Meadow

Taurus is gone. Fled in the night like a coward, and Eirlys is left to suffer this grief alone. Every breath aches, a spike in her lungs, pain in her chest because she does not want this, does not want to exist in a world where her daughter is dead and her lover has abandoned her. All she knows is unending pain, the ache of betrayal and the inevitability of life.

Perhaps the greatest betrayal comes from her own body. It isn’t enough that it does not spare her continued life, that she must drag endlessly on. It isn’t enough that the grief which consumes her will not just allow her to lay down and die, and she has to suffer endlessly on. When she wakes to the crisp bite of Autumn, she feels the echoing rush in her blood that means only one thing, and Eirlys lets out a desperate, soul-wrenching sob. As if she could think of bringing another child into this world. As if anything can replace her precious Anwen. To be reminded of it, to be forced to live through another Autumn with the knowledge that she can create a life that her sweet child will never get to live settles sick and heavy in her stomach, a blackness infecting every inch of her.

Eirlys has no idea where she is; the days since following Taurus into the ocean have bled together, all a senseless blur she wishes she could forget. She doesn’t know when she last ate, when she last slept, when she last did anything except stand at the base of this tree, stare blankly off into the empty field before her and beg the universe for a death it is too unkind to give her. She had been so confused at first, waking to find herself alone, the warmth of her lover missing from her side, the comfort of her daughter resting at their feet. What she had found when she went looking for them...well, Eirlys still isn’t sure what she saw. She is sure that she found Anwen, small and lifeless and cold. She is sure that Taurus fled. She is sure that she screamed her rage, that her hot tears mixed with the salt of the ocean as she chased after him.

Washing up here and not drowning in the turbulent ocean after she chased her wayward lover was just another betrayal in the long line of them, and Eirlys lets her eyes slip closed, shut tight against the cruelty of the world. Perhaps if she just continues to stand here, she will fade into nothingness and be spared continuing on.