Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 203: And Still, I Flee

Chapter 203: And Still, I Flee

From that moment on... I no longer really knew how. But I had ended up reaching a platform. A flat space. Stable. A stopping point. Or maybe just a pause offered out of pity.

I didn’t know if I had gotten there by walking. Or crawling. Or maybe... both. At times. Alternating.

I didn’t remember the last steps. My body had moved, that was all I could say. It had slid, pulled, dragged what was left of me here. Without me understanding whether it was I who was moving forward, or if something had pushed me there.

I floated between two breaths. Suspended. Neither alive, nor entirely broken. Just there, held by a strange inertia, carried by a refusal too ancient to still have a name. A resistance without form, without scream, without real strength — but still standing.

Something in me said no. Not with words. Not with a thought. A deeper no. Older. That of a being who falls but does not yield. That of a memory that refuses to die entirely, even when everything else already has.

And then... they were there. The moss cushions. The ones from the beginning. The same, or maybe others, but I immediately recognized that spongy softness, that vegetal warmth, that silent promise of a rest without judgment.

This time, I didn’t resist. I didn’t pretend. I didn’t make myself beg. I fell into them. Completely. Body, breath, thought. Without struggle. Without grace. Like one collapses into something softer than oneself, not out of trust, but because there is nothing else left to oppose. Because everything has already been given. And the ground, at least, asks for nothing.

My muscles gave out before my mind. They loosened on their own, without warning, as if they had been waiting for this moment to finally betray their duty. I sank into the moss like into a forgotten womb, warm, alive, almost maternal — a refuge without form, without promise.

And I thought I slept. Just for a moment. A suspended heartbeat. A slide into something blurrier, softer. But true sleep didn’t exist here. Not in this world. What came was not rest. It was something else. A disguised memory. A slow illusion, slow like an ancient poison one breathes in without realizing. Nothing extinguished. Everything remained. Lurking. Waiting for me to see it.

She returned. First... a shiver. Light. Insidious. Like an invisible hand brushing the nape of the neck, without really touching it. Then a beat of warm air, irregular, almost organic — as if something was breathing too close to me, without breath, without body, but present nonetheless.

The space around seemed to contract imperceptibly, to welcome an absence made tangible. I hadn’t seen her. Not yet. But I already knew. It was her. Her again. Always her.

Then... a note. A single one. Scattered, floating, lost in the air like an ancient sigh someone forgot to silence. It barely vibrated, but it vibrated true. Tired. Out of breath. Too human to belong to a dream, too filled with life to be just a hallucination.

It didn’t come from far away. It came from nearby. From intimate. From a place I had never known how to name but that I recognized, despite myself. A note... like a hand extended from a world believed to be closed.

And yet... it wasn’t a sound of the world. Nothing the air, the ground, or the sky could have produced. It was a song. Low. Broken. A hoarse voice, almost extinguished, scraped against the walls of something older than pain. It didn’t rise, it crawled. As if each syllable had to cross a chasm. As if singing was an act of survival. It wasn’t a melody. It was a presence. A wound that speaks. And despite myself... I listened to it. Because it carried something I recognized. Something that, deep down, may have always waited for me.

That voice... I knew it. Not with my head. Not with memories. With something older. More buried. I knew it from before. Even before I had understood what being consoled meant. Even before I had known that one day, maybe, someone could lay a hand on a pain without making it bleed.

It was a voice that belonged to a space I had never been able to name. But that my body, it, had never forgotten. A voice woven into the silence of childhood, where no language is enough.

She sang. Without words. Without refrain. Just a series of sounds spun in a low voice, as if woven from a love too deep, too ancient, to be expressed otherwise. A love that cannot be named, that cannot be spoken without betraying it.

It was a formless murmur, a sacred stammer, from a place without language, without logic — a place where one loves simply because one has never learned to do anything else. A lullaby without words, born of the need to hold, to soothe, to be there. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And my body... began to react. Without my will. Without my control. My eyelids trembled, as if shaken from within by a memory too heavy to stay buried. My jaw tensed, teeth clenched not out of will, but out of defense, out of fear of letting out what was rising. My stomach tightened slowly, painfully, as if trying to contain an ancient scream, a scream that had never been let out.

Everything in me was closing... or opening. I didn’t know. Only that this voice, this song, awakened something I thought was dead. And that, slowly, was returning.

— No, I whispered.

My voice was almost inaudible, swallowed by the air, by the fog, by myself. It wasn’t a violent no. Not a revolt. It was older, more fragile. A refusal barely formed, coming from a place in me I didn’t dare look at. As if that single word, slipped into the silence, was enough to make everything tremble.

I didn’t even know what I was saying no to. The voice? Love? The possibility of being comforted? Or the child, there, against me, whose breath reminded me I was still alive. Maybe that no... was to myself. To what I was becoming. To what I had always been.

But the song didn’t listen to me. It didn’t back down, didn’t fall silent, didn’t bend under my refusal. It continued. Relentlessly. Not with force. Not like an attack. But with that implacable gentleness of things that have always existed.

It seeped, note after note, into the oldest fibers of my being, like a murmur from before my birth, before fear, before even form. It didn’t want to convince. It didn’t want to force. It only wanted to be there. Present. To persist.

As if, whatever I said, it had always known I would need it. That this moment would come. And that it... would not leave.

I covered my ears. Brutally. Like a survival reflex. As if my own hands could stop the inevitable, stifle that song too ancient to be fought any other way.

I curled up, back bent, knees to my chest, reduced to the gesture of a lost child, naked, trapped in a reality too full. I bit my lip until it bled. Not to punish myself. But to remind myself I was still here. That I still had a body. A limit. A concrete pain to oppose what was invading me.

But even that... wasn’t enough. The song passed through everything. My flesh. My bones. My refusals. As if it wasn’t meant for my ears, but for something lower. Deeper. Barer.

But the voice... it was already in me. It had never been outside. It didn’t come from the world, nor the air, nor the mist. It came from farther away. From lower down. From the exact place where I had stopped existing. Where something in me had broken for the first time, silently, without witness.

A place I had covered in layers of silence, of forgetting, of anger. But she, she remembered. She still lived there. And now, she was rising, slow, gentle, but implacable — as if she had always been waiting for me. Not to judge. Not to help. Just... to remind me.

At that moment, the child, lying on my stomach, slowly lifted his eyes. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even really move. But his gaze... his gaze was there, full, open, inevitable. And I knew he was listening, too.

Not to the song. Not to its invisible notes. But to me. What I was doing. What I wasn’t doing. He understood. Not with words. Not with analysis. With that raw lucidity of beings who cannot be lied to.

He saw that I was refusing. That I was still rejecting. That I was fleeing. Once again. Still. Always. And in his eyes... there was neither blame nor anger. Just a silent truth. A presence that reminded me I was no longer alone with my refusals. That now, each of them had a witness.

— Shut up, I breathed.

My voice was just a breath, a rasp escaping between clenched teeth, too weak to impose anything. Of course, the voice didn’t obey me. It didn’t even waver. It continued, intact, indifferent, gentle and implacable.

It had never been there to listen to me. It had never sung to be cut short. It sang for me. Specifically. For what I was. For what I had forgotten I was.

It sang because I was here, now, reduced, trembling, unable to silence what lived within me. It sang to remind me that the very fact of wanting to flee proved I was still hearing. That something in me was not entirely dead.

Despite everything... despite the fact that I had to move forward, despite that certainty planted deep inside me — the one that I had to change, to continue, to survive for something or someone — I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t anymore.

It was there, yes, that desire to move forward, that inner cry, sincere, burning, almost pure... but it drowned in something else. In a fatigue stronger than will. In a pain so vast it covered all light.

All I really wanted, deep down, was for it to stop. For this infernal loop, this suffering spinning again and again until it crushed me, to finally cease. For the noise to fade. For the weight to fall. For the voice to fall silent.

For me... to fade too. Not as an end. But as relief. A soft, total, irrevocable dissolution. A peace that asks for nothing. Nothing more.

Because it was simpler. More bearable. Quieter. Than accepting that one might have been loved, once. Loved sincerely. Despite everything. Despite what I am. A beast. A twisted creature, deformed by rage, starved for escape.

Because even today, even now, on the brink of collapse, I keep looking for ease, the laziest, most immediate escape route.

I know it. I see it. And I don’t look away.

I am scum. Not because I do harm. But because I know exactly when I flee. And I flee anyway. Because it’s easier... than accepting that someone might have, one day, placed a hand on me without pulling it away.

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