Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 166: Just To Be Held

Chapter 166: Just To Be Held

The ferns... followed me. Without a sound. Without haste.

Their leaves stretched toward me, slowly, too slowly, with a gentleness that unsettles more than it soothes. Like vegetal fingers, supple and insistent, gliding through the air as if trying to brush against me without grasping.

A silent crowd. A voiceless assembly, reaching their arms toward me—not to stop me, nor to hold me back, but like one reaches out to the condemned. Not to judge. Not to punish. Just... to be there. Around. Present. Until the end.

And the song continued. Discreet. Persistent.

A lullaby. But not just any lullaby. The kind sung only to a child too fragile to survive the night. The kind whispered when there’s nothing left—nothing but tenderness, naked, trembling, helpless.

A song that doesn’t try to save. Just to accompany.

— You know it, murmured the voice. — You’ve heard it.

I swallowed. My throat was dry. Rough. Tight as an overstretched cord. Ready to snap.

— That’s not true, I whispered.

But she continued. Gentle. Relentless.

— Not here. — Before. — When you cried, alone. — When nothing moved anymore. — When there was only you... and her.

I closed my eyes. Hard. As if to crush the moment. As if to bury everything in darkness.

But it changed nothing. The song remained. Like a memory that doesn’t ask for permission.

Their leaves... touched my skin. Slowly.

My wrists first. Then my neck. My cheeks.

They didn’t scratch. They didn’t sting. They didn’t invade.

They... consoled. With a gesture too pure to be intentional. With a delicacy almost inconceivable. As if each one knew exactly how far to go.

As if the world, in that precise moment, had decided to love unconditionally.

There was light in the gesture. A bare clarity. A love without words. Without voice. Without expectation.

And I didn’t understand.

Why? Why were they consoling me? Why now?

Why did this song, barely whispered, awaken something... in me?

Something buried. From far away. From deep down. Something that had no shape anymore. No name. But still beat.

— She sang it to you...

— When you pretended to sleep.

I clenched my teeth. Hard. Too hard. Until it made my jaw tremble.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to bite. I wanted to tear this melody from my skull, like one escapes a nightmare too soft, too precise, too ancient to be a lie.

— WHO?! — WHO?! FUCKING WHO?!

And the answer... came. Without waiting. Without detour.

Simple. Obvious.

— Her. — Always her.

And the voice... was no longer in my head.

It didn’t speak to me anymore. It inhabited me.

It vibrated in my chest. In my bones. In the hollow of my belly. Like an ancient breath that had always been there. A buried echo. A trace.

And it beat... to the same rhythm as the lullaby.

I couldn’t breathe well. Not at all.

Each breath scraped my throat, rising like one breath too many.

A pressure was building. A dull, brutal, living tension.

It lodged there, just under my glottis, like an impossible scream. Like a sob stuck for years, hardened into silence, compressed in me until it became stone.

And in my eyes... a burning.

Slow. Deep. A muffled, ancient pain that didn’t come from outside. As if something were pushing... behind my eyelids. A nameless force. An inner current.

As if the water of a memory, long held back, long denied, was trying to pass through.

Despite everything. Despite me.

It wanted out. It wanted to flow.

And I could feel... I wouldn’t be able to stop it.

— You don’t have the right...

My voice wasn’t a voice anymore. It was a plea. A sonic crack. A supplication I hadn’t been able to hold back.

— The right to what? she asked calmly.

No challenge. No harshness. Just the calm obscenity of those who ask the right questions.

— To speak of her...

A whisper. Torn. A burst. More a sonic fracture than a word.

And the voice... fell silent.

As if it knew. As if it had understood it had gone too far.

Or maybe not. Maybe it knew that this silence... would be worse.

But the ferns still sang. Always. Tirelessly.

As if nothing had broken. As if my cry, my scream, my refusal had no hold on them.

As if the world... had decided to lull me. Whether I wanted it or not.

An imperturbable softness. A tenderness without condition.

Like an arm that does not withdraw, even when bitten. A stubborn lullaby. That goes on. Because it knows nothing else. Because it still believes... even when I no longer believe.

