Embers and Ashes

Chapter 20

Melona

The next morning I lay in bed. My bed now that it had been fixed. Streams of dawning light reaching me where I lay contently. I haven’t had this good of sleep in ages.

    I get to lay there soundly. Tracing the patters on the ceiling lovingly with my eyes. Counting the slowly passing minutes with song bird chirps and wind in the trees. Breathing in the oaky and spiced sent of the room. My breakfast already laid out by another servant since Pomona is still away on holiday.

    Sitting up I find a note and another golden apple placed on my nightstand. Eris’ sprawling elegant hand writing signing out my name on it’s cover.

   Grinning I sit back in my pillows as I unfold the page and taking the sweet crunch of the apple. A fluttering feeling in my chest as I open and read.

    Good morning Melona,

    If it isn’t too much to of a bother I have chosen a dress for you today. You don’t have to ware it if you don’t want to, but it would mean a lot to me if you did today.

   I’ll meet you at the lake out back.

Yours,

Eris 

   Glancing over at the chair by the fire I spot my favourite marigold dress hanging over it. The dress I wore my first time coming to the manor. When I had come to tell Eris that he didn’t have to love me, but I would not let him ignore me for the rest of our lives.

    I smile and side to get up, eat and dress. Slipping on a pair of slippers that I don’t mind getting ruined before making my way down the hill the manor is perched on to go and find Eris.

   Who happened to be standing clear in view on the small rocky beach that lead straight into the lake. Simply clothed in a pair of tan pants and a white peasant button down shirt.

    I had come here only once before while it was just me and Pom while he had been away. I had stopped at the waters edge where he now stood.

    There was a feeling of holiness there. The silence the sleeping of a god that did not want to be disturbed.

    “I was born here”, he states with his eyes still closed as I come to stand next to him. His face to the lake as he feels the breeze on his skin and ruffle his curls. “Right here, between the water and the land. This is where my soul was crafted.

   Mother would take me here to get away from it all. When father would get too much for us to handle. She used to hold picnics on the beach for her ladies-in-waiting, and my aunts who would visit her as often as possible. I’d play for hours in the shallow water chasing crawfish, and swim until I was exhausted. Then I’d lay in her lap. Feeling the cotton of her dress. She’d run her figures in my hair as she talked with her friends.

    Here I was my happiest. My best.

    And after it all. After I nearly drowned, I came here. I wouldn’t let myself be afraid of what had happened to me. So I swam out to the middle of the lake and I floated for hours until I learned to control my fear. Then I’d swim all the way to the bottom and grew accustom to the world underneath it.

    After the war camps. After every mistake. Every time I was ever afraid or angry with the world, with myself,  I’d come back here and loose myself in the water.”

    There were tears in his eyes now and I reach out to hold his hand. He doesn’t flinch or pull away. In fact he takes my hand solidly.

    “You feel like you need to go in again?”, I ask softly. He nods silently.