786 Delving Through Regrets, Part I almost wish I was dreaming right about now.
When that scene faded, when the muffled whimpers and the frail, pitiful figures before my eyes had imploded into silencing wisps of black vapor… how relieving it’d be if that was my consciousness just springing awake, and I was still in bed lying warm and snug… crusty eyes staring bleared and dumb out into the cold light of a day that has yet to be.
A day to look forward to…
But then the vapors would continue to swim and dance in a sea of its pitch darkness, trapping me in this perpetual nightmare… one memory after the other… harrowing memories that would come and go as they felt like it.
Yet that last one in particular, however… it stayed with me even as it long dissolved into the misty void.
Never in a million years could I ever imagine Amelia saying those words the way she did. I could feel her dread – the panic and sadness blasting through all sense of self-restraint as if it were my own.
I nearly believed in it myself too. That for Adalia, there was simply no hope, no chance at salvation… save from the embrace of death, and I knew it was stupid, ridiculous and slushed in every modicum of idiotic, especially since I knew myself that that wasn’t true. Just gotta turn my head a little inch to know that, to see that… the almost reassuring cold of her hand on mine.
Still, though…
“Almost… finished…” Adalia whispered, apparently sensing my disquiet, her tone as barren as the darkness all around. “Don’t… let go…”
.....
And before I could say much else, I saw the smoke and swirls solidify, setting the scene and laying the foundation for another memory to unfold.
I blinked, and suddenly, we were plunged once more under the light of day… or at least a vivid imitation of day.
The stage was set, faintly ushered in by chirping of birds unseen, the backdrop littered with the smudge outlines of village structures scattered across the township, and there, shrouded in the limelight of darkness was a familiar lone figure sitting beneath the rustling leaves of a tree.
Has it been a day already? Or has it actually been a full week since? The deep blackness was specifically tailored to give no definite estimation, or explanation for anything. All that I could surmise was that Adalia’s prediction of dying soon had yet to happen.
But just looking at the state of her here, frailer, thinner, lightly struggling to even rouse a breath, it was apparent that soon was coming pretty soon… fate looming over her like a gray cloud over a dimming, dying horizon.
I imagine she was all too aware of it herself, which was what brought her in the first place – a final chance to see the world, enjoy the little leisures still available to her before the inevitable arrives.
Amelia was nowhere in sight either. Where she could be, I wouldn’t know, but going off of what I’ve seen and heard, the answer was simple.
She was away.
Honestly, I didn’t want to think about how she was even feeling, fortunately, I was suddenly given a distraction to steer my attention toward, expelled out in the form of a dry, weary sigh.
“I know you’re there,” the frail shadow spoke, a gust of wind carrying away the strands of grass she had plucked all the way forward against the side of a nearby building. “Stop watching me and just show yourself, why don’t you?”
I followed the heading of the breeze, and just around the corner of flimsy wooden boards, poked out the little battered nub of a long, narrow stick. The faint silhouette of Liamel then sheepishly limped forward toward her direction seemingly seeing no other alternative approach.
“A-Adalia,” He greeted her, his hunched figure slanting a little more out of discomfort than anything else. “Good afternoon to you…”
“Why have you been watching me?” She demanded, formalities in abandon. “You’ve done your rounds across the village. There is no reason for you to loiter, and yet here you remain… watching me.”
“W-Well,” He attempted to explain. “I’ve noticed you’ve scarcely left your home, even rarer now as of late…”
“And what of the times you’ve passed by my place of residence? There reside only three houses apart from mine, surely you’ve no need to come by and collect from them every single day, do you?”
“You noticed?”
“I always had,” She breathed out, sighing loud enough to be mistaken as displeasure. “Every day.”
I heard him audibly gulp.
“I… I can assure you I’ve no ill-intent by it. I really don’t. Though, I suppose it is still quite an unsettling notion… um… I sincerely I’ve not fostered any kind of aversion for you to have of me with my tactless actions.”
“Annoyance is more like it,” She said. “So, tell me, if not to annoy me, then what is your intention?”
“Like I said. You rarely leave your home nowadays, if ever, and well…” Liamel straightened his hunch a little. “I was concerned for you.”
“Concern, you say…”
“Of course,” He said with a slight swell of confidence. “You, you’re unwell, aren’t you? And what’s more you live alone, with your sister only coming to visit every other week… and even her I’ve been seeing less and less of as of late.”
It would have been the perfect cover-up for his actions if he just wasn’t so overwhelmingly sincere about it. I didn’t doubt him, but I would be lying if I wasn’t a little taken aback… every step forward seemed like an agony for him, and yet every day without fail he’d willingly walk the long journey across the village and back just to check on her.
