Ashes and Lilies

Ash and Lilies

The study was a sanctuary of shadows and silence, lit only by the flickering glow of a single candle. True, she could use the overhead lights, but nothing was more soothing than the shadow patterns dancing over the walls, decorating her bookcases of trinkets and leatherbound journals with intricate lace designs. In the centre of the room, she sat at an ornate desk, once a grand spectacle now patchworked with fixings of varying successes. She placed the letter to the side as she settled into her routine.

The ritual was everything.

First, the candle. Its flickering glow was the only light allowed; the overheads were an assault. Next, the paper from the drawer. Thick, with the correct lily watermark. She smoothed it once, twice, until her palm registered no imperfections. Then, the pen from an old roommate shared with love. The weighted silver, placed precisely parallel to the paper’s edge. Only then did she permit herself to unfold the intruding letter. Whoever this "Arthur" was, they had a way with language that stirred something in her ancient heart.

Dear Nymphaea,

Your name called to me like the water lilies that drift upon the pond, their roots tangled in shadows beneath the surface. I saw your letter upon our desk—don’t worry, I did not read it, though its presence was impossible to ignore. Our dear Rose has taken her rest, her petals now still, and the garden feels... different. Quieter, yet not entirely at peace.

If you don’t mind, may I claim your written word, your time? You may call me Arthur—a name less delicate than the flower I replace, though no less devoted. I wouldn’t dare disturb the ties that bind you. But perhaps, in the spaces between your thoughts, you might hear me—a whisper, a ripple, a faint stirring in the depths.

Let me be the hand that reaches out, not to take, but to hold, if only for a moment. And if you allow it, perhaps we might write a new chapter together, one where the ink flows as freely as the water and the words bloom like flowers in the light of our shared understanding.

There's a peculiar comfort in writing to someone you've never seen. It's as though the words themselves become a mirror, reflecting not just our thoughts but the part of ourselves we rarely show to the world. Do you ever feel as though you're living in two worlds at once, one foot in the present, the other in the past, forever caught between what was and what could be?

Yours, in quiet anticipation,

Arthur

Nymphaea took a deep breath, the stillness of the room wrapping around her like her favourite velvet cloak. She adjusted the candle's position, ensuring the light fell perfectly across the page, and began to write.

The scratch of the pen gliding across the paper was the only sound, each stroke deliberate, each word carefully chosen in response. As she wrote, the shadows in the room seemed to shift, as if something – or someone – was watching. But Nymphaea didn't notice. She was lost in the ritual, in the act of reaching out to a stranger who, for the first time in decades, made her feel less alone.

Their correspondence had begun in the golden glow of scholarly admiration – Nymphaea’s letters lively with underlinings and sketches, Arthur’s replies crisp as pressed flowers. But the comfort of this ritual soon cracked.

Your monograph on funerary botany is fascinating! I've enclosed notes (do forgive the marginalia – you’ll find me an incorrigible scribbler), she wrote. However, did you deduce that roots really preserve memory in their bark? I've only seen that theory in one crumbling grimoire…

His reply was waiting at dawn. The grimoire you nearly cited was Herbarius Memoriae, though your copy lacks the torn folio on hellebore. A pity. You'd have adored the woodcut. P.S. Do you still hum Green Grow the Rushes, O, when transplanting seedlings? An old habit from when you cared for street kids?

The script of her next reply was a frantic mess. She reached for a fresh sheet, then another, the bin filling with crumpled lilies. The salutation bled into nonsense - To the Gentleman-Sir-A. - each one wrong.

Mr Arthur, she finally wrote, the ink blotted with hesitation. Your erudition borders on the uncanny. That song hasn't passed my lips in an age. Herbarius hasn't been catalogued since the Central Library fire of 1879. I begin to wonder if you make a habit of haunting librarians.

His response was a blade.

…My dear, My Nymphaea, were you not Livia then, in the house with the blue door?

A week's silence. The ritual broken. She left the pen uncleaned, the drawer open. When Nymphaea finally replied, the warmth had bled from the page.

Cease these personal references. Let us consider our exchange concluded.

Yours,

N

As Nymphaea sealed her response, a chill crept along her spine. The ritual no longer felt like protection. It felt like a beacon.

No reply came for days. Then at midnight, a letter slid beneath her door. The paper was edged with a brownish stain. As she split the seal, it shuddered. No more courtly phrases. The script jagged, the ink blotted. The final sentence read: You cannot hide from what remembers you. A poem was attached with a pin she recognised as her own, a russet liquid still fresh on its tip.

The candle flickered, though no wind disturbed the room. And for the first time, Nymphaea realised the shadows watching her were not just a figment of her imagination but something far more tangible – and hungry. As her eyes scanned the first line, a cold hand clamped her shoulder.

