For over an hour, Dessin debated putting DaiSzek out of his misery. And I felt that anguish deep in my soul, piercing my heart with a rusted blade.
It just so happens that DaiSzek understood this too. He limps through the threshold of our favorite wooden door, brushes his head against my thigh, and walks outside for the first time in days. Dessin turns to watch with the saddest, meekest glimmer of hope in his tired gaze. But DaiSzek only looks at him briefly, a silent word that only his best friend could understand.
This morning, we walk behind DaiSzek as he ventures into the tree line to the Red Oaks. Though, this far back into the past, there isn’t an ounce of red. The blaze of bright green leaves soars around us. The sky sprinkles its thin rainwater onto the moist soil. Even the trees seem to lean in, sensing an unforgettable event is about to pass us by. And as we come to a stop, Dessin never lets go of my hand.
“I’m scared,” I whisper to him.
“Me too, baby.”
“Maybe he’s feeling better. Maybe he wanted fresh air and a walk,” I reason.
I watch DaiSzek stand over Niles’s grave. At least, where his grave will be in nine hundred years.
I want to make time stop. To beg for a do-over with our boy. I barely made it out of a depression alive when my brother was killed. When Chekiss passed slowly, struggling to take even the smallest breath in his last weeks of being alive.
But I’ve known and loved DaiSzek since I was a little girl.
He’s covered my body with his own in the middle of a destructive storm. He’s come to my rescue more times than I can count. I watched him play in the rain as a pup. I’ve endured his clumsy stage of feeling small but growing fast and bumping into us when he’