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The windowpane is spattered with rain.
Sitting cozy in a cushioned alcove, you watch the droplets slide down in regal rivulets, consolidating to form single streaks. The scenery beyond the window is bleak and dreary—a despondent landscape of gnarled, leafless trees and scratchy brambles stretching towards a dark, dismal sky. Sometimes you liken the rain to tears, wondering if Mother Nature weeps for all creatures or simply for you and your situation. Rare are the days in which the sun shines upon the craggy stone façade of your captor’s castle, and she is as benevolent as she is cruel.
For all of its sumptuous splendor, generational wealth filling the interior with priceless heirlooms and relics, it is an empty, cold structure. You’ve taken to enveloping yourself in thick furs, if only because these furs do not speak like the monster who so humbly offers his embrace. Though you’ve always considered yourself of strong, sturdy mind, your restraint is thinning. As the days pass and you shed clothing sizes like they’re second skins, you find yourself drawn to warmth.
Which is, ironically enough, contradictory to your current temperament. The windows, frigid like the grave, provide solace you cannot find anywhere else—for it is only tender warmth you receive from him. Had he not been so merciful, perhaps it would have been easier to shrink away and truly loathe him with every ounce of your being.
And yet, in order to escape the warmth which enshrouds, you seek the cold, bitter windows and their rain-weary countenance.
Lying beside you on the pillows, snoozing the afternoon away, a calico cat snores idly. She was a gift from him. You were neglectful of your mental health and thus, as per his guard’s suggestion, he sought to find a cat to cure your loneliness and inspire some form of happiness. You appreciate Silver—genuinely, you do—but the good luck a calico brings is not nearly enough to rescue you from captivity.
She was a stray, a scrawny thing with a limp and one bad eye. You took to her right away, scooping her up in your arms and lovingly naming her Cotton. Similarly, she returned your affections, rubbing her head against your palm and purring pleasantly.
Now she likes to nudge the dome that is your stomach, a great, round thing at only six months. Sometimes you think she’s more motherly than you are. You’ve never been able to care for much of anything. Plants wither under your touch, recipes spoil even when you follow them to the letter, and your electronics crack.
Your phone, more fractured than your very heart, is cold in your hands. The screen is blank; it’s dying. It was at 100% before. Now it’s been reduced to a sad 7%. There is no reception or connection to be had in Briar Valley. Your phone, once so powerful and all-knowing, is but a hollow shell. Useless. A digital photo album will expire at its final hour, and there’s no charger. He offered to use his magic to charge it, but he has never known his own strength and you couldn’t risk losing the treasured memories stored within.
Sometimes you’d return to old message logs and read through them. Now you can’t do that, lest you drain the battery quicker than intended.
“So this is where you’ve retreated,” Malleus notes, poking his head around the corner of a towering bookcase. Concern settles on his features. “Are you well? Sebek tells me you were absent for breakfast.” “I wasn’t hungry,” you mutter, watching his reflection through the stormy glass.
Malleus glances at Cotton and then at your phone as it rests in your clasp. “May I trouble you to eat just a little, if only some fruit?”
“I’m not hungry.” He nods, stalling. “Will you join me for lunch?”
“If I must.”
A small smile lifts his lips. “Are you cold? It can’t be very comfortable to sit there for such a long time. You’ll catch your death.”
“I hope.”
He tuts in disapproval and shrugs out of his cloak, draping it over you even though you’re already wearing a fleece robe. Malleus assesses you with a fleeting once-over.
“It doesn’t hurt to layer. You must understand where I’m coming from, dearest. Extreme temperatures serve to weaken those who are already so fragile.”
“I’m not fragile,” you snap, turning to scowl.
He doesn’t flinch at the heat smoldering in your eyes. “You’re human.”
“How many times did you have to practice that to come to terms with it?”
Malleus’s verdant stare narrows; his frown tightens. “It’s the truth.”
“I didn’t think you’d confront it.”
