Firstly, mate, I am so sorry to hear about your hamster.  It’s never easy to lose a pet.

Secondly, I want you to know that I never forgot that message you wrote me weeks ago, and that it has meant more to me than you probably realise.

And so I just wanted to do a little something to say thanks. They’re quite short, and not really edited (also the tense kept doing funny things…), but I think they worked out okay.

I hope you like them.

(also, Read More is not working. Sorry.)

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She wonders.

In the dim light, the barren room with its barred window and stark walls reminds her of another place, another time, another world.  If she lets her vision blur– and sometimes the tears do that for her– she can pretend that this is truly that place, the walls becoming rough-hewn stone, the light dimming to the flickering glow of an old torch, her nose filling with the smell of its heavy smoke and the damp musk of the rushes below her feet, the familiarity settling around her like an old, well-loved blanket.

In her place, most people would dream of open spaces, of laughter and sunshine, of chains rent apart and of pure, uninhibited freedom.

Very few would ever long for anything else, let alone a prison even danker and darker than the one that surrounded them.

But she does.

Because there, in that old cell that she could only think of as home– there was no brusque nurse in a starched outfit, no cold-eyed queen come to stare at her like an animal in a cage.

There was only him.

So she turns her back on this new world, this unchanging hell that holds her trapped.  She closes her eyes, she dreams, and she wonders.

She wonders, because there is nothing that she knows. She gave up trying to ask so long ago– gave up with shouting, with pleading, with reasoning and with demanding– she gave it all up so long ago that she’s no longer sure she still has the ability to speak. 

And yet, she cares little. What does she care for speaking, if he’s not there to hear her? What use are her lips now, if they will never feel the touch of his ever again?

What use is her life, if he’s not there to share it?

It is only the wondering that keeps her alive, keeps her heart beating and her lungs drawing in breath after breath.  It is only the thought that maybe he was out there, somewhere– in the world they had shared, or in this one– and maybe, just maybe, he was searching for her, or perhaps sitting still and silent by the great window, waiting for her return.

 She is no stranger to reason; she knows that the distance between them– which, given this strange new world, is now much more than just miles on a road– is simply too great for any mere man to conquer.

But he has never been a mere man.

And perhaps, where most would fail, the love of a beast may just succeed.

She wonders.

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He has many treasures.

His home is like a cave of wonders, filled with the rare, the valuable, the magical.

Yet, as he stands numbly over the ransacked remains of his living room, he scarcely spares a thought for any of it. There is only one object in his mind, one cherished belonging that seizes his thoughts and stills his heart, his entire body gripped with overpowering dread.

He never notices the cane slip from his grip to clatter to the floor; never feels the pain in his lame leg as he all but runs to the study, bursting through the door with a crash, chest heaving and body shaking as he stumbles across the threshold.

When he sees the door of the ornamental glass case hanging askew, almost torn from its hinges, the sight is almost enough to bring him to his knees, a high, animalistic keening escaping his throat.

Reaching out with a trembling hand, he stares through blurring vision at the empty shelves beyond the ruined doors, sees the empty place where his heart once stood.

A stabbing in his chest draws his attention back from the pit of desolation into which he had just nearly tumbled; gasping, he sucks in a sudden breath, again feeling  the painful protests of his abused lungs.  As his breathing begins to steady, he finally becomes aware of the unaccustomed wetness on his cheeks, one hand lifting to touch the damp trail that was slicing down his skin like a razor blade.

Staring at the glistening moisture on his fingertips, he was drawn to the last such moment, the last occasion in which he had shed even a single tear.

The fingers suddenly clenched, the hand forming a tight fist, trapping the tiny teardrop inside as if to crush it into oblivion.

They had taken her from him once, had stolen her from his arms like thieves in the night.

This time, he would show them that, like magic, taking what was his always came with a price.

Turning his back on the empty cabinet, he leaves the room as silently as the ghost he has become, his steps slow, measured, his expression hard. 

Pausing only to retrieve his cane, he walks out into the dusk, stepping over his scattered belongings without sparing them a single glance, leaving them lying where they had fallen, discarded like the worthless trinkets they were.

Because she is his only true treasure, and he will keep her locked in the vault inside his heart until the day he dies.

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