Fully three months had past since the loss of Llhaesa, and Jahrae remained stunned and heartbroken, now locked into an addiction that suited her just fine in the moment.

Jahrae wondered what point was there to life, when the one person to whom she gave all of the love in her to give, given unrestricted and complete access to her innermost self – access to all of the secrets, all of the good and the bad that constituted her life as a sentient being - was gone forever?

Addiction in this day and age was simple. Simply peel off the protective cover, fasten the sticky clear membrane to an unexposed patch of skin, and… done.

Jahrae had not been out of her apartment in days, excepting to buy more patches and some grocery items. She did not need much in the way of sustenance; she was slight of frame even if somewhat tall at 178 centimetres, and hardly felt like eating. What she did buy was junk food, yet another newfound addiction aimed square at her own disregard for continued existence.

The elsferodol might numb her mind, but it could not chase away knowledge of, or even all of the pain, nor remove the memories that were the underlying cause.

While something deep inside would not let her take more immediate and final measures, the medication could accomplish over time what she was unwilling to do in conscious thought or as an immediate act, because it worked silently and over a long period of time. The methodology seemed different, it was different… and where she could not find it within to do one, she found it quite easy to do the other.

M’traliel had been trying to reach her for days now; at least ten messages were still on her mobile, unanswered. Sooner or later M’traliel would be at her door, and Jahrae relished the opportunity to lash out at someone – anyone – to attempt to give release to all of the pain, all of the anger, all of the hurt of loss, that was ripping her life to pieces.

As a child, she was instinctively wary of her parents activism. Maybe there was something to this, some premonition that at a point in her future, she would lose the love of her life as a direct result of her partner’s involvement in activism. Maybe she knew this and wished to prevent such an occurrence, but in the end, she bought in to the activism, bought in to her partner’s brilliant vision, and lost her.

What could she have done differently? Advocate and cajole her partner, someone who dreamed of equality, of achieving social change, and who would no more sit silent than she would in her work as a musician, to go against everything she believed in in life?

Jahrae knew such an approach would have been a mistake, and it would have caused a fracture in her relationship with llhaesa.

Where llhaesa was so strong, Jahrae thought of herself as weak, as everything her partner was not, a miserable failure. Not only did she fail now, she failed then as well, failed to protect her partner from imminent danger, though she knew a day of reckoning approached.

She was caught by surprise and dragged away, when she should have been ready and willing to fight. Her stupidity and lack of preparedness for what she knew was coming likely cost llhaesa her life.

Did that matter now? To Jahrae, yes it did; it signified her failure, a failure that lit the sky of her mind as if it were cast in the brilliance of neon, relentlessly calling out and calling attention to what was now a shattered, hopeless life.

Jahrae would fall yet further, she would find life hung in a precarious and last gasp balance. At the ebb of her misery, someone would reach out and pull her back onto a road to a place she never envisioned or aspired to – a place about as close as humanly achievable and best represented by her unique middle name: T’srha, mythological Arrhazonan Goddess of Light.