“I must if I’m to understand…” He exhales through his nose, deflating somewhat. “You’re in fine health. The physician tells me so. There’s no need to worry ourselves with ineffectual what-ifs.”
You turn your gaze on the sprawling forest next, unwilling to discuss the report and its subsequent conclusion: If she remains in good health and follows the recommended diet for an expecting mother, she’ll carry to term.
“My phone is dying, Malleus.”
“Is that not life? Lilia once said so.”
“My pictures… My everything is stored in this phone. It means so much to me.”
“Truly? Is there not a way to make physical copies of these photographs?”
“Unless Briar Valley has the technology to do so…”
“I’m afraid not.”
Malleus takes a daring step closer, endeavoring to comfort you. Cotton cracks her good eye open to peer at him. She hisses low in her throat, a protector standing small against something so tall. Pouting, clearly disheartened, Malleus heeds her warning and chooses to linger just within the bounds she deems acceptable.
“Yeah, that’s what I assumed.”
You heave a dejected sigh, your shoulders drooping. Seeking to cleanse your visual palate, you power the device on. 5% blinks back at you, an insignificant number sitting in a corner that you normally wouldn’t have paid much mind to. Now it weighs heavy, a reminder that the end is encroaching.
“I would’ve liked to keep these photos forever,” you whisper, mostly to yourself. Malleus hums his acknowledgement; you think he knows the feeling—or some variant of it, at least. “If I lose these pictures…”
“Do you not have memories?”
“I do, but it isn’t the same. One day I’ll grow old and my memory will be frail. I won’t remember nearly as much as I do now. Those memories will become ghosts and eventually I’ll—”
“You will not.” There’s a finality to the declaration—you won’t leave me; you won’t drain or die like this mobile device.
You rest your head against the window. The cool glass soothes your soul. I wonder what the others are up to right now… You place your hand upon your belly. I wonder if they’d have any good ideas for a name. I’m terrible at naming things. I can never pick something that feels right.
“I’d like to have a funeral for my phone.”
But maybe there is no right thing.
“Of course,” he agrees, perfectly serious. You will have that phone funeral, just as you will have every other request you make—however patently absurd it may seem. (Every other request except for freedom, of course.) “Materials may not have the same worth as a loved one, but the experiences they provide are just as valuable. Surely, no? Otherwise I would not feel so troubled when Roaring Drago…” Pausing to search for the placeholder, Malleus glances at your phone. “Perhaps there is no greater tragedy than existence itself.”
“It’s the most bittersweet burden,” you echo, scrolling through each picture with wistful remembrance. “But then I’d rather know the fleeting frivolity of life than endure hundreds of years of solitude. It makes me appreciate everything that much more.”
You stop at a picture of you and Malleus, a photo snapped by Lilia himself. Part of you often wonders why he chose you—why he adores you to such a degree when you, like everyone else, will inevitably perish. But therein lies the allure: That which is unobtainable is even more tempting. And because there is only one of you, a human destined to one day return to her home world, your very presence is more fleeting than a dream.
To Malleus, who has always dreamt, fond and fervent, of the unobtainable mundanity of normal life, you are a sweet, tangible blessing.
“Horns, do you think I’ll ever get another chance to have my phone at 100%?”
He softens under the nickname. It means more to him than his lofty station. “Would you like to know that joy?”
“It would be nice, yes, but then I’d just get sad when it reaches zero. I guess I should be grateful it’s stayed alive for this long. Sorry, it’s a stupid question. Just forget it.”
“Nonsense. There is no such thing.” He reaches to touch your cheek, but Cotton hisses again and so he refrains. She stands on unsteady legs and climbs into your lap, perching awkwardly in spite of your rounded belly. The sight draws a deep chuckle from him. “Your feline friend is quite taken with you.”
“It’s probably because I’m warm. She likes my belly a lot.”
“As do I.”
You roll your eyes.
“Your beauty is most beguiling. There’s a certain radiance to your person. It’s very charming. Do you not agree?”
