Era of Madness

No more lies

Tyler looked away, secretly activating his Blessing. Not to do anything extreme, but simply to give himself more time to think about a reply:

"I... I don't know what to say" Tyler finally said, giving up. "I'm sorry for your loss, and-"

"Don't be, it's not your fault" she interrupted with a weak smile, before looking up at the ceiling again. "And, more than everything, Ibelieve that my child is now in a better place"

"A... better place?" Tyler repeated, stunned.

"Yes of course, because now my little princess is in heaven!" Cecilia said with a bright smile. "It hurts, it hurts so much... but I keep going. Because I know that, somewhere above us, she is waiting for me. So i have to keep going and live a better life so I can eventually join her! Maybe it's Genova, maybe it's the Silent One, or maybe it's yet another deity, even above, but I know that afterlife and salvation exist. Because I know my little princess still exists, somewhere up there, happy"

Tyler finally understood what was this strange expression of semi-true happiness on her face: Cecilia was in denial. She was deluding herself into thinking that her daughter was in a better place.

But that led to a more important question: what should he do? His instinct told him to comfort him and, somewhere, deep inside, he knew that it was the right thing to do... It was the best for her... just like it had been for Munch a few years ago.

Munch... Tyler only left Glactia-62 two months ago at most, but it already felt as if an eternity had passed. Was Munch still even alive after all the chaos that happened on the planet?

Yet, what happened after they discussed about his son's loss was still crystal clear in his memory. He became a shadow, a shadow of who he was before. On the outside, he was the same but on the inside, there wasn't much left. That was the consequence of lying to someone to comfort them, the consequence of going along with their delusion.

Tyler thought back about himself. What had happened after he found Alicia's corpse hanged? This memory wasn't buried as deeply as the others, and yet there was so many details he had overlooked.

He remembered waiting. Waiting for the perfect occasion to take back her corpse. He waited, waited and waited. But in the end, this occasion never arrived, because it could never arrive. How could there be a perfect occasion... if there wasn't any obstacle in the first place?

That was right, nobody ever bothered guarding the corpse, because no one cared about about two lower sector rats living or dying. He had managed to recover the corpse without any significant complication, and had seeked for a place to bury her.

It turned out that there was only one option left, except for cremation and mass graves. It was a small territory his parents had bought when they were alive. Miraculously, it was still at his parents' names, and thus he had been able to get it, even though their home had already been seized.

He had gone there, and had seen an old tree. Memories were brung back to him: in the first place, it was for this reason that his parents had bought this area. Apparently, they had met around this old tree...

At that time, Tyler had looked at the names engraved in the bark of the tree: Brandon, Melodie and Ulysseus. His parents names, and...

... another.

Wordlessly, Tyler had scratched the name off, and had replaced it with Alicia's. He had wrapped her body in a shroud, taken a shovel, and buried her without a word. Once it was done, he had looked at the dirt left on his hands. Small pieces of dirt had been falling off his hands, on Alicia's improvised grave. He had looked at it for a second, and then looked away, unable to maintain his eyes on it. He had looked at the names on the tree's bark again. He had known that in the first place, his parents had had engraved their names there as a proof of their family's love and, most important, their existence.

Hesitantly, he had added a few other words. Now, on the tree was written 'Alicia, Brandon and Melody rest here, may they have peace'. Then, before their names, taken by a sudden impulsion, he had started to write his own name along with the others', but had quickly stopped.