Waning: Character thoughts of suicide.
People like to posture that they understand what it means to be alone. They like to lament it with poetry chalk full of angst and metaphorical jargon about being an island. Most times it's something about not having a significant other. Or not enough friends. Or maybe even traveling the road, and not seeing people for a few weeks at a time. They think they understand what lonely means, its definition, its application. They think they know what it's like to truly stand by yourself and have the disgustingly soul crushing epiphany that there is no one else out there, and that no matter how loud you scream, and scream, and scream, nobody is going to hear you, because there is no one to hear.
People don't know anything.
I know what alone is. Alone is madness. It's a creeping madness that gets in your blood. And you're alright at first, sure, you're just fine. Peachy even. A few months go by and you figure out how to survive in this new unforgiving terrain you're on and it's just grand. You can get food, and water. You can build yourself shelter from tropical torrential rains. I learned, though it took me a good while to get a system going. And while you're learning to survive, that's the easy part, that's alright. Because you have something to set your mind and your hands and your feet to, and it's okay.
It's what comes after that. The loneliness. It starts early, but it's just a niggling at first. You think now and then that you miss your friends a little. Then you miss them a lot. You're plagued by dreams of loved ones that you once had. For me it was my husband, my bright-eyed husband with all of his ambitions. You don't really realize how much you love someone until you're forced to live without them, until they're ripped right out of your fingers, or rather, you're ripped right out of theirs. You start pretending that you're talking to them when a year's up, and you allow yourself this leniency; it's okay, you say to yourself. You just need to fill in the silence, but everything is going to be alright, you'll make it through this.
Sucker. Stop lying to yourself.
You start answering back for them. You talk for them. You pick a tree or a bush and it becomes them, and you have conversations with it. It's just banter at first, just chatter. You don't realize that you've changed your voice to sound like theirs when they're answering you. But that's alright too, who cares that you're doing that? It's just talking about the weather, usually, or about the strange furry creature you managed to snare and eat for dinner. It's no big deal, just another way to pass the time when you've survived another day, you've earned yourself a little conversation.
And then suddenly you're throwing yourself at the tree that you were talking to, sobbing at it, beating it with bloodied knuckles, begging that it tell you why it let you get near that portal, why it didn't stop you, why it didn't tell you to stay back despite your own stupidity...
You're dying, you'll die here alone and it's all your own bloody fault.
It takes two years. At least it did for me. That was when the other thoughts set in. When you're walking near the edge of a cliff and you look down at those foamy, too-green waves of water, and you think, just one jump. That's all it takes. There's no dark god to yank your soul here, no Realm. All it takes is just a jump, and then you'll be flying, and you'll hardly feel the rocks exploding through your useless hunk of meat when you hit the bottom. And you can finally forget about how the loneliness is crushing you, following you, grinning down like a contented beast and licking its jaw as it feeds off of your growing mania.
But you're stubborn. Oh yes, you're stubborn. Always have been. Confident, powerful, resolved. Every day you walk by the cliff and you just keep walking. You laugh in the face of your own dementia and depression and you just keep going because no, no you won't let it win. You're stronger than that, and some day he'll pull you back again. You tell yourself he's going to pull you back again, he loves you. Days tick by and you keep telling yourself that over and over and over again, and it helps you fight. In the beginning, it helps you fight. Tick, tick, tick, days go by, you've shaved off the trunk of a tree, chipped off the lime of a rock, kept track. But then one day you wake up and you don't see why you should make another mark. They glare at you mockingly, they glow out of wood and rock and they whisper to you.
He's not going to come for you. Nobody's going to come for you.
“Shut up. He loves me, he'll pull me back. He will.”
If that's true, why are you still here? How long's it been? Poor Eleese. Poor Eleese. You're alone.
“I won't be here forever. Any day now, he'll bring me back. He'll take me home.”
He's forgotten about you. Everyone has. Your friends, your family. They think you're dead. And you are dead, aren't you Eleese? Poor Eleese. You're already dead, and you just don't know it yet, you don't know it yet...
You wipe the tally's away. You tear them off the trunk, you smear the stones with mud and dirt and dung. You run and it chases, your solace is now your torment. He's given up, of course he has. You can't search for four years, you can't. How could anyone even expect you to have still been alive? He's mourned you and he's recovered, and so have the rest. They laid your coffin bodiless down, they put a marker in the ground, and you're alone now, you're just walking dead. A ghost, a wraith, you don't really exist and it's all over now, and you're running, and you're dying.
And you fall. Through the floor you fall, vines snapping and catching on your flailing limbs and roots tugging on your hair. You dangle there, in the air, suspended, a fish caught and laid out to be eaten. The room is aglow with light, a room carved by hands. Someone built this, you realize, they built it and that means someone was here, someone that wasn't you. Oh, it's so beautiful. You want to reach out, to touch it, your grubby, bloody fingers grope for it like an animal clawing its way towards the sun. You can only imagine what you look like, Feral, is there even anything sentient left about you? There is spittle leaking from your mouth, your teeth are stained, your nails are long, your hair is a ragged mess. You twist and squirm, and fall to the floor in a heap of dirty flesh and aching muscle. You crawl, you drag yourself over the cracked stone floor towards one of those lights, you heave yourself up the wall and try to press yourself against the glass, to see what's inside.
A face. There is a face. Your heart lodges in your throat. Tears sting your eyes. You run your fingers down the glass; you want to touch it, to feel the skin beneath your fingers. You want to cup it in your hands. It doesn't matter who it is, you must have it. Desperation seizes you. You find a stone and you begin smashing at it, at the glass separating you, you peel it back and you don't notice the blood running down your fingers from the sharp edges. You pull and pull and pull, and a door opens, hinges creak. Strange runes glitter to life on its surface, awakening. Liquid pours out, steaming, curls of it rising from the ground. And there he is, lying there, glowing, colorless and strange. You rush towards it, grope for it, but you cannot touch it, your hands go right through. You become more desperate, it begins to dissolve before your eyes, you're crying again, begging, just wanting to touch it, to touch...
Eleese.
You're not alone anymore. You can feel it in your head. There is a presence, your hands are glowing, your eyes. It's consuming you. You're not afraid, if it kills you it doesn't matter. Death would be preferable, because you cannot go back to the all encompassing alone when you feel them there, in your head, smoothing intangible fingers over your broken mind. You feel their pity, pity grows to compassion. They are gentle and kind and benevolent. The light is on your hands now, up your arms, behind your eyes, inside of you. It's so warm, so very warm. You cry from the feel of it, the relief of it, being plucked out of the ice and laid before a roaring fire. It's repairing...me. It's fixing...me.
It's...it's...
Aldurne. My name is Aldurne, and I'm here now, Eleese Batrachian. You're alone no longer.