“Flattery will get you nowhere—definitely not in Cotton’s good graces.”
“I’m simply voicing a fact.”
Your hand slides down from your stomach to pat Cotton. She purrs under your touch, and a weak approximation of a smile tugs at your lips. Amidst all of this sorrow, she is a glimmer of hope. In a way, she’s like you—a stray without a place in this world, snatched from the cobbles she once wandered and confined in a cage of royal opulence. Your similarities are striking, if not immensely devastating.
“Fact or not, I don’t care if I look pretty. It means nothing to me.”
“To be impartial towards appearances… Quite a noble mindset.”
I never once thought you were scary or strange, Horns. Even now.
You look at your phone once more. 3% flickers back.
You’re just lost, and in being lost you found me. But I was also lost. I never even belonged in this world to begin with…
“I’m not going to be a good mother.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can’t even take care of myself.”
“I shall care for you when you find yourself unable to.”
“I’d rather you not.”
With Cotton having curled on your lap, slumbering peacefully, Malleus chances to close the gap. His broad frame leans to make up for the difference in height, and he runs cold fingers along your cheek. He brushes away the tears you weren’t even aware you were shedding.
You grip your phone in shaky hands, your shoulders hunched. There’s a piercing ache in your chest, pain stabbing all the way through to your heart. It persists when you power it off, unable to delight in pictorial reminiscence for a moment longer. Silent like death, you sob; seismic dismay shudders through you in waves. Distantly, in a forgotten corner of your brain, you suspect this may be the last time you’ll ever use your phone. The last time you’ll ever look upon the photos you’ve amassed. Photos of friends, class notes, food. Photos snapped by mistake, blurry and unfocused. Photos taken when Ace and Grim stole your phone. Precious memories are preserved within the permanence of a photo album—an album that only remains everlasting so long as you keep your phone charged.
Your final shred of the world beyond Briar Valley vanishes in a blip, leaving you with the dark void that is an empty screen. Brutal is the agony, contorting your face, and you bawl like you’ve just witnessed the end of a life.
In a way, you have. You held it in the palm of your hands, and you watched it wither. Watched the percentages drop through numbers, double digits easing into singles. Watched every week and tried to spare your beloved phone of its fate. Watched and attempted to stall the impossible—a foolish undertaking. This was inevitable; you knew this, and yet you’re still mourning.
Perhaps that is the most tragic facet of existence. From the moment one is born, they are mourning. Humans mourn losing time—of allowing it to slip through their fingers when they should have put it to better use. Humans mourn aging even though it is celebrated yearly. Humans mourn for things that are inhuman—for robots stuck in an endless cycle of some menial task while gears grow rusted and systems shut down or trapped on a distant planet, never to return home. For the fruit that falls from trees and rots, trampled and forgotten. For the endings, good and bad, of novels. For art that will never see the light of day because it has been destroyed or stolen or silenced. For the friends they meet, have met, and will meet.
You mourn because you know it’s impending, and you spend all of your life coming to terms with it, only to break down when it finally happens because the truth of the matter is that you will never be prepared no matter how much you prepare yourself. You mourn because you’re a complex human with complex emotions, surviving in a complex world with millions of intricacies, and the only way to weather misery is to mourn.
To the little life cradled in your womb, who knows not of these difficulties yet, they cannot fathom the anguish that accompanies loss. And right now that is all you can hope for—a life without loss.
But that is impossible because loss is true to everyone’s experience. It is part of existence, and existence is inescapable.
Malleus does not gather you in his arms. He will do so if you ask, and he knows you want to ask, which is precisely why he waits. But you’re stubborn and you refuse to give in to the temptation, let alone grant him the satisfaction. It doesn’t offend him.
The windowpane is spattered with rain. So, too, is your phone, spotted with tears and snot.
Briefly, you wonder if you still look beautiful to Malleus.
Even at your ugliest, he would still cherish you. Desperately, as if he might lose you.
Knowing this does not soften the gutting grief.