Ideas, Ideas.

This is yet another beginning to a story that I am fine tuning and thinking about perusing. Got to love how the beginnings come so easily while the middle and end just dwindles around...

I turned and swiftly crossed over the threshold, keeping my hands tucked safely against my stomach, my face inscrutable. I wasn’t going to give anyone in the room the satisfaction to see me upset by this news. I wasn’t going to allow a single soul to read my mind by looking into my features. I was going to be stone and brick all at once.

     But when I turned the corner my plan fell to pieces. Their eyes were all trained on me, hard and unyielding, some turned down at the corners in sadness, others squinted to keep the tears at bay, but not a soul was crying. I suppose that was how this was going to go. I had never had to face a death in society. I had never asked or inquired or looked into how one might behave when someone died. And now… now it was too late to ask.

     My skirts whistled against the granite which then turned to stone as I walked. My heels picked up an echo, like a mournful cry. I could feel my eyes burning but I refused to look to myself to see what it was they were burning with. Surely not tears? Wouldn’t I know if I were crying? That I had never seen this day coming, that I had never imagined for one painful moment that it would come to pass. Of course it would, how could it not? Death was not a party one could decide whether or not to partake in. One was expected to attend; one was indefinitely expected to be there.

     I didn’t expect his hand to find my wrist nor was I seeing quiet as clearly as I thought I should have. His warmth surprised me and I nearly cried out. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, closer then he should have been to me by all standards, but close enough to be considered a comfort. I gratefully took his arm and tucked myself against him so he could carry me. With his comfort came a sense of weightlessness that I had no control over. My body felt insubstantial, the world a globe not hanging quiet right on its brass frame. “Steady there, Eliza.”

     “I—I’m sorry. Please, you shouldn’t—” But he gave me no chance to finish.

     “Shhh. Just keep walking. We are almost there and then you are done.”

     I swallowed hard the lump that climbed my throat. All would be alright.

     We both approached the casket. It was closed; thank the lord for that small blessing. But that didn’t change the feeling of suffocation that seemed to erupt within my chest. She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t. She was my age, my cousin, my dearest friend…how could all those things be gone like the flame on a thriving fire? All was nothing now but ashes, cold and wasted, gray and black. I wondered if I would ever see things clearly again, wondered if the blurred edges that now clouded my vision would remain forever. Gently, I held out my slender fingers, brushing the cool wood with the tips, and then the whole of my hand, my palm; all touching the cool surface. “Cicely,” I breathed. “Oh, Cissy.” And then I could breathe no more.

     William’s grip on my arm tightened and he forcefully led me away from the casket, ignoring my desperate pleas to return to its side. “Hush. Eliza, you must be quite now,” he whispered as he drew me away more and more quickly. I stumbled a number of times, but still he kept going, faster and faster it seemed, until the edges of my world were too blurry to see and no matter how I tried I could not clear them of their desperate weariness. My limbs felt broken, disconnected, gone… my head was spinning in so many circles, round and round. “Eliza!” he said in a louder voice. My head, by some miracle snapped up.

     “Cissy,” I whispered again to myself, wincing at the pain the swiftly followed the lofty syllables.

     “Shhh,” he said again. I tried to clear my eyes to see his face clearly but nothing I did seemed to work. “Eliza, please. You can cry here, we are away.”

     I glanced around me, took in the weeping willow directly before us, his hand gripping the branch tightly, as though for support. We were a fair distance away from the mourning party, their colors melting into one another until all that remained to be seen was a blob of shifting black, inhaling and exhaling between distant winds.

     It was here that my release could be had, here that my tears could be cried and not mocked. I told myself to begin. It was then that I realized I had already started. This loss of self control would have started me into a whole round of near hysterics, but as it was, I seemed to be already under their sway.

     Will’s arms then took me into a very warm embrace. My mother would have struck me for allowing such a casual gesture, and I was sure if we were seen scandal would be a friend of mine for the coming weeks. But I didn’t care. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care what society made of me or my actions. I wished only for him to hold me tight, for his arms to circle me closer, for his heart beat to warm mine back into life…

     “What are we going to do, Eliza?” he breathed into my hair. “What on earth are we going to do?”

     I wished that I had an answer. We were two instead of three, one less where one should be. The very ground had shifted beneath our feet and all seemed hopelessly dark and bleak. I couldn’t design an answer between sobs, and a small part of me knew he didn’t want an answer because an answer meant acceptance, something we both were not ready for.

     “Ah, the sun is setting. I hope there is a full moon tonight,” he said softly, “for old times sake.”

     I surfaced just long enough to take in the darkening sky, the clouds as they took color to their hearths and settled down low in the sky for the night.

     “I shouldn’t have let them see, Will,” I said without color.

     He tilted my chin up just a fraction so that his eyes could read my face. I wasn’t sure what he found but it humored him. A half smile crossed his lips briefly. “I don’t think you could have resisted the charm of tears, dear Eliza. You aren’t really one for holding back, you never really have been.”

     A smile tugged at my lips but I didn’t allow it to grow. “Come, walk me home. I desire nothing more than to be away from everyone. Everyone and everything.” I could feel more tears pressing again and I hadn’t the slightest desire to let them be shed here, in this place, all over again. He linked arms tightly with me once more and we set off, he dragging me, across the darkening lawn.

     “This reminds me of a story…” he began softly. I fought the pressure in my throat, my lungs, my heart.

     “…a story I was told so very long ago…” I whispered carefully back.

     “…if you listen I will tell it to you…” His voice was low and heated, full of a longing that made my eyes burn all the harder.

     “…once upon a time…” I began, our footsteps bringing the lofting of words and breathe into the beginnings of a story I knew all too well.