Livia (auriulele) wrote in vagabondwriters, @ 2008-01-16 17:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | author: livia, rain |
Title: Loss
Author: Livia
Theme: Rowena Ravenclaw
Word: rain
It was raining.
Fitting--romantically so, Rowena thought. Bitter and romantically fitting.
He died outside, as he wanted. Rowena had tried to explain that it was cold, that it was already thundering and Light only knew how bad the storm would get. You could catch your death, she had said.
Rowena, he replied, I already did.
He had gone quickly, lying on his back near the pond, hands resting neatly on his stomach. Less than five minutes after they were outside, he began coughing, blood rising in his throat. But he would not move. He simply lay there, supine, as blood filled his windpipe and suffocated him. Rowena held his hand the whole time, crying, his skin warm despite the frigid air.
She kept saying I love you, Edward! Oh God, please, I love you! I love you! Over and over and over again. He never responded, even in the final moments. He just gazed at her with those clear blue eyes and reached out, patting her hand lightly as a father would his daughter. As a teacher would his student.
Now everything was quiet, except of course for the rain falling on the stones and the rumble of distant thunder. But that seemed now to be a part of the silence, inseparable from the whole. His cheeks were still flushed from fever, not yet pale with death. Rowena wished--selfishly, she knew--that he was still alive. An unbeliever, she gave up her skepticism long enough even to pray, screaming upward to whoever would listen--bring him back to me! I need him!
Water matted her hair to her cheeks, deepening it from red to burgundy, tangling it before her eyes. She barely noticed the way that her clothes were soaked through, or the sounds of a baby crying from the house.
For this moment--for this moment only--she was not a woman. She was not a lawyer, or a mother, or a witch. She was a sixteen-year-old girl, standing in the rain, looking down at the corpse of the man she loved with all her heart.