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How long had it been, really?
Hours? Days? Weeks?
Did that really matter? In the end, it all blurred for Pure Vanilla Cookie.
And yet he remembered that day far too well.
The day he lost her.
After the war, he tried his damndest to carry himself through the afternoons. Taking care of his kingdom, his friends… he was holding out well, all things considered.
At least, that was how it appeared.
Sitting there alone, under the moonlit garden pavilion, only Pure Vanilla Cookie could feel the bleeding, aching hole in his heart.
The hole in the shape of one withered lily.
He was no stranger to loss, not at all, but this…it hurt him in a way far more primal than anything ever could.
He never even got to tell her.
Deep down, he prayed that some small remaining piece of her heard his final words. His final confession to her. But would that have changed anything?
He swallowed hoarsely, turning his gaze up at the moon. It was the color of her hair, and it shined like hers too. Almost like if he reached out, he’d be able to touch it. To grab it, softly in his fingers.
To run them through its silken, silver strands. To hear the soft giggling of the one whose head those strands lay upon.
To hear her soft giggling.
To hear her.
Anything to hear her again.
Anything to...
“The moon is beautiful tonight.”
Pure Vanilla Cookie’s breath hitched. He whipped his head towards the voice that rang out beside him. Soft as a flower yet clear as a bell.
There she sat. There she sat, her eyes lifted upwards and shining with the pattern of a thousand stars. She looked like a statue, sitting so still, yet she looked more alive than Pure Vanilla Cookie had ever seen.
“Y…y…you…” he could barely choke out a single word. It felt like an eternity since he saw her beauty, and it stunned him even now. He reached a hand towards her, only to falter. “You’re not…actually her, a-are you…?” His voice dropped, his brows furrowing in disappointment.
She closed her eyes, her head drooping. “No…” she looked back up at him with a kind smile. “But I can be. Even if only for a little while.”
He set his hand on the step beside him and looked down. All was silent for a while, until Pure Vanilla Cookie spoke again. His lip quivered and his voice was husky as he fished the words from his throat.
“I loved you. From the moment I laid my eyes on you, you had a vice grip on my heart. That’s never changed, even after all this time. I love you so, so much. And it hurts.” He clenched his fists he now held close to himself and screwed his eyes shut, a few tears falling onto his robe.
“It hurts that I’ll never again be able to have you by my side. It hurts that I’ll never be able to give you all this love I have twisting and churning inside of my heart, it—“
A gasping sob burst from his throat and broke off his train of thought. A moment passed where he tried desperately to pull himself back together, until he finally resigned with a painful sigh.
“I…I don’t know if I can go on. Not without you.”
“But you will.” White Lily Cookie put a hand on his cheek, wiping a stray tear from his eyes. “It will be hard, but you will heal. You will persevere, and help those suffering the same pain, because it’s simply in your nature. You never gave up back then, and you won’t give up now. You don’t need me by your side in order to prove that. After all, you’ve gotten through something like this before, have you not?”
“But this is—!” Pure Vanilla Cookie began to retort, “…This is… different.”
“How so?”
An icy hush fell over the garden. The moments where they sat in silence felt like hours to Pure Vanilla Cookie. Like someone had taken an hourglass and put it on its side.
The two of them, sitting side by side in that garden, the moon blanketing them with her silvery gaze…
Every part of him wanted it to last forever.
He knew it was impossible.
He knew it was too good to be true.
But even just sitting silently together made something flutter in his heart.
He felt like a child again.
He fidgeted with his hands as he gathered his thoughts, his feelings. The knot in his stomach grew tighter like vines. He let out a soft sigh and looked back at White Lily Cookie, his voice was small and tender.
“Can you hold me…?”
She nodded wordlessly, pulling him in and wrapping him in her arms. Her warmth felt indescribable as she gently caressed his hair.
It was like she was embracing his very soul.
It was then that the realization hit.
He would never feel that kind of warmth from her again.
And that broke him all over again.
A whimper forced itself from his throat, and he curled in on himself like a wounded animal. “Why?” He wept pathetically. “Why did you have to go…?”
She didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Nothing she could say would be able to change the outcome of that day.
She could only continue to hold his crying body in her arms, until the morning sun finally wrought him from his slumber.