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My heart aches in my chest for them, and for the first time, I silently begin to pray that what I want to do will actually come to fruition.
Their inconsolable hearts and souls, along with mine, are on the line.
I take the book into the bedroom, the sight of Tessa sending that all-too-familiar strike of weakness through my body once more. I try to ignore the overpowering grief within me. Something insists that I use it as I snap the book open and take Tessa’s ink and feather to the page.
I’m not a storyteller by any means, but this is the only narrative I know that I can tell. It pours out of me like rain, the love I feel, the melancholy of my heart, and the magical, powerful intentions of her selfless nature.
I write what I feel will suffice and slam the book shut. I remain on the floor, on my knees, once again feeling my hands shake. I cannot take my eyes off of her.
“Come on, my Tessa,” I say, my eyes blurring once more with an ineffable gloom. “Your parents need you. I need you. This world needs you and your stories.”
I stare at her, hoping that my eyes will not deceive me.
TWENTY
TESSA
I thought the darkness had consumed me. It was soft, like being wrapped in a blanket as a child during a thunderstorm. I was carried away, and it was quiet, beautiful in its own finality. I float, in infinite nothingness, finally calm and serene.
Then I feel a pull. Away from the dark that swirls all around me. The pulling sensation brings me back into the feeling of everything, the ilk of being human, both the turmoil and then the beauty.
I’m brought back from feeling nothing to feeling everything all at once. I’m rocked back to life like a child, again with the same warmth of graceful death, the rhythm of my own heartbeat, the first song that guides me back into existence.
It thumps, squishy and wonderful at the center of my chest, and life spreads through me like a cosmic event. I begin to feel everything that is attached to the center core, the bones, the organs, the connected roads. I feel the place I have been laid, also warm and tranquil. I sense the presence of my eyes, their heaviness vanishing like the fog.
When I open my eyes, I feel like a newborn babe. My eyesight is blurry, and my memory is nearly nonexistent. Yet, I do not know fear. That is the sense of freedom I feel an impulse to cling to.
“Tessa?”
There is a creature sitting before me. He says a word that sounds familiar, yet I cannot grasp it. I feel myself scowl, the first of many, I’m sure, and rise up in the bed.
He comes to me, rising from the floor with a look of utter wonder. But also great pain.
“Don’t move. Stay still!”
He implores me, but I don’t know why. My scowl evolves into a grin as he tries to guide me to my back, and I reach out to touch his face.
I’m not sure why, but I’m pulled to him just as I was pulled from the darkness. I touch the face that isn't skin but dark black and red scales. His eyes are blazing like a raging fire in the dead of night.
He looks at me, halting his frenzy of adoration, and it all returns, like a splendid rush, feeling his lips on the hillside, making love by the river as the moon spilled over us, his name, a poem layered in honey.
“Varzig,” I said, smiling. “Varzig, I’m okay.”
He pulled me to him rather roughly, and I began to laugh as he wept with a harsh cry. I’m elated, having realized that I had caused my own death for the sake of this demon that I adore, for my family, and for the village.
“You brought me back,” I said, laughing deliriously as he tightened his grip around my waist and back. “How … did you …”
“The book,” he splutters through tears, burying his face into my neck.
It’s lovely and wet, his nuzzle bringing back memories of our intimacy.
“The book …” he repeated. “I wrote in it that you would come back to life. That you would come back to me.”
I’m engulfed in love, but another feeling takes me over. It’s not panic but a sense of impending disappointment.
“Varzig,” I said, tenderly running my hands through his hair. “Do you know what that means, now?”
He lifted his head from my neck after frantically kissing it, which sent shudders of desire through my very soul. His eyes are reddened with a mix of grief and relief. I touch his cheek to comfort him.
