A Shadow You're Seeing That She's Chasing

[alright, this piece is vaguely complicated...vaguely. it's another character piece, and the first part is told from the point of view of Elle, Lila's mother. the next two are from Lila's point of view. it's another sentimental-ish piece. i incorporated a lot of lyrics into it. have fun.]

The silence was suffocating.

It had a pulse, a heartbeat. It lapped against me, like waves against
an isolated rock. I was a boulder off the coast of Cornwall, close enough to the
mainland to be recognized as part of it, but not connected in any way. The water
was the silence and sadness, washing over me, preparing to swallow me whole. I
couldn't fight the current, I couldn't struggle to keep myself floating any
longer. The ocean was going to swallow me whole, and I had no reason to fight
it. What reason was there for someone like me, away from the mainland, alone in
the water?

Lila, she was a bird. She had laughter and song, she was close to the
sun and the sky. She could go wherever she wanted and nothing held her back. The
sadness had no grasp on her; she was far away from its reach. She had no time or
care for the rocks and the waves of lonliness. She would sing and dance her way
through life, away from me. She would follow the sound of drums and guitar
calling her away, in time with a rhythm only she could feel, a rhythm coming
from inside her. She would smile as if everything in the world were in the right
place, tilt her head back and sing along to the Clash, or Joni Mitchell, or Bob
Dylan.

Where was she to sing now? The flat was so empty; the walls grew
higher, arcing over me, towering above me, looming overhead. Everything was so
far away. Everything was gone. And there I was, on the wide, empty shore, gray
waters, gray sands, gray sky. Everything was gray, save for the twinkling light,
the faint glimmer of something beautiful. And there he was, tambourine in hand,
beckoning me forward, calling me to follow him. To take me on a trip upon his
magic swirling ship. My senses had been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip,
my toes too numb to step. I was ready to go anywhere, ready for it all to fade.
He called me to the waves; I promised to go under it.

Lila would be fine. Lila was the sun. The sun that lit the surface of
the ocean, the sun that would never be swallowed. But I, I would be swallowed.
The cold overwhelmed me. He had pulled me under, his current wrapped around me,
holding me beneath the surface. I could only stare up at the smiling sun, its
cold white light, and then its sudden burst of warmth before it blinded me
entirely.

"Mum?"

*

"Mum?"

I leaned over her, her pale moon face staring up at me. It was blank.
Glazed with tears. It was too pale. Her eyes had been bloodshot, but they too
were now pale. Their light blue had been stripped of its starlight, the faint,
twinkling glow that light up when she cried and dimmed in the sunlight. Dead
eyes.

She was dead.

Vomit, of all things, leaked out of the corners of her lips. The pill
bottle had fallen to the floor, the wine had been spilled down her front. Her
antidepressants. Her anxiety treatment. And the wine- the horrid white wine she
drank, until even her tears ran the same color. She'd drowned in it, dragged
down to the depths of the ocean by the medicated weights around her ankles. She
was gone. I'd lost her. Let her slip away. She was away from me now, swept away
by the cold current.

"Elle gave me a bell, what's going- Lila?"

Dad was behind me. She had called him? Wanted him to see her like this?
Her spirit, her body, broken? Broken by him. She wanted him to understand her
sadness. She had planned this. This wasn't one of her passing whimsies, her
sudden sparks, to pick up a paintbrush or belt out a ballad. This wasn't a
sudden wave of sadness. A mistake. She didn't slip away. She'd left. She'd left
me.

"I don't know," I found myself saying. My voice was too frantic, too
high, too panicked. It didn't match the icy cold feeling in me, like artic water
in my veins. "I just got back from Cornwall, and she's here and she-,"


Arms pulled me away from the room, a hand turned my face away. But I
could feel her behind me, I could feel the weight of her ghost, like a giant
magnet on the sofa, pulling everything toward it. It wasn't like she hadn't
thought of it before; when she stared out into the white empty sky and I could
see her soul fly out the window, disappearing into the blankness. It happened,
in the summertime. It happened in the morning. It happened in winter. It
happened on Tuesdays. It happened all the time. She got the urge to go, the same
way I did, the same want to run away and keep running and never reach the
horizon and never look back. She got the urge for going. I guess it was her time
to go.

*

The silence was suffocating.

I couldn't got into the Church. I had never before been in a Church.
For all I knew, neither had she. Why would they bring her, after she died, when
she'd never cared to go while she was alive? It was unnaturally cold for August,
and the chill hung over me like cobwebs. The quiet, though, was cellophane,
clinging to my face and nothing I could do could peel it away.

Her body was in there, but she wasn't. She was somewhere else. A crow,
lifted into the dead sky, floating away to an artic shore. Following the sound
of cries and whispers only she could hear. Beckoned into the ocean and dragged
by the current. There was nothing she could do to fight it. There was nothing I
could do to bring her back; I would be lost in the waters, sailing forever
through the other haunted, lost souls.

I wouldn't be lost like her. I still had a horizon to run to, a dawn
coming for me. I would fly free from her; she was away from me. She wasn't here.
So I did not have to drown in her. I could fly free.

She was gone. I had to let her go.