"Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love."
– Queen Elizabeth II
The city park was a tapestry woven in shades of grey and brittle gold. Autumn had truly taken hold, stripping the trees with a ruthless efficiency, leaving skeletal branches clawing at a leaden sky. Leo sat hunched on a bench near the duck pond, the same bench where he'd once sketched Elara feeding stale bread to the mallards, her face alight with simple joy. Now, the pond mirrored the overcast sky, dull and lifeless. A few desultory ducks paddled, ignored.
He wasn't here for ducks. He was here because benches were good listening posts. Parks were places people came to think, to talk, to idle. Places where fragments might surface. His notebook – no longer just a sketchbook, but a dedicated "Dream Fragment Archive" – lay open on his lap. Page one held Finn's description from The Grind, meticulously recorded. Pages two and three were blank, waiting.
His own reflection in the dark water of the pond startled him. The face staring back was gaunt, pale beneath the shadow of his unwashed hair. Dark smudges bruised the skin beneath eyes that held a frightening intensity, a hunted look. He barely recognized himself. The quiet art student was gone, replaced by this spectral figure haunting public spaces, ears straining for whispers of the impossible.
He'd tried talking to Ben yesterday. His oldest friend, usually a wellspring of easy humor and steady support. Over greasy burgers at their usual dive, Leo had tentatively broached it. Not Elara – he'd learned that lesson. But dreams.
"Had any weird dreams lately, Ben? Like… vivid ones? About people you don't know?"
Ben had paused, a fry halfway to his mouth, his brow furrowed. "Weird dreams? Dude, I dreamt I was being chased by a giant sentient pizza last week. Does that count?" He'd laughed, a warm, familiar sound that now felt jarringly alien. "Why? You having nightmares? You look like hell warmed over, Leo. Seriously. When's the last time you slept? Or ate something that wasn't coffee?"
The concern in Ben's eyes had been genuine, laced with a confusion that bordered on pity. Leo had mumbled something about stress and changed the subject, the chasm between his reality and Ben's widening into an unbridgeable gulf. He couldn't share the weight. The burden of remembrance was his alone. Queen Elizabeth's words echoed bitterly: Grief is the terrible reminder… His grief was monstrous, isolating, a constant, screaming reminder of a love that had become his solitary secret.
A sharp breeze rattled the dry leaves still clinging to a nearby oak. Leo shivered, pulling his thin jacket tighter. He hadn't been back to his Life Drawing class in a week. Professor Thorne's concerned emails went unanswered. Assignments piled up, ignored. His world had shrunk to the dimensions of his notebook and the public spaces where echoes might linger. He existed on coffee, snatched sandwiches, and the jagged shards of hope Finn's words had provided. The thought of returning to his studio apartment, to the crushing silence and the walls covered in increasingly desperate, imperfect sketches of Elara, filled him with dread. The apartment was a museum of absence. Outside, hunting whispers, he felt marginally less insane.
An elderly woman settled onto the far end of his bench with a soft sigh. She wore a thick wool coat and a knitted hat pulled low over silver hair. She unwrapped a wax paper parcel, revealing a crust of bread, and began breaking it into pieces, tossing them towards the indifferent ducks. Leo watched her out of the corner of his eye, his internal antennae tuning. People often talked to themselves in parks. Or voiced thoughts aloud.
He pretended to sketch a skeletal tree across the pond, his pencil moving automatically, capturing the stark lines while his focus remained entirely on the woman. Minutes passed in the rustling quiet, broken only by the distant traffic hum and the occasional quack.
"Strange thing," the woman murmured, not to Leo, not even really aloud, just a soft utterance into the crisp air. She tossed another breadcrumb. "Had the oddest dream last night." She paused, her gaze distant, fixed on the grey water. "A young woman... couldn't see her properly, mind you. Like looking through frosted glass. But she had this... smile."
Leo's pencil stopped dead on the paper. His breath hitched. He kept his head down, his body rigid with anticipation.
"Not a happy smile, not exactly," the woman continued, her voice a low rasp. "Brave, it was. So terribly brave. Like she was facing down something monstrous... something that would frighten the life out of anyone else. But she smiled." The woman shook her head slowly, a faint frown creasing her weathered face. "And kind. That was the queerest part. Facing horror, and smiling with such... kindness. As if the horror itself needed gentleness." She sighed again, a sound like dry leaves skittering on pavement. "Woke up wanting to weep. And wanting to hug her. Felt like I'd met a saint, or an angel walking straight into hell with a bouquet."
Brave. Kind. Facing horror with gentleness. Like an angel walking into hell.
The words resonated deep within Leo, striking chords of recognition that vibrated painfully. Elara. Facing the world's casual cruelties, the systemic injustices she studied in Sociology, the personal anxieties that sometimes shadowed her – she met them all with a fierce, quiet courage underpinned by an unwavering core of kindness. She didn't look away from the monstrous; she met it with empathy, a gentleness that disarmed rather than confronted. An angel walking into hell. The description was terrifyingly apt, hinting at the sacrifice he didn't yet understand.
He fought the urge to turn, to bombard her with questions. What kind of horror? Did her eyes crinkle? Did she say anything? He clenched his jaw, forcing himself to stillness. He'd learned from Finn. Intensity scared the fragments away. He slowly, carefully, slid his notebook closer. Under the pretense of shading his tree sketch, he wrote, his hand trembling only slightly:
Dream Fragment #2: Elderly Woman, Willow Park Pond. Date: Oct 19.
- Smile: "Brave." "Kind."
- Context: "Facing something monstrous/horror."
- Quality: "Gentleness towards the horror."
- Feeling: "Wanted to weep." "Wanted to hug her." "Like meeting a saint/angel walking into hell."
-Physical: "Frosted glass." Face obscured.
He underlined Brave, Kind, and Angel walking into hell. This wasn't just a smile; it was a revelation. A glimpse into the essence of how Elara faced the world, or perhaps… what she had faced in the end. The "monstrous" the woman described felt chillingly real, a shadow looming over Elara's sacrifice.
The woman finished her bread, brushed the crumbs from her lap, and stood with a soft grunt. She didn't look at Leo. She simply walked away, her sensible shoes crunching on the gravel path, leaving him alone with the echoing weight of her words.
Leo stared at the entry in his notebook. Two fragments. Two distinct facets of Elara's smile, witnessed by strangers in their sleep. Finn's had been bittersweet acceptance; this woman's was courageous compassion in the face of terror. Both resonated with piercing accuracy. Both left the dreamer feeling hollow, moved, bereft.
He closed the notebook, the worn cover cool beneath his fingers. The weight Queen Elizabeth spoke of – the terrible weight of grief – settled deeper onto his shoulders. It was no longer just the grief of loss; it was the grief of knowing. Knowing her smile existed only in these stolen, fragmented echoes and the fading gallery of his own imperfect memory. Knowing the depth of her courage and kindness, qualities the world was oblivious to. Knowing he was the sole custodian of this truth, this love, this unbearable, beautiful burden.
A single, fat raindrop splashed onto the open page, blurring the ink slightly. Then another. Leo didn't move. He sat on the bench in the cold park, the rain beginning to fall in earnest, soaking his jacket, his hair, his sketchbook. He let it. The physical discomfort was nothing compared to the desolation within. The ducks had sought shelter. The park emptied. He remained, a solitary monument to remembrance in the downpour, the weight of solitude and the terrible, luminous depth of his love pressing him into the cold, unyielding wood of the bench. He was drenched, shivering, and utterly alone, except for the two fragile entries in his notebook and the ghost of a smile that haunted the dreams of strangers. The grief was crushing, but it was his. It was the proof. It was all he had left of the light.