All that painstaking effort for a complete and total stranger…
Adalia shook her head at him.
“Well, here I am,” She proclaimed limply. “Concerns all satiated, yes?”
“On the contrary,” Liamel limped a little closer, his cane quaking in his grip as he leaned his gaze forward at her. “You look… terrible.”
Adalia heaved again. “Mind your own business. I am not asking.”
“Forgive me, but I think it is. I told you – I see you as one of ours.”
“Well I am not,” She said at once, barely able to raise her voice any higher. “So, once again, for the last time – just leave me alone.”
But it seems he wasn’t listening anymore. The closer he got, the more determined he became. From my point of view all I could see were inky shadows, but surely to him, seeing her… he had to be seeing so much more.
And I don’t even dare imagine the state she had to be in for him to so boldly turn a deaf ear to her demands.
“You’re haggard. Have you not been eating?” He asked her, stopping short at a close distance as to not tread upon her boundaries. “Or – Adalia, what is it? What’s afflicted you? Maybe I’ll be able to help you in some way.”
“You? Help me?” She said, unable to even muster a sneer. “Are you trying to be funny?”
“I find no humor in this, believe me. The state of you… how – why – just, what do you have? You’re deathly ill. I had hoped you’d be feeling better after all this time – does your sister know about – but of course, she does. What am I even saying? So then had she not been giving you remedies? Have you not been seeking treatment? How did this…?”
“You’re not going to leave…”
“No,” He shook his head at her. “Not until you tell me just what…”
“Are you simply just attracted to me?” Adalia suddenly asked him. “That’s the actual reason behind your intent, isn’t it? The things you’ve done, the things you’re doing. Why is it you keep watching me day after day. Why you won’t just go away. You think me desirable in your eyes, don’t you?”
Even I was rattled by the bluntness of her words. Without anger, disgust or any other emotion she’d usually exhibit, all that was left was just her plain, impartial observation of him ringing loud and quite too often true.
Liamel became unusually still. His right hand pushing down onto his cane as if intending to burrow it into the earth.
“Tell me,” She continued, her voice in dull, cynical mockery. “Just what is it you find so appealing about me? Is it my appearance? Has my personality utterly captivated you? Or do you think me adorably weak? charmingly frail? Perhaps you regard yourself as my savior. The man that will save me from the illness that afflicts me so.”
“That is not…”
“You deny. Do tell – in which aspect do you deny? The deep attraction you hold? The many feelings you nurtured? The overwhelming lust you harbor? Tell me, do you wish to make love to me? You do, don’t you? You’ve thought about it.”
“Adalia,” He raised his voice, speaking fast before she could interrupt him. “Please, that is all beside the point. Right now, what you need…”
“So you deny it?” Adalia interjected anyway. “This goodwill, this altruism, you insist on sickeningly portraying, all of it, simply out of the kindness of your heart?”
“I want to help you,” Liamel answered. “That is all I want to do.”
“You keep saying that,” again, only an eerie calmness was resonating in her voice. “As if your help is worth any meager value. Look at you, you’re weak, you’re useless, you can barely do anything by yourself. Sincerely, just what can you do for anyone, for yourself even?”
And here she went on without pause, without care, sparing Liamel no chance to speak in the slightest.
“Was Leonardo not enough for you? Was his assessment not enough to snap you out of this delusion of yours? You’re unfit, incapable – completely and utterly worthless. You live a wretched existence and you insist on denying it, but why deny what you can’t change? Why even try and change? Why can’t you just accept it? Just live with it? Face it, you idiot – you’re hopeless.”
So despondent, so lifeless. Adalia, a literal shadow of herself. A hollow silhouette blacker than the darkness that encompassed everything. Then on the other hand, standing on the opposite end, Liamel gazed at her, his figure hunched and brittle… and yet with his head still held high and firm.
“All very true,” He said to her. “Still, I wish to help you. I’d still like to try.”
“Why?” Adalia demanded, the last of her annoyance leaving with her breath.
“Because I can,” He simply said. “Because I want to,” then he crossed over, stepping past her boundaries. “So please, just tell me what’s wrong with you.”
That lonely sullen figure wallowing, drowning deep in the depths of her own despair. I watched her swallow another breath, no longer caring, no longer hoping… yet for that one brief moment when her eyes met his… the two of them… an inverse, opposite reflection of one another… and as such, it seemed she saw a little bit of her inside of him.
A little bit of his courage.
A little bit of his hope.
So, in spite of it all, Adalia spoke.
“I am dying,” She declared to him calmly. “Do you suppose you can help me with that?”
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