1183. About nostalgy, 7
(Armylè)
Elyne went for a refreshing moment on her own outside.
After any wound mending, there are ups and down over time.
Overall, this lately felt like progress. No doubt she would fall back in depression sometime, but climbing up again would always be faster and easier afterward.
Autumn was well set then. The air was nicely cool. She was walking and managing. She discovered anew sensations she had forgotten for too long. Elyne asked herself how long she had not gone outside, unable to answer.
The air was cool, and the lightest rain felt nice. The physical light strains of muscles as she walked, breathed and went along her way felt all too new and refreshing. Focusing in each aspect of the movements, feeling the capacities and limits of her articulations and strength. She was walking effortlessly, gauging the possibilities. Many tendons had gone stiffer with the lack of exercise, she could tell.
It was nice feeling back on her feet and alive.
It wasn’t enough for her to smile, but it was still nice to clean her lungs a little.
Elyne went to the nearest park on this slightly rainy day. She sat on a sheltered bench for a moment, to breathe and stretch. Focusing on her body a little again was a nice thing. Even though emotionally inside, she still felt wrecked.
She held her tears, again feeling as if she was still crumbling down inside.
Her sensation of abandon remained. Still caught back to what seemed all too essential, she tried to recall everything that had been shared with Prume.
She tried to encompass their entire shared lives, which was impossible in one conscious perspective.
What they shared was not an object but abstract considerations, discreet and shifting.
Elyne was trying to put her own life in perspective again, and it was painful. Her memories of Prume were still defining her life.
All the memories, happy or sad, still returned to her mind unruly. She still failed to control that flow bringing tears out along as they went through her head.
She was not detached. She would never be. Her head implant stung. The headache was sharp for a moment.
Her brain seemingly pulsated along her heartbeat.
Elyne teared up again. Her blind eye could just as well. Unlike Cheryl, she still had her lachrymal gland.
She could feel the tears swelling her eye.
The cold wind was brushing her regularly. She didn’t mind.
She thought back about a sadder song that Prume might have sang someday. She had shared her voice for eclectic styles, and a few had been melancholic or sad.
Elyne closed her eyes, under the impression that she could hear it again. She just knew it by heart.
A few songs had marked her more than others. Enough to recall every tone and sound.
Most of the songs of Cheryl were rather dynamic, with a cheerful passion even. Elyne must remember some of them as well. Often her voice had sounded a little different then. But for a few, one could really guess it had been Prume singing. And in that endless and colourful palette of poems, a few could feel like they spoke to her directly. As art pieces and poetry could always be.
Elyne recalled a few that seemed to fit her situation. Mild messages that could feel a little as if Prume had expected this moment to be for her sister.
A part of them both was hidden there, hidden between the lines and their patterns.
Symbolism, everywhere.
Prume was my daughter.
She found her catharsis in a parallel way to mine.
Elyne was beginning to see some perspective of her road alongside.
She sighed, letting herself float between memories, unevenly. Aimless. Still lost at sea.
Elyne had returned a little more to her senses but was still aimless in her thoughts and memories. She was breathing, and remembering things. She let herself go along that time, unsure.
The body heals, and so does the mind.
There was no obvious choice to make.
Aiming for normality was among the right directions and ambitions currently. Eat, walk, clean. Then work or study. Then function in society. Then find other loves and passions to steady your pillars and please your mind.
Then laugh about her passing sometime.
In a distant future probably.
But eventually that is how all memories should be.
~
Elyne felt like she had to make a choice.
Her torn heart could only see the duality of abandoning all hope and memories, or clinging to the deceased and denying reality. That was a very biased perspective, but she had her head too deep in that mud to understand it.
Nothing was absolute. She had a choice, but akin to all freedom, it was bound to a context and the limits to her reality in all possible ways.
She felt that choosing something was deciding between different bad decisions. She couldn’t. Because it was a mistake in itself.
All she had left of Prume were memories...
Voicing that thought, it made her tense up nervously. Her guts, her lungs, her heart, all was taken by a painful hint.
That thought was painful to admit.
But denying reality was hopefully not something she was damaged or frail enough to fall into.
Elyne was strong enough, even if she could no longer see it.
Even if it felt wrong in so many ways. Prume was gone, and that was it.
Even if it bleached all her perspectives for her future. The canvas overcoated with white becomes blank for a new piece sweetheart. Palimpsests are common in reality. And their history always bleeds through gently eventually.
There’s no end to the count of paintings with ghostly shades rising slightly over the years.
Prume won’t be gone entirely, never.
Elyne sighed and looked at the clouds.
She was still torn, struggling to accept reality and continue.
An irrational part of her still sang to her ears that Prume could not be gone.
She couldn’t shut that little voice down. Reason was struggling to cope with the most painful reality, and each side was fighting vividly.
She sighed again.
Tiny steps forward and through her grieving. Slow and unsteady, but nevertheless...
~
Elyne left more days and their varied colours rain over her. She wasn’t quite yet able to properly estimate how she could fare. She was still very depressed and frail.
She found herself exhausted on that bench, not doing much. Feeling cold was nice, but the drive to move was still clunky.
She sat there nonchalantly, not looking at anything particular. No one passing by would ever mind at her vacant look.
Her eye was somewhat focusing over the lights reflected against windows facing this park.
Elyne’s mind was mostly recalling some songs from Cheryl.
A classical one she had liked, making her dream and fly. A sensation of liberty was coming from what had been an older century’s church choir. A bit of music that touched her more than most pictures did.
It reminded her of an ideal sensation. It made her breathe.
This passion in the song still touched her.
The darker feelings rose as sundown began to set. It was slow, but as she was currently, Elyne could see its entire progression. She was in her own bubbly and melancholic world.
And with endless subtlety, her thoughts eventually wandered toward someone else. Another memory unexpectedly.
Elyne surprised herself thinking about someone else but her sister.
Another sight almost forgotten.
The shady girl, with piercing glare most of the time. Néphéline...
What had become of her? Elyne didn’t know, and now she felt some pity and sympathy. For her too, Prume had been important, if not downright vital.
Yet as much as they had in common, they never shared with each other anything. Elyne had a burst of sympathy and missed her a little. She had not heard back since it had happened. She wondered whether she should try to reach out to this girl who didn’t like her.
Could that help either of them? To exchange on a shared pain. Elyne wasn’t sure and had exhausted her energy thinking about this. She forgot the idea for this time, and returned to her usual swamp of melancholia.
Prume remained at the heart of things. Being separated for good was bleeding Elyne, simply.
She loved her more than she had words to describe. She reacted emotionally more than she should.
Dead? The confusion returned for the millionth time. Elyne teared up for another while, as night was setting over the city.
The contrast with the building lights grew. The sky seemingly disappeared. The stars and moon didn’t catch her sight.
She never really had looked so far outside.
Elyne returned to her home, drained by the cold along.
She thanked Maya and had him leave for the night. The young man was polite and evaporated out of her mind soon after his presence. He shared my trust in her, I know it.
Elyne ran and jumped below the sheets rapidly. She felt her strength leaving her, flowing away. She crawled to her pillow and buried her head against it. She fell asleep immediately.
A sleep without ghosts and without Prume, at least for a while.
~
