching fear. “It is just you and me in a quiet room. There is no danger here.”

“No… I’m not crying because I’m terrified.” Theresia whispered in turn amidst her sobs.

“Then if you feel comfortable, will you tell me why you’re crying?” I asked of her.

“It’s stupid…” Theresia shook her head, her rosy cheeks still laced well with dried tearfall. “You’ll laugh if I speak it simply.”

I gilded the edged lines of her jaw with my fingertips, bringing her gaze forward to meet mine as I spoke plainly.

“Nothing that makes you cry is funny to me.”

Meeting her glimmering ocean gaze, I couldn’t held but look away to spare my face the heat of blush, but she pulled my expression back just as suddenly to place her lips upon mine.

I didn’t mind if I got sick beside her, simply because it would mean more time spent in the same bed against the warmth of her touch.

“I had a dream where you weren’t present, and so my heart worried me.” She whispered as she pulled away from me.

And against her words, I couldn’t help but laugh, despite saying I wouldn’t.

It wasn’t because I found it funny, however.

“Theresia, I will never willingly leave you behind. I will always be here, until the time when I can’t be.” I smiled. “So you’re just going to have to trust me on that.”

“I do.” She spoke simply in response, falling against my chest as I held her close.

I had known by then that she was someone I loved wholly, and was someone I could place the trust of my heart in.

So for her, as I brushed away the endlessly flowing locks of obsidian hair from her prim and sallow face, I sung softly a lullaby composed in my own mind, cleaved away from that which had been sang to me as a swaddled child.

'Sleep, my darling, sleep, my lovely.

Close your eyes, my dear.

You have done so well today,

sleep, my darling, sleep.

Where has time gone?

Over the mountains she's traveled,

to settle in the blue sky.

As a kind souvenir,

tell me what time has left for you?

A sound, and sleeping mind.'

And in turn, as she lay gently in my arms, Theresia fell fast asleep, her soft and unshuddered breaths falling hot against my skin.

As I stared at her face, whose cheeks had been stung red by fever, my lungs were strangled by the elated euphoria in my chest.

I couldn’t handle for a moment how adorable I found her.