Journal Entry, Dated 06/02
Jasmine
Metadata
Reference Number: BICI/SSP/CRJ0402/009
Title: Journal Entry, Dated 06/02
Author: Jasmine
Date: Written approximately 06/02, Year 5607 A. o. W.
Extent: One journal entry, two pages long
06/02
My sister came back to me in two black boxes. The first held her ashes. Everything she was and ever will be was reduced to something barely bigger than my lantern.
The second one held the things she wore when she died. Her clothes. Her accessories. A lock of her pale blonde hair. Everything was covered in dried blood. I don’t blame Pina and Deodar for not trying to wash her clothes, but her necklace? It was so easy to clean. A little rinse and a rub and the blood comes right off.
So that’s what I did. I took her necklace out of the box and I washed her blood off. That was earlier today.
I still haven’t cleaned up the bloodstain on the floor. I need to. It must have set in the wood by now.
I washed off her necklace and I wore it to the funeral. Despite what felt like the entire village being in attendance, only Spica’s Dad recognized her necklace, and his sad eyes followed my every move.
There were so many people. Families with infants. Seniors who must barely leave their cottages most days. I recognized many of the adult villagers, but few of their children. Not even the ones that looked like they were Blossom’s age.
She didn’t usually speak of school, and anything I did hear was in the form of a complaint. Usually about having to go. She never spoke of her schoolmates, and any time she was out of our cottage and not in class, she was either at Spica’s or hiding away in the lighthouse.
My peers didn’t like me much, but I cared little for most of them, too. I don’t know if Blossom felt the same towards her own. I never asked, and now I’ll never know. I saw her peers, standing near their parents, and wondered why they came. Are they memorializing an acquaintance, or are they here because their parents demanded that they pay their respects to a girl they found strange and off-putting? I don’t know. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
No one there knew her like I did. No one there loved her like I did. They could never understand what it was like to lose her. To lose everything. To them, her death was a celebration. The merchants always insist we should be more devout, but nearly every person in Seabreeze Shoal believes that every day is a gift given to us by His Eternal Warmth. Even if Blossom didn’t get as many days as most people, she still was given a gift.
How can I celebrate? My entire life was ripped away from me. Blossom and my parents get to have an infinite number of possibilities in their next life. But I’m trapped here. Alone.
Even my best friend is gone.
It was hot at the funeral. It’s still hot now. Strange, considering how the sea breeze usually chills the entire village. Humid, too, and the humidity clung to my skin and made me want to tear it off just for the chance at relief. A few villagers insisted that His Eternal Warmth was there, celebrating with us.
Is that why the air tasted like salt and rotten fish? That the sky above was the same sad gray as Nothingness’s fog wall? Did His Eternal Warmth will that into being, too? To celebrate a little girl’s death?
It makes me sick.
I had to give a eulogy. But I didn’t prepare one. It wasn’t that I didn’t think to, but that I just… couldn’t. I stood there, in front of nearly everyone I had ever known, and I opened my mouth and let whatever nonsense within tumble out. I don’t remember what I said, but I’m sure it was all awful.
It’s not as though Blossom heard any of it.
I went to scatter her ashes at the foot of the lighthouse after. If Spica was here, I would have invited her to come with me. Blossom loved her, too. But Spica is gone. I had to do it alone.
Now I’m back, with an empty box in an empty home.
And that fucking lighthouse. Is that my grand purpose, O Keeper of the Forge? To keep your stupid fucking lighthouse in one piece until I join my family in your stupid oven? How long until that happens?
I was never scared to leave, back when I still thought I could travel the world, but Spica was. Unlike me, home meant something to her. She likes security. Stability. Knowing that a roof will keep her head dry and where her dinner is coming from that night.
But I didn’t care about any of that. Getting to travel the world was so much more exciting. I’d give up roofs and warm meals for getting to live out all the stories Malva and Cinna told me. I loved my family, yes, but I stayed because I didn’t have a way to leave.
Then my parents died, and I had to stay for Blossom. I couldn’t abandon her. I couldn’t be like them. I had to stay for the villagers too, I suppose. So we all can prosper.
But what do I care anymore?