Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 195: The Sip

Chapter 195: The Sip

I no longer knew how long I had been climbing. The minutes, the hours, maybe more, had dissolved somewhere between two steps.

The sky, itself, had lost its bearings. Or maybe it had never had any. It was no longer a direction, nor a refuge, nor a promise. Just a blurry expanse, without beginning or end, as if suspended above me without wanting to respond.

And I kept climbing, searching for a shape in that void, without knowing if I was rising toward something... or sinking deeper still.

The fog would not dissipate. It didn’t recede, didn’t yield anything. On the contrary, it thickened, slowly, insidiously, until it became almost tangible. A strange, clammy, living density, that coiled around me like a tightened throat.

It was heavy, saturated, compact, thick... like a voice one had wanted to scream but had swallowed at the last second. A smothered word. A heavy silence that clung to the skin, to the eyes, to the soul — and from which one could no longer break free.

I was limping. My step grew unsteady, unbalanced, pulled sideways by a dull pain that settled in without noise but with determination.

It bit into my hip, in small regular stabs, then slowly climbed, insidiously, to my shoulder, like a creeping fever, finally settling into my wrist — the one holding the child.

There, it pulsed, heavy, throbbing, as if that arm, that anchor point, carried far more than his weight. As if everything I still refused to let go passed through it.

He didn’t cry. Not a sound, not a tremor. His face remained smooth, almost peaceful, as if he were sleeping... or pretending. Maybe he really was resting, curled in a peace I didn’t understand.

Or maybe he was waiting. Waiting for me. Waiting for me to falter, to give in, for my legs to finally give out. As if he already knew the moment would come — and had decided not to move until then.

In front of me... something appeared. Again. A new shape, a new rupture in the already fractured pattern of this now unbearable world.

It wasn’t brutal, not imposed, but it emerged from the fog with deliberate slowness, as if it had always been there, lurking, and had finally chosen to reveal itself.

An anomaly. Another strangeness. But here, every strangeness seemed to carry a meaning I could not yet grasp, and yet... I knew I had to approach it.

They hung along a melted railing, stretched like liquid filaments frozen mid-motion by time.

A hair of petrified rain, suspended between sky and matter, streaming without moving. Each strand seemed to cry something ancient, dense, silent.

One couldn’t tell if they were alive, or simply the memory of a motion halted too soon.

Gray filaments, supple, quivering, threaded with a soft light, almost shy — an inner glow, flickering, like the breath of a nightlight in the dark.

They seemed alive, yes, but with a quiet, muffled, organic life, that did not seek to show itself, only to endure.

They pulsed as I approached. Slowly at first, then more distinctly, as if my mere presence awakened in them an old, forgotten breath.

As if they felt my pain, recognized it, resonated with it. There was in their rhythm a kind of echo, a tremor aligned with my dizziness.

As if they were thirsty — not for blood, not for flesh, but for awareness. For a presence fragile enough to vibrate. Alive enough to resonate.

I had an impression, vague at first, then overwhelming. A sudden, irresistible urge, born of their light, their vibration, their tense silence: to say what I had in my heart. To speak, simply.

And my mouth opened before I even understood why. The words came on their own, unfiltered, unpolished, as if torn from an overflow that had been brimming for too long.

— I... I’m not made for this.

My voice trembled, rasped by effort, by fatigue, by shame.

— I mean... carrying this weight. I’m already... my own weight. Already a burden to myself. So why should I inflict this on myself? Why should I accept to slow down, to break again? I know... I know it’s the right thing to do, I know it. But it hurts. It hurts so much. And I just want... just want to crack. To collapse right here, now. To give up what’s left.

It was a naked complaint. A sigh thrown into the void, without expectation, without hope for an answer. But the filaments still pulsed. They hadn’t fled.

The thing before me lit up a little more, barely, but enough for the air around to quiver, as if the light itself hesitated to become real.

A soft, intimate clarity, that didn’t hurt the eyes but seeped beneath the skin.

And then... a tear of sap welled up. Slowly. From one of the filaments, or maybe from a knot of silence at its heart.

It slid noiselessly, dense, golden, alive, like a fragment of emotion the plant world had finally accepted to reveal.

I reached out a hand, released slowly, almost reluctantly, as if this simple gesture risked breaking something.

My fingers, trembling, uncertain, brushed the tear without breaking it, then caught it, delicately, like one gathers a breath.

It was warm, strange, almost alive between my palms. And without thinking, without asking myself why, I brought it to my lips.

I drank it. Gently. Like swallowing a silent truth, a liquid memory. A shard of something else one does not understand but agrees to let in.

The warmth enveloped me immediately. A deceptive warmth, enveloping, round, almost maternal — that of a happy memory never lived, but believed true, because it’s needed.

An illusion so gentle it became believable, irresistible, almost right.

It seeped into me without shock, without violence, slipping along my muscles, into my chest, into the most closed-off corners of my breath.

And in that warmth... I sank a little. Not from weakness, but like one finally lets go of something gripped for too long.

A crumb of stolen peace in the midst of vertigo.

The weight lessened. Barely. Just for a moment. But that moment was enough. Enough to fool the body, to trick the mind, to spark the fragile illusion that all this might grow lighter.

It was tiny, almost nothing — but just enough to believe. To believe that maybe, something in me had been heard. That the burden could be transformed. That the world, for a second, allowed me to hope.

But that’s when she returned. The vision.

Clearer this time. Sharper. More commanding. As if the warmth itself had been a trap, a parenthesis offered just to better echo the return of reality.

It imposed itself without warning, without crash, but with an icy precision — cutting like a blade laid against the skin.

It didn’t ask. It entered. And everything the gentleness had just soothed... tightened again.