Storm
Elias could have headed back to the heart of town to go to a tavern. Could have warmed himself by another fire and nestled into clean sheets.
Instead, he walked away from Ayan’s house and into the dark. Until he couldn’t see any light made by man and his eyes adjusted to the moon and stars. He crouched down in the middle of a field and turned his face up to the sky.
Elias’s breath was steam and his cheeks were numb with cold. He brushed his fingers against where the Italian girl had kissed him.
He had never felt so lonely. Not on the first train from Germany, not on the boat hiding from that family. Not in Alain’s hands, not during his crimes in Geneva. Not when he lay on the ground curled around Agatha’s doll had he ever felt so isolated from all men.
He smelled, even to his sympathizers, of blood that could not be washed, and there was no one left who could understand that he smelled like justice.
More, did the rules of a place he could never return matter?
Where the community that would have held him, would have cried out with rage for him as he sought his retribution .
. . were not the ones out here in this wide world who could touch him gently? He wanted to be touched gently.
Before he came to this place, Elias’s world was so small.
This is a thing one cannot know until they leave.
His world was still that small in Geneva.
Now he had no home.
The thread in him started to vibrate again as Elias pressed his forehead to the frosted ground.
He did not have tears for this, but he let the hole inside him grow wider and deeper until it swallowed him entirely.
He shook and rocked back and forth in the moonlight.
He was alone, he was alone, he was alone.
Elias froze to death in the grass . . .
`and woke the next day.