“A moth to your eternal flame,” a voice recited to her, “I orbit voids you scribe into the night.”

A grip tightened around her throat. Nymphaea’s lungs screamed. She thrashed, knocking over her chair.

“By thy father’s gate, I watched…” his voice was a gravestone whisper, the chain around her neck slithering tight, “the foreman’s son, deemed too low to crave thy face…”

The memory surfaced, not of romance, but of a presence. A figure too often at the factory gate, his gaze a weight she’d learned to ignore. Her father’s protective fury, a shield long turned to dust.

“I swore to bind thy star-drift soul with rope.” he crooned, the pendant searing her collarbone, “Not silk, but hemp to leash what I cannot own.” His body enveloped hers, cold and suffocating, “Thy father’s money soured my fate,” he spat, the phantom's own cloying bitterness stifling the air. “His guards saw to that. But now his gold is gone, and I…I am ink and memory.”

Fingernails drew blood from her own throat in desperation.

“Yet death’s no bar to love that’s thin and inked! So haunt, my fair wraith – we’re knotted past the grave.”

With one final, desperate yank, she snapped the links. She shoved backwards, collapsing as Arthur’s form shuddered into something alien and vine-like. She scrambled for the hearth, dumping the letters and the shrieking pendant into the flames. A shadow twitched behind the curtains. Something with too many joints unfolded from the wardrobe’s mirror, but she couldn’t look; she just couldn’t. With a flicker, the flames roared up, painting his condescension in corpse-light, his fading voice a lullaby gouged from a gravestone:

“You’ll feed them to the fire, but embers remember—

you’ll forget the words, but your bones sing them back.

Every page you burn writes itself deeper into you—”

Nymphaea sat at her writing desk. Before her lay the remnants of Arthur’s locket; shattered shards of a broken memory. The room was silent, the oppressive weight lifted, yet the air hummed with an uneasy stillness. Nymphaea faced the remnants of his locket and the pile of singed letters on the desktop. Burning them had left her hollow, like tearing away a part of herself. The shadows in the room seemed darker, more alive, waiting to stretch and stir.

Soot trailed from her dress and stained her hands, a gritty testament from reaching into the flames. The fire had been both a weapon and confessor, devouring the words that bound her yet leaving residue of something unresolved. As firelight flickered across her face, the room held its breath. Yet, strange hope emerged in the way she smoothed her skirts, sending soot falling like ash snow, and turned with deliberate, reverent movements towards the desk, as if preparing to write a new story from the ashes of old.

As she reached for a fresh sheet of paper, her hand brushed against something cold and metallic. She froze, her breath catching in her throat. There, nestled among the ashes, was a small, unfamiliar key. It was old, its surface tarnished and etched with symbols she didn’t recognise. She turned it over in her hands, a shiver running down her spine. Where did it come from? And why did it feel so… familiar?

The candle on her desk flickered, casting long, twisting shadows across the walls. For a moment, she thought she saw something move in the corner of the room—a shape, faint and indistinct, but watching. She shook her head, dismissing it as her imagination. But as she set the key aside and began to write, the words flowed from her pen with an urgency she couldn’t explain.

Confusion and a desperate, grieving hope twisted within her. Dearest Arthur, she wrote, her hand trembling slightly. The memory of his first letter, so full of gentle understanding, clashing violently with the phantom’s cruel smile. She had to know if any of it was real. I don’t know if you can hear me, but I…

She stopped, staring at the page. The ink had smudged, the words blurring as if damp. But the room was dry, the air still. She touched the paper, her fingers coming away stained with something dark and sticky. Blood? No, it couldn’t be. She wiped her hand on her sleeve, her heart pounding.

The candle flickered again, and this time, she was sure she heard a whisper—a voice, faint and distant, calling her name. She turned, her eyes scanning the room, but there was nothing there. Just the shadows, stretching and shifting like living things.

Nymphaea took a deep breath, forcing herself to focus. She folded the unfinished letter and tucked it into an envelope, along with the strange key.

She didn’t know why, but she felt compelled to keep it close, as if it held some kind of answer. As she sealed the envelope with a drop of wax, she noticed something odd: the wax hadn’t set properly. It was still soft, warm to the touch, as if it had just been melted.

She shook her head, pushing the thought aside. She was tired, that was all. Tired and overwrought. She went to leave the room, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. As Nymphaea exited the room, the candle flickered out, causing a fragment, delicate and charred, to drift down like a feather borne on an unseen breath, settling softly against the hem of her dress. It clung there, as if reluctant to let go, a silent witness to what had been consumed and what still remained.

Let me be the hand that reaches out, not to take, but to hold, if only for a moment. And if you allow it, perhaps we might write a new chapter together, one where the ink flows as freely as the water and the words bloom like flowers in the light of our shared understanding.

Yours, in quiet anticipation,

Arthur