Clouds extended to the horizon, pressing downward as if threatening all who defiantly and audaciously passed below. The inclement city air felt stagnant, unstirred and absorbent of every foul odour emitted in the capital district. Most stayed indoors; those that ventured out felt an urge to hold their breath and breathe only when necessary. For these few, when they talked at all, would tersely describe weather conditions as unhealthy – and quite rebellious.

“Quite suited to circumstance and my mood,” Jahrae reflected, now barely able to function. Finding a way to move forward after your world was pulled away, maliciously ripped apart and cast to the overbearing and uncaring sky – left Jahrae knowing her inner will mustered a diminishing and weakening hold to dear life – living was the last thing she wished to do in this moment, on this day, or ever into the future.

Finding limited cubic space into which she might fit snugly and await her desired fate was far more an inviting and comforting a thought. Ever since the official with the barely disguised glee in his voice called her hours before, Jahrae spent half the ensuing time in resistance to  the comforting draw of shutting down. The other half of time willed her toward this self-induced oblivion out where she could be anonymous and left alone. What she most needed by whatever method was an end the horrific emotional pain that swarmed over her at 10:20, 310 minutes before.

Rebellious The word came rushing back in the midst of her struggle to hold tight to whatever remaining strength and will she possessed, headlong into her tenuous connection to what was just one day before. Rebellious. The word rattled around her mind in an unwitting and unending instant replay that mocked all that she believed. How many times had this word been tossed accusingly at them? Why challenge millennia of established cultural mores? Why do you believe women deserve equality? What makes you think you are our equal? These comments and so many more misjudgements were thrown at them by Brellian’s henchmen and lackeys in their two short years as partners. Did their cause matter any longer, or at least, did it matter to her with her beloved llhaesa gone?

Patriarchy was a living hell for Arrhazonan women, an irrational system that worked to squelch the abilities and contributions of half the people of their world. With the onset of dictatorship, llhaesa would no more keep silent than a songbird. With the gift of her voice and musical play, she worked tirelessly to change their world through peaceful means, through enlightenment, through music.

That shred of herself clinging to a will to live forced its way into Jahrae’s mind. She understood that to give in now, to lie down and let go of the last remaining and unseen emotional tether to llhaesa, meant not just the failure of her heart and mind and soul, but the loss of any hope of fulfilling llhaesa’s dream of equality on Arrhazon.

Fully two-thirds through this forlorn and melancholic day, Jahrae wrestled with drawing upon what she had taken away, or rather learned, from the person who until the coming night lie next to her through her first years as an independent adult. Jahrae’s thoughts veered away from pondering her immediate course of action and toward a remembrance of the gentle, constant, and loving touch that melded them into one each night. Now, locked by only memory through time and guided as if by some mandatory primal instinct, the experience and memories screamed for her to keep up the fight.

The pain overwhelmed, the threat to shut down hovering near. It was too much, pushing her towards shock.  For Jahrae, there would be months of agonising and a further fall before circumstances would move her to rediscover her strength. Friends old and new, family, and mysterious associates would one day rekindle her spirit and drive, but not before she learned life anew, from the bottom up.

In the end, Jahrae would accomplish all she wished to in memory of her partner, and far into the future, to the twenty-two year old, fully a decade and a half ahead, she would find something thought lost that would rock her world – or more precisely, two worlds.