Atop the altar in the Chapel of the Retreat lies The Book, bound in stitched canvas, its cover blank but warm to the touch. It never gathers dust, though no one admits to opening it. The air around it smells of lavender, iron, and regret.
Naturally, Raine opened it.
The book is part diary, part confession, part portal.
Entries are written by dozens of different hands — yet somehow all in the same voice. Anjelikka’s voice. Or a version of it. Maybe the voice of someone remembering her.
Entries are written by dozens of different hands — yet somehow all in the same voice. Anjelikka’s voice. Or a version of it. Maybe the voice of someone remembering her.
(Pg. 2 — Burned edges, faint thumbprint)
“I made up a man once. Beautiful, full of poetry and useless plans. He painted me in silver and called me his muse. Was he an artist or just an alien elf?
Then he walked out of my painting and blamed me for his unfinished soul.”
Then he walked out of my painting and blamed me for his unfinished soul.”
 |
| Who is that G guy? |
“G said I made him a better liar. I think he meant it as a compliment. I miss how he used to stand too close and pretend not to. Buried him in the west yard. Still sends dreams sometimes.”
(Pg. 17 — Water-damaged)
“The chapel rewrote my prayers. I asked for peace. It gave me music. I asked for silence. It gave me Casey and Rachel drunk on joy and basement gin.”
“I didn’t ask for love. It gave me cats.”
FINAL ENTRY (Back Page, appears only at dusk)
“If you find this, you’re not supposed to. But if you’re reading, you probably loved someone you shouldn’t have, or let someone love you wrong, or danced alone, hoping someone would watch.
“This book doesn’t forgive. It remembers.
The grave is never where the body is. It’s where the story ends.”
“The chapel rewrote my prayers. I asked for peace. It gave me music. I asked for silence. It gave me Casey and Rachel drunk on joy and basement gin.”
“I didn’t ask for love. It gave me cats.”
FINAL ENTRY (Back Page, appears only at dusk)
“If you find this, you’re not supposed to. But if you’re reading, you probably loved someone you shouldn’t have, or let someone love you wrong, or danced alone, hoping someone would watch.
“This book doesn’t forgive. It remembers.
The grave is never where the body is. It’s where the story ends.”
The altar book didn’t just remember Anjelikka.
It remembered everyone who stepped into the Retreat carrying that unforgivable ache.
The kind that only comes from loving the wrong person… beautifully.
It remembered everyone who stepped into the Retreat carrying that unforgivable ache.
The kind that only comes from loving the wrong person… beautifully.
Raine’s Found Fragment – Tucked Into Page 63
It wasn’t written. It was stitched into the binding, like a wound that refused to close:
“I knew he wasn’t real. But he remembered things I never told him.
He made me tea the way I liked it, but he was just copying a dream.
I said ‘I love you’ — and he said it back like a line in a play.”
“He was perfect.
Because he was pretending to be.”
One of the alien-cats (possibly named Navi) curled up on the book after Raine finished reading.
It purred once, turned its glowing eyes toward her, and said (yes, it spoke):
“It’s not wrong to love badly.
It’s just dangerous when you pretend it didn’t hurt.”
No comments:
Post a Comment