And I... broke.

Not suddenly. Not dramatically. Not in a grand crashing collapse.

No.

I broke like a dam that silently cracks, giving way not under violence... but under a murmur too soft. Too true. Too old.

I felt a first sob rise. Like a hiccup. Sharp. Involuntary. Brutal. And dirty.

Yes, dirty.

Because it wasn’t wanted. Because it tore something from me I had cemented too deep.

A spasm. A wave. A jolt from the bottom of the well.

That well where I had thrown everything. What I refused to feel. What I thought dead. What I had never had the right to call pain.

And yet... it rose. It pushed. It tore.

I collapsed to my knees.

In one block. Without grace.

Like a body bent too long that finally gives out.

My hands... trembled.

My shoulders tightened, stiff, painful, as if trying to close around my heart.

My belly twisted, curled in on itself, ready to expel something I couldn’t name.

My whole body... folded in. Curled up. Closed in on itself.

And I cried.

Not because I wanted to. Not because I understood.

I cried despite myself. Like a reflex. Like an earthquake.

I cried like a lost child. A child without a name. Without refuge. Without voice.

A child thrown out too soon, frozen in a memory no one ever managed to console.

I cried against myself.

Against my own body, no longer able to hold on.

Against that unbearable warmth trying to make me believe I was lovable.

Against that fucking song... that I knew. That I knew without knowing why.

I cried out of shame. Out of rage. Out of terror.

And none of those tears would stop.

Because for a moment—just one—I had believed I deserved it.

Not everything. Not peace. Not forgiveness.

But... that tenderness. That embrace. That fragile, unthinkable right.

The right to be held. The right to be consoled.

I had believed, in a breath, in a shadow’s heartbeat, that I might be worthy of that.

Just that.

Not love. Not redemption.

Only... to be held. To not be let go.

And that thought... That abominable idea... That forbidden light... Broke me.

It split me from the inside. Turned me to the marrow.

Devastated me more than anything I had lived through before.

More than the screams. More than the falls. More than the chains.

Because deep down, it wasn’t the absence of love that hurt.

It was having believed, for one second, that it had been possible for me.

Meanwhile...

The ferns closed in. Slowly.

Not violently. Not to trap me.

But with care. A wordless attention. An instinctive precision.

Their stems bent toward me, like a learned, ancient gesture.

Their leaves stretched out, supple, patient.

They curled around my shoulders. My arms. My neck.

They did nothing to me. Nothing else.

They asked for nothing. Took nothing.

They were there. Present. Whole.

And they rocked me. In silence. Without imposed rhythm. Without music.

Only that mineral, vegetal, almost maternal swaying.

Lovingly.

Like one rocks a pain that can’t be healed.

But that one can... at least hold. Until it stops screaming.

Or finally learns to cry softly.

So... I let go.

I resisted no more. I struggled no more.

I sobbed. For a long time.

Curled up in that vegetal, mute, living embrace.

It didn’t speak. It barely moved.

But it held.

And I... emptied out.

Each tear fell slowly, as if torn from the depths of a bottomless well.

Each moan was a piece of soul peeled away gently, without sound, without violence, but with that slowness that hurts more than anything.

I cried for everything I had never cried for. For everything I had held back too long.

And this time... no one stopped me.

And during that time... the voice.

Still there.

Distant. Gentle.

Far away like a prayer one dares not interrupt, for fear of profaning something too pure, too ancient.

It did not impose. It slipped through. It vibrated.

— You have the right, you know...

— To be fragile.

And I hated that right.

More than anything.

I vomited it. I rejected it. I bit it from the inside.

Because within that right... was the idea of a love.

Of a gaze that doesn’t crush. Of a presence that doesn’t judge.

And I didn’t want that love.

I didn’t want it.

Because I knew. I felt it. I didn’t need anyone to tell me.

It was still there.

That love.

Unaltered. Whole. Present despite everything.

And that was... the worst part.

I didn’t deserve it.

And yet... it didn’t leave.