prayers for rain.

Only the phoenix arises and
does not change.
And everything changes.
And nothing is truly lost.



I'm sorry I can't help you now. For these last months -- for years, even -- I've stayed by your side, trying to take as much of your burden as I could. But now...now, I am useless. Perhaps it is only my own doing that leaves me thus, but there are things that I know, things that I cannot tell you. I just can't speak the words.

But I know what you're going through. As stupid and as trite as that may sound, I understand.

We're not really so different, not at all.

I once loved a boy. So totally that I didn't know what to do. I wasn't my own anymore, the things I felt and knew had all been been flooded with that huge, endless warmth that fills you until there is nothing left, the kind that you know will surely kill you if it were to ever die. It was everything, and even when that warmth was drowned and crushed in some unknown ocean, it couldn't stop. I love him still, though it's been years and years.

Like me, I'm sure you knew what he wouldn't tell you. There was always that sinking feeling in the back of your mind when you held him, wasn't there? That dark little voice that whispered, that told you someday he would go away forever and there was nothing you could do, no words you could say that would be able to stop it from happening. I always knew he would go, and I felt it, every time I held him close. I knew when he left that sunny afternoon that he wasn't going to come back. I'd never see his smile again, I'd never feel him at my side.

I didn't stop him, either. Like you, I watched him go off into the unknown while my tongue was twisted with a thousand things I would never get another chance to say.

Even though I felt it happen, I didn't believe them when they told me he was dead. I couldn't.

They called me a hard woman. They whispered around the evening fires that I didn't love him; but while the village mourned, I stood with myself, alone with all this quiet grief and I held you and Wakka against me as you both sobbed your hearts out for the loss of Chappu. But I didn't cry. I didn't wring my hands and heart and grieve.

I waited.

Because I knew he wasn't dead. Even though I felt that emptiness well up inside me like a raging flood, even though I felt him go, long before the news arrived from the battle.

He couldn't be dead.

I could still see him in the waves, when I'd stand on the docks and watch him smile for me. He kissed me when I lifted my face to the rain. He still held me in his arms when the night went cold, beside the village fires. He still whispered to me in the summer breeze, told me all those things that I wasn't brave enough to say.

He couldn't be dead.

I remember when I finally accepted the truth. I remember what it was like to lay sobbing against the cold ground, knowing that he wasn't coming to back to me. When you held the fragments of your heart in your hands, cupping them like sand, I was there once, too. I watched them scatter to the winds, bright and shining like glass, like tears: I felt that emptiness, too. I felt like I was dying, so soon after finally realizing I was alive. One is only capable of so much strength before everything breaks. You're strong, though, so much stronger than I ever was. I know you'll make it through.


I never told him that I loved him, either. But I'm sure he knew. I'm sure they both did.

I know what it's like to be where you are. I know it hurts, and someday, you too will realize that the pain never really goes away, though it may dull a little with time. Maybe you'll still find him in the fading colors of the sunset. Maybe you'll cry. Maybe you'll become like me.

But don't give up. Listen to his half-heard whispers during the storms; don't speak. When you feel his arms around you; don't turn around. You won't see him, either. But you'll know he's there, and you'll know he still loves you. He's still watching you, and maybe someday, you'll be able to feel it, too.

I know what it's like. I've heard, I've felt, and I have faith.

Don't let him go.

-fin