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Syden sat on his bed, legs covered by the thick blanket, staring at the letter in his hands. The longer he stared at it, the more the words seemed to blur into each other. It was a letter from her mother, his aunt Elizabeth. In it, she was telling her daughter about life in the faraway lands in which she worked tirelessly to protect villages and towns from the invasions of mysterious and malignant creatures.
He never usually read Cela’s letters, but this time, for some reason, perhaps driven by an intuition deep within, he had been compelled to open it before she came home. If he had asked her, she would have probably let him read it anyway, but he just couldn’t wait…
It has been a little over two years since she came to live with his family. In the beginning, he was plagued by all sorts of sad thoughts and painful memories of their first parting and its lingering ache. Over time, however, as he got to know her all over again, and the two of them bridged the lost time with new memories and a new kind of bond, his fears of her going away again had mostly been overcome by other, more immediate thoughts.
With her by his side again, he was finally able to live fully in the present.
No, that wasn’t entirely true… he had been living in the present for years after she left, having shifted his focus to other things by necessity. But her re-entry into his life was really the only thing that eased the emptiness buried deep.
He had spent over an hour mulling over Elizabeth’s letter. It wasn’t the first half that bothered him. It was the second half… the part where she hinted that it may soon be time for her daughter to return to her duties, that the dangers which had made it necessary for her to be sent away were almost fully eliminated.
The implications were too much for him to bear.
And so, after pacing in his room restlessly, he had sat down, unable to concentrate on much else.
The curtains were fully open, letting in the thin, gray light of a drabby evening sky.
He lay his head back against the headboard, wondering how much longer he’d have to wait.
Suddenly, he heard a doorbell ring downstairs. Someone went and answered the door.
Soon afterwards, he heard steps coming up the stairs…
The door to his room swung open, and there she was, in her plain, brown dress uniform, a small package swinging from her hand.
Cela had started working at a bakery in their small town, to have something to do other than just attending school. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t at all necessary, but she had insisted on it as she wanted to contribute something to the household. The job required her to work some evenings, but she always made time for him, so it wasn’t too bad. He had even visited her a few times at work. People often seemed confused about whether the two of them were relatives or lovers.
Cela came up to the bed and greeted him with a kiss.
“What’s that?” she asked when she saw the letter in his hands.
Silently, he handed it over to her. “It’s from your mother.”
She hesitated, a question in her eyes, then she took it gently and sat on the edge of the bed to read.
Awareness seemed to dawn slowly as her eyes scanned the page.
A moment later, Syden sat on the floor beside his bed, with the pastry she had brought for him still in its paper bag on the floor. Cela sat at his side, the letter on the bed behind her. She always insisted he ate away from the bed to avoid crumbs getting on the sheets, despite the fact that it was his room and his bed.
For a long time, they said nothing. Much as he appreciated the sweet gesture, Syden couldn’t bring himself to eat even a bit of the pastry.
“Please don’t go,” he said, breaking the silence eventually.
“Syden, I don’t want to, but this is my duty…” she began saying, but he interrupted her by turning towards her suddenly and enclosing her in a tight embrace.
“I love you. I don’t want you to go…” He felt like a child as he said it, but he couldn’t control himself. The overflow of emotion drowned out any reason.
“I love you too,” she said, holding him in return and stroking his back soothingly.
They held each other for some time, then slowly parted, the surge of emotion subsiding for a moment to allow him to reflect.
He sat, with his knees drawn up, and her listening beside him.
“Long time ago… when your mother decided to move away, it was the hardest thing I ever had to face,” he began, eyes downcast in thought. “You were my favourite person. I never really thought about it until I lost you.”
Cela put her hand on his shoulder.
“I… went a little crazy,” he said. “I didn’t talk much, I didn’t eat, I started fights at school with other children over silly things. When they got me a doctor, he said I had an ‘ailment of the mind’… Is that what they call heartbreak?”
“I…never knew,” said Cela, with wide eyes. She stroked his shoulder, her eyes conveying deep sympathy as she continued to listen.
“I’ll show you,” he said, shifting over to pull out the metal chest from under his bed. He opened the lid which seemed extra heavy on that day, and dug inside until he found a small, bound book. He took it out and showed her, flipping through its contents casually.
“In those days I… drew you a lot,” he said, showing her the early sketches he had made of her as a child when he was 7 years old. “I sent you some of them. But I kept most of it to myself.”
“I kept all your letters too,” he said, pulling out another pile of papers from deep inside the chest, kept together in a stack tied by a thin red ribbon. They used to write to each other before life got too busy and they fell out of touch.
Cela held the book of drawings as if it was a delicate relic that would fall apart easily if she wasn’t careful.
“I remember,” she said. “I still have yours as well.” She thumbed through the images. Even in their rough lines there were signs of a youthful mastery. “They’re lovely drawings.”
There was a slight moodiness in her downturned face.
“The only reason I stopped writing was because there was no way to send the letters overseas,” she said. “Some of the places we traveled to were far from any cities… and from the big ships that carry goods. I remember…writing letters in the hopes that I could send them, but there wasn’t a way to…”
“I see,” he said.
He recalled now how his mother had said that she didn’t know where to send the letters to at one point. There just wasn’t a stable location. She still wrote to her sister, sending the letters to her estate in the bigger town where their permanent family home was, but it would be months before she would get an answer, as Elizabeth and her family would be traveling, living in obscure fishing villages at the edges of the world.
Cela took his hand in hers and looked into his eyes.
“Syden, I promise, no matter what happens, we won’t be apart forever. We may be apart for a time, but I will never abandon you. I will find my way back.”
Syden stared back at her, trying to ignore the stinging in his eyes.
She stroked his hair.
“I promised to be with you forever,” she reminded him.
Syden nodded. “You have a… healing effect on me,” he said. “Every time you touch me, I can feel it.”
“It’s love,” she said. “I feel the same when you hold me.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You make me feel safe.”
Syden leaned towards her and kissed her. She kissed him back, softly. The comfort flowing from her had a calming effect on him, like a warm body of water. He couldn’t help but allow himself and his worries to sink down into it.
For the moment, the letter lay forgotten behind them.