White Rose

Narcissa had always reminded me of a white rose. Beautiful, pale, noble...there was a sort of gracefulness about her that was mind-boggling, but captivated you entirely at the same time. Delicate to some she might seem, but I knew that she was strong and courageous, and these things lurked patiently under her masked elegance.

Somehow, in all the times I had thought of her, it had never quite occurred to me that flowers die young.

I regret it all now. All the times I looked at her with cool indifference when really my heart was pounding and my breath taken. All the times I looked so aloof when referring to her, "my wife," and never lingering on the words or savoring.

I stare at her, noticing how even death becomes her. Everything always did. Even when her blue eyes are blank and unseeing and her skin deathly white, her pale lips dared me to deny her beauty. And, for the life of me, I could not.

I had built my entire being around her, my hope rested on her shoulders, my fears on her mind, my guilt on her conscience, and I never appreciated or even fully realized how much I needed her until I did not have her.

"Do not fear the end, Lucius," she had once said. "For sometimes...it is the only thing we have to look forward to."

I should have known then that it was coming. But death comes so quietly, so slowly sometimes that you hardly know that it has sneaked its way into your home until it takes hold, and then leaves, just as slowly and quietly as it came, this time taking something with it.

That something had been my wife.

"I can beat this," she said, coughing. "Haven't I looked Death in the face before and laughed?"

This time, no one was laughing.

"Please, don't worry about me," she whispered weakly. "I'll be fine."

Nothing would ever be fine again, for the minute those words were out of her mouth, a last final spark traced its way through her fingertips, and then her hand fell limp in mine.

As I looked at her, laying in downy blankets in a coffin of rosewood, I felt a veil that had been in front of my eyes for so long lift, painfully slow, and when it was gone, I could see Narcissa clearly now as a woman who had wanted so much more than life had given her. Me, a child...She had wanted happiness, I now realized, and I had not been able to give that to her.

I turned to the inside, and was surprised to find not anger, but a much more indescribable feeling, stronger than regret, but weaker than hatred. IT was as if I had been looking for what I truly needed all of this time on the outside, when all I really needed to do was look inside myself.

I placed a white rose in her hands, and walked away, feeling as I did so that I was leaving behind everything I had ever known, and coming to something else, though what I could not fathom.