Only in my dreams does he visit.
Only here does the world feel still enough to hold us both.
The wind curls between us, and I can feel it changing. The warmth thinning, the colours dulling around the edges like water soaking into paper. The Forget-Me-Nots close just slightly. The grass hushes.
I want to cry again, but I don’t. I just watch him.
And he watches me too. He opens his mouth like he wants to say more, but no words come. Instead, he presses something into my palm—his Forget-Me-Not brooch.
It’s cool and slightly damp. Real. My fingers close around it. I look down.
When I look up again, he’s already beginning to fade.
His outline is softening, like mist burning away in the morning light.
“Eli…” My voice cracks.
But he just smiles, the same slow, quiet smile from the river. “Don’t forget me.”
The world turns white at the edges. My skin burns. How could I?
“I won’t. Never—” I can feel the tears rolling again.
Then, the air cools.
The river is gone, and I’m in my room. Alone in the dark. My hand is still curled tight, pressed to my chest. But when I open my fingers, there’s nothing there. No silver. No Forget-Me-Not brooch. Just the cold ache of missing him.
The air smellsof summer now. The heavy scent of honeysuckle clings to everything, as if the garden has forgotten the chill of spring entirely. Each morning the sun rises higher, its warmth pressing against the world like a hand, coaxing everything into bloom.
I find myself standing at the window more often, hands resting on the cool sill, watching the leaves tremble in the breeze. My eyes are always glancing at the wall beyond the garden. At the stone that divides Thornhill from the outside world.
It’s been days since Eli visited me in my dreams. Even longer since he came, climbing over the wall. Each day the garden grows, but my heart feels colder. I don’t speak of him to the Monster anymore. It’s easier that way. Easier to ignore the ache of longing in my chest, the gnawing feeling that something is wrong.
And yet, every time I move through the house, every time I walk past the stone wall where he used to climb over, my gaze slips to that spot. I can almost hear his voice in the rustling of the leaves. In the distant melody of the river.
The Monster watches me with a kind of knowing that makes my skin crawl. Its eyes are always too sharp, always too intent.
By mid-afternoon, the garden is quieter than usual, the soft rustling of leaves the only sound breaking the silence. I move slowly through the rows of flowers, my thoughts too heavy to carry.
The air is thick with heat as I cut through the garden, and the altar shimmers between the soft silhouette of the brushes. There’s a glint of something in the grass sitting at the feet of the altar, catching the sunlight, pale and precious.
A flower—a brooch.
Made of iron, delicate but unmistakably wrought in the shape of a small Forget-Me-Not.
Identical to Eli’s. The one he showed me weeks ago, when we were sitting under the wall in the tall grass. It fell out of his pocket, and when he picked it up, he looked at me.“It reminds me of you,”he said.“That’s why I have it with me all the time.”
I had smiled back then, blushing like a blooming rose, but now, the sight made my chest twist even harder.
My hands tremble as I reach down to touch the iron flower, but I pull back, suddenly unable to bear its coldness. It felt wrong. It shouldn’t be here.
Why was it here? If Eli had been here, standing on this ground, I could have sensed him. But there’s nothing.
I look around, my heart pounding. The garden feels emptier than ever. The only thing I feel inked into the ground beneath my feet is the Monster.
But why would it have Eli’s brooch?
I remember my dream. The way Elis pressed it into my hand as if for safekeeping. As if he were heading to a place where he couldn’t carry it with him. The ache in my chest sharpens. The air feels too still around me.
