The Autumn Box

Adagio

... ... ...

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee; 
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.

Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe

... ... ..

My fingers trembled over the keys. I could feel her, smell her, taste her... see her. 

As I sat in the dusty old manor, surrounded by cobwebs and evening mist, and decay and ruin, I felt her presence. Bittersweet joy gripped my chest as my fingers found leisure on the fabric of my sleeves. Ghostly limbs wrapped around my person as I felt the cool touch of a woman's kiss on my cheek. The phantom caress left frost on my skin, burning hot and cold.

Then came the violent sobs as I remembered that day. The wounded tree trunk where she promised to meet me. The day I met her. My love. My Rein.

The young man begins to play Claude Debussy's Claire de Lune.

It was the midnight hour like her message vowed. I waited there, staring at the moon that mimicked the color of my hair. The air was cool, and the songs of the nightingales filled the atmosphere of the woods. My toes curled into the soil as I reclined against the root of the Redwood where she buried her box of letters. I dug it up and held the box to myself to prove that it was me: that I was her Midnight. 

And then I saw her. Dark brown hair that fell down in sensual curls, dressed in ghostly silk robes like an enchantress. Her fair skin held the glow of summer beneath the moonlight even as the shade of trees and branches hid its allure in fractals of shadow. If there had been one feature of her that held no beauty in it, it was probably the frown on her lips or the red rims around her eyes. Her face was veiled by grief, an emotion I never knew the depth of until recently. 

Still, isn't it odd to find loveliness in a portrait painted with sorrow? For that was what I saw when she came.

I still remembered the way she spluttered, hurriedly wiping the tear stains on her cheeks as she found me. I heard her quiet gasp when she regarded my whole countenance. Such a reaction was not new, for even the fae of the woods fell before my feet in reverence of this ghastly perfection. I disliked the worship of this ethereal body, for it hid me from the world I wished to know. My perfection was a curse of isolation. But to be beheld by her, to be seen by her, to be revered by this woman; it was enough to exhilarate my inner being. 

"You," she began. Her brows scrunched, her button nose twitched, her bottom lip wedged between her teeth in anxiety. "Are you a fairy?"

I was too baffled by her presence that I forgot to respond. Her voice was more child-like than how I had imagined it. It brought an excited chill through my bones.

She placed her arms around herself, rubbing her exposed skin for heat. Or she may as well have been conscious of herself. I never did know.

"Can you understand me?" she asked.

Blinking, I nodded. "Yes."

"Are you a fairy?" she asked me again, speaking the words slowly as if worried I would cast a spell.

I shook my head. "No."

Her gray eyes' gaze dropped from my face to the wooden box I held in my arms. Her hands found her hair, consciously combing the strands with her fingers.