The Connection

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Rosella woke with a start, the pendant around her neck throbbing madly. It reached underneath her nightgown and settled just over her heart, the Sapphires sending blue reflections all over the room, even though it was concealed beneath folds of cotton. Lighting a candle feverishly, for it was long before dawn, and pulled the long gold chain out from under her clothes.

Cupping the jewel in her hands, she felt such pain emanating from it she began to fold in on herself, breathing heavily. She didn't understand it- Sepp had left it for her when he left. She wished he hadn’t, even though she told him to, and had taken to wearing it everywhere.

Her shaking hands clutched the sapphire, tremors rippling down her back and making the whole room look as though it was shaking. With the amount of power within her, it probably was. She couldn't see anymore, her vision was clouded with red, and her heart was burning so painfully she felt as though she could collapse and die on the floor.

There was something so distinctly Sepp about her sudden agonising pain that she felt tears begin to erupt from her eyes, spilling over and hitting the mattress. She began rocking back and forth, feeling her heart be ripped from her chest. Was this how it felt to be inhuman? Was this how it felt to die? Or was this how it felt to lose Sepp?

And still, as this excruciating pain struck her, she did not remove the pendant. She could feel the thing had something to do with it, but it was more a connection than the source of the agony. A connection to Sepp.

She knew right then that she would never take the necklace off.

Sliding it back under her nightdress, and closed her eyes and felt the pain, embraced it, let rack through her frame and penetrate her soul, but she didn't fight it, because she knew it was Sepp- she was sharing his grief, and so making it more bearable for him.

She fell asleep that night, screaming. When she woke, her voice was hoarse from the tortured cries she must've uttered all night long.

How glad she was to know she had no neighbours.

The tear tracks on her face made it stiff and wet, her eyes swollen and bloodshot. She looked awful, but she felt worse. She had to talk to Sepp, she just had to. She held the pendant in her white, shaking hands, and closed her eyes, concentrating hard on the one she missed most, and that included her mother.

She remembered young Sepp, small, skinny, funny looking... seven year old Sepp, trying to tell her goodbye as she screamed in his face, his eyes pleading her to understand.... then Sepp ten years later, apologising, missing her, loving her.

And she felt a little tiny piece of her seep away, into the pendant, and gone for good. She opened her eyes, physically unchanged, but with part of her heart miles away.

In his palace, Prince Sepp sat up with a start.                    

.........................

He felt the ruby ring he'd found on her dressing table pulsing on his finger, and he felt such desperation coming from it, such need that it enveloped him, became part of his own feelings. He neither understood it nor cared, because he knew it was Rosella. Any connection he felt to Rosella, he would embrace, gladly. He couldn't not be with her ever again. It would kill him.

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