Creative Writing Collection

Love's to Blame

Alone again, naturally.

       Human will be born, live, then die. It is how the cycle has always worked. And how it always will. Even if you could immortalize them, so they’d live forever, they are otherwise mortal to anything else but age. It’s happened once, and it should never happen again, because the pain of loving someone for so long just to have them wither away is a terrible hurt. A gash to the emotions.

       There is a nasty scar on Aster’s chest — that was Belle’s mark when she disappeared. Taken from him, perhaps, but even then he could feel the telepathic link. Now, all he felt was nothing; a cold, deep, empty nothing. She was gone.

       He didn’t know what to feel; pain, anguish, grief, anger. He just didn’t know. Maybe all of them? His heart sagged deeply in himself, so far and hidden away that it was hard for him to even think. And then he knew the word to describe how he felt: miserable.

       Grace was left to his care now as a single parent. But haw was he to know how to care for a female? The firstborn? He was just learning and Aster needed more than just himself to raise a child. She was growing by the day, but he always saw her mother, his lover, in her face — the same gentle eyes, the shape of her face, her heart of gold, kind and just.

       I should have never tired. I should have never courted her. I should never have fallen in love with a mortal, he would think to himself in the most restless of nights as grief controlled him, golden eyes staring up at the ceiling. The immortal Shadow remembered their first home; they had cut into a redwood tree and made a house out of it from the inside, the myriad of expanding stars as their ceiling. Now, he moved to the city for a better job, a better future for Grace, and he was left staring endlessly into a slab of drywall.

       I should have asked Leo to be mine, not Belle. I-I should have been more courageous to have asked Leo. “Aster, how could you be so stupid!” Thoughts now became harsh whispers to himself. “She was a good friend and immortal, everything would’ve been fine, and she wouldn’t — couldn’t ever — have died!” He was yelling and shouting now. Getting onto his feet, he paced about as his hands went for his hair, tears and memories flooding into his eyes; the first time they met, their many adventures, their first kiss, their wedding, Grace’s birth… “No, stop it!” His world was torn. His best friend was gone. And he could not get over her.

       Raging with pain, he pushed down the dresser and pulled the drawers, his impeccable strength then flipping over the bed. He shred at the walls with the claws of a wolf, pupils narrow slips as he destroyed the room; nothing was left untouched. Aster’s breaths eventually leveled themselves, the flame in his eyes beginning to dye down as his hands quickly wiped away the tears that soaked his face. Belle was gone. She will never come back.

       Swallowing a hard lump in his throat, he gave a small nod. He shifted into a wolf and circled about the pillow Belle used to use. He sniffed it, padded onto it, yawned, then fell asleep on the pillow.