Shadelings

chapter eleven

Constance

I paid Brittany a hefty sum of money to keep her fat mouth shut about what happened; if it were any other time, I would have fought to keep my money, but I knew I wouldn't have time to deal with that. Hell, I can't even deal with my own emotions. It's why I'm on everything I could find laying around my penthouse—excluding nadol—right now. And it's kinda nice. As nice as my husband's funeral in a freezing-cold swamp can be, anyway. At least I'm able to function. A little.

Xerdonis' family mulls around, sticking to their own group in the thinnest of the drooping trees. I'm the outlier, the only elf here. Everyone knows who I am, and they want nothing to do with me. I guess I shouldn't blame them. They said when we got married that an elf and a drow were never meant to be, that I would do nothing but hurt him with my deceiving, brutal ways. I wander over the frozen ground to a large tree with red leaves and lean against it. Casanova rubs up against my legs.

It's alright, Constance, she thinks to me. Xerdonis would be glad to have you here, no matter what his family thinks.

“Would he?” I mumble, smoothing out the skirt of my dull black dress and glancing up to the graying sky through the tree's leaves. It's going to rain or snow soon.

Of course he would. He loved you, Constance.

If he knew what I did, would he still love me? Sleeping with other men never changed my feelings toward Xerdonis, but would his have changed if he knew? I feel my eyes start to burn and immediately conjure my pipe. It's still lit from the last time I called on it, so I take a few hits of whatever is in it. Within a few minutes, my breathing steadies, and I'm... okay again.

An off-pitch horn sounds from where the red-and-purple trees are thickest. The pipe disappears with a quiet pop, and I start toward the noise. The quicker this is over with, the... better? Would anything even be better after Xerdonis' body was sent into the swamp to be eaten by the zaire dragons that inhabit it? Maybe if I think it'll be better, it really will be better.

Even my mind doesn't want to believe that.

Xerdonis' family is gathered in a semi-circle, waiting on me. I walk through the crowd of drows, trying to pretend like the glares and scowls that I am sure they are throwing at me don't exist. At the center of the gathered family, on the shore of the frosted-over brown swamp waters, is a wooden makeshift raft tied together with vines. Xerdonis lays in the center of the raft, looking significantly older than when I had last seen him.

I should have seen him earlier, when his family was gazing at his body. But I couldn't bring myself to mingle in their crowd; I knew that they didn't want me here. I didn't want to bother them. It might have been the right choice, maybe; maybe I postponed myself from falling apart by not looking. None of the drows in Xerdonis' tribe are shamans. I'm the only one who can do this; I can't fall apart now.

But I should have looked. So I had time.

His once-lilac skin is now paled with death, a milky white. Purple age spots cover his uncovered arms and up his long ears. His family wove vines and red leaves into his long, white hair and carefully framed his aged, wrinkled face with the plants. Misshapen bronze coins hold his eyes shut. He's wearing a brown suit, his hands laying carefully across his chest. Every vanguard wears a spiked silver cuff; his is laying on his chest, just above his hands.

Impatient murmuring from behind me pulls my gaze away from Xerdonis and his alien features. I look up and away from him, close my eyes and breathe in, focusing on the swamp. My body feels cold and sluggish, just like the looming body of water, and at my will, that feeling begins to almost ripple as the water laps onto the shore to take the raft into the inner workings of the swamp. I open my dead eye and glance down at my feet. The ground is a beige-colored blob that runs into a darker-colored blob, which is probably the swamp. I can't tell. I just hope that Xerdonis is floating away through Mmiri.

“Your tribe says farewell.” The Polturranen speech Xerdonis' mother gave me when I arrived comes out sounding more rehearsed than it is. “But the Great Mother welcomes you into her warm embrace. Begin your final journey through the worn waters of your home, Warrior, to meet the Great Mother's children...” My voice cracks. I open my other eye to see the raft float beyond a bend in the trees.

Never to be seen again.

I can't finish the rest of the speech.

“Ijeoma,” Farewell, Xerdonis' family says from behind me. Their collective voice echoes across the bleak swamp waters, fading into the distance and to silence.

I stare at the clump of trees Xerdonis had disappeared behind, willing the raft to float back to me just so I can see him one last time. The water won't obey; the speech spell is carrying him far, far away to... disappear. It seems so wrong that his existence isn't acknowledged by something. A cross, a rock, a tree, anything is better than simply floating into nonexistence.

But I can't do anything about that.

The drug haze begins to schism around me, my calm and apathetic mood slowly crumbling into... into... I struggle to stay standing as waves of pure emotional agony overwhelm my body. My entire being hurts; tears start to stream down my face, and I fall to my knees on the muddy swamp shore.

He's really gone.

I feel a hand on my shoulder.

“Did you really love him?” A soft, feminine voice asks me. I wipe the tears from my face, sniffle and turn to look at who spoke. A light-skinned young woman looks back at me. Two men with more-purple skin hover nearby. The rest of Xerdonis' family seems to have dispersed.

“Yes,” I say, then pause. “Arwen?”

She nods and looks surprised I recognize her. Her eyes aren't a drow's glowing, bioluminescent eyes; instead, they're exactly like mine.

“I'm sorry,” I tell her. There isn't anything else to say.

Arwen removes her hand from my shoulder and stands up to walk toward the two men. I'm assuming they're Alphonese and Alistar, her brothers. My sons. A whole new wave of agony washes over me, and I turn away from them, staring back toward the swamp as tears begin to fall once again. My entire body aches. Each time the wind blows, it freezes me. I can't bring myself to move. My body's numb until the wind blows, and then there's only enough feeling to feel the cold bite of the air.

The sky opens up, pouring freezing cold rain down onto me. Every drop disturbs the tranquil surface of the swamp, breaking the thin film of ice that had begun to form. I should... get up. But. I can't. I can hear zaires' playful, musical calls in the distance.

Did they... find him?

The thought of Xerdonis being torn apart by the mild-natured amphibious dragons chills my soul beyond where the rain can soak.

“Ch...ash...” Dinner. The Mivphves word ripples through the thundering rain, from the throat of a zaire.

He's gone.

He's really gone.

cover on right is by @reminiscence- // song is "what shall we do now?" by pink floyd