Until Every Star Stops Burning

She didn’t cry herself to sleep that night. It was the first time in a long while. Instead, she only blew off the candle that lit the small bedroom in which she now searched for rest, the warm light of the burning wick suited her much better than the synthetic rays of modern electricity. She peeled the heavy blankets off the bed so she could get in, the weight of the covers pressing her into the bed kept her warm and helped with the anxiety that was left in my absence.

She had no family left, her parents had left her an orphan years ago thanks to a car accident, when we were both teenagers and only getting to know each other. More recently, most of her friends had abandoned her, unwilling to deal with a broken woman when they could instead keep throwing their fortunes away in parties too extravagant to be remembered through the migraines of the next morning. 

Our first days together were still fresh in my mind. She was so different back then, more akin to her friends, the life of the party. It all changed when that drunk driver hit her parents. Still, even when she left the wild days behind her, even when she had no family left, she was still full of a desire to see everything, be everywhere, and seize every experience she was offered. But now? She was only the empty husk of a long-lost woman I’d fallen in love with so many years ago, a time when we were both young and in love with the idea of love.

A tumultuous decade later here we were. She, lying alone on our bed, hugging the pillow, clinging onto it as if the remains of her life depended on it. I, looking through the window at the remains of what we once had, careful to hide from her sight every time she looked somewhere I should be.

The cottage we’d chosen as our home over the mansion her family owned felt infinite with the empty darkness of my absence, like the ruins of the castle of our kingdom that had been crumbling down for a while now, surrounded by the dead, barren grounds of a once green garden full of life and excitement.

She began moving in her sleep, nightmares unknown to me still plagued her mind, I suppose the healing that allowed her one tearless night was not merciful enough to let go of the bad dreams. Tossing and turning, distress was clear on her face as her brows furrowed and her lips parted in a silent plea to stop. She woke up with a strangled scream that threatened to knot her throat. Suddenly sitting up with a quickened heartbeat, her chest moved with difficulty as she heaved out of breath. 

She hung her head in defeat, the absent tears from before now burned her eyes, compelling her to close them tight. Her trembling, cold fingers became fist full of ire, her knuckles turning white as she kept them closed, forcing them to stay still, to keep everything locked tightly inside of her crumbling chest. 

Still, even through gritted teeth and shut eyes, the heavy darkness that had emptied her heart from everything else began pouring out of her, she rubbed the lonely tears that wetted her cheeks before looking upwards to the empty ceiling, her erratic breathing torched her chest as she wordlessly pleaded to an upper power to end her suffering.

She, of course, received no answer. Unwilling to close her eyes, afraid of the things that haunted her dreams, she flung her legs towards the edge of the bed, her movements slow and disconnected. An uncanny stillness took over her as seconds went by with only the recurrent movement being the drops of water falling from the sky and the slow rise and fall of her chest as she breathed laboriously. Finally, she reached with feeble arms into the drawer of the discolored bedside table to retrieve the little box of matches she always left nearby.

Staring at the flame licking the wick, she continued sitting on the bed for a while before getting off the bed. Even when she’d tried to avoid it, she briefly looked at the window, trying to decipher the images barely illuminated by moonlight through the constant downpour that seemed to imitate the blue that flooded her heart. 

As I hid from her sight, she seemed to look for something outside of her room, whether it brought her relief or worsened her sorrow I didn’t know. In any case, she did not seem to find what she was searching for, and with a sigh, she shook her head, mumbling something to herself as she exited her room.

The rain that had been going on for the last couple of days had isolated her further from the only friends who still talked to her, though she did that well enough on her own. Her phone had been dead for a while now, its battery drained by unsolicited calls she refused to take until they eventually stopped coming in.

Her restless nights continued as the nightmares persevered. The tears returned in her desperation to let go of the pain. Sleep deprivation became her new routine until the lack of rest made her collapse out of exhaustion so she could have one night of interrupted and blissful unconsciousness. Still, the dark circles under her eyes continued to be a familiar sight on her face.

Throughout the day, she would drop things and stumble into walls, she became forgetful and skittish, always jumping due to nothing. It forced me to hide myself better and better, not wanting to cause her more harm than what I’d already had. 

Sadness, I realized, became contagious. A heaviness in my heart made me ache when I saw her broken, curled up in the middle of the night in a corner of our library, forcing herself to stay away to evade the hauntings in the dreams. Oh, how I wished to rush to her side at that moment, but when the window creaked by my hand as I tried to get closer, I saw the fear in her eyes as she woke startled from the brief rest of her eyes. I ceased my attempt.

I stopped visiting her for a couple of nights after that.

She didn’t cry herself to sleep that night either. I couldn’t keep myself away from her any longer so I watched again from my place outside her window. 

She didn’t technically sleep either; instead, I found her sitting on the edge of what we considered my side of the bed, her fingertips caressing the blanket absentmindedly. Her face glowed with the warm fire of a lonely wick. Maybe she found some comfort in the tragic, delicate light of a burning candle, maybe she’d read one too many gothic novels; but there was something that now spoke to her soul as she walked through the rooms of our cottage. A strangely serene look in her eyes accompanied her in her search for something.

For the first time in weeks, she’d recharged her phone and answered the call of one of our friends, with as much cheer as she could manage, she reassured her she was well, only suffering from a minor headache, excusing herself before she ended the call, claiming she wanted to sleep the pain away.

Now, I saw her grab a bottle of some pills from the cabinet behind the bathroom’s mirror, half-heartedly confirming they were the kind she was looking for before walking back to our bedroom, where a cup of tea that had gone cold was waiting for her.

There was a faraway look in her gaze as she returned to our room, her eyes turning to look at the window where I stood. This time I had made no effort to hide, more enthralled by her actions than the constant worry that made me careful of not being seen.

For the first time, she looked straight at me, no fear or panic filling her eyes, no sudden urge to flee fuelled her body. Instead, she stayed still with a wishfulness that glazed her eyes as she continued staring through the window. Minutes dragged and finally, she continued on her way, reaching our bed, climbing onto it with heavy, dragging steps.

She drowned the pills with the long-forgotten tea before laying back down and closing her eyes. For the first time in a while, sleep came easily, her tired body was finally resting.

I entered our room through the window, the image of her sitting lonely at the edge of our bed never seemed more inviting. This time she turned to look at me, at first, her eyes took a while to show recognition; even when she did, there was some despondency from her part until I took a seat by her side.

“It really was you,” she said, her cold hand cupping my cheek. “All those nights—but then you weren’t there and—”

“I swore to be by your side until every star stops burning,” I said, wishing to reassure her as I placed my thumb over her lips. There was no need for her to suffer any longer.

There was no fear or sadness on her face anymore, only a soft smile that illuminated her pale face, warming her dark eyes and blue-tinted lips. I spoke her name before closing the distance between the two of us, my lips claiming hers in a way I’d been forbidden since my death. I took the hand that still cradled my cheek and brought it to my lips, her eyes slowly turning from our intertwined fingers to my face again before she turned to her left, staring at the bed behind our backs.

I turned as well in an instinctual reaction guided by her movement, wondering what she thought about as we stared at her lifeless body resting over the blankets.