The Goddess and the Star

Abysses of Solitude

I am alone.

Sirius has gone, and I am alone.

I have returned to the sea, where I have always felt at home. The sea where Sirius and I first kissed, first confessed our love to the other.

The sea has always been my comfort, but now it just reminds me how alone I am. Where once Sirius and I had loved, now there is only me.

I have always loved reading Muggle literature, and I am reminded of a quote from The Awakening, about a woman who is happily married - or so she believes. Over a summer, she begins to awaken to who she really is, and falls in love with the only person who believed in her. They are about to consummate their relationship, but she is called away to be with her best friend during the birth of her friend's new child. Her lover then leaves her, and she realises that she has nothing. She does exactly what I am about to do - walk out into the sea, where she was happiest, and just let herself go.

The further I walk out, the more I see Sirius in my mind. He left me without a real good-bye, just as Robert left Edna. All the memories of our lives together run like a constant film inside my head, Edna and I are one for a moment, and I am removed from myself. Seeing myself as though I am floating above the water, I begin to think of myself in the third person, and believe that "As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself."

I hear voices calling for me - not just Sirius, but the sea as well.

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamouring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace."

I speak the words from Kate Chopin's most famous work aloud, not truly realising I am speaking outside of my own mind until I hear another voice reciting them along with me. I look around, and see no one. I feel the sensuous embrace that I associate with Sirius, but there is no one there. I realise that the sea truly does have its own voice, its own embrace, which mimics the person we long for the most. I hope against hope that Sirius is still alive, and that he is here with me, but he is not here in the sense that I need him to be.

I know he is dead.

I also know that he is here, hovering between the world of the dead and the living, waiting for me to join him.

I shed one final tear for what could have been, and then I let myself go, and slip under the waves, into the abysses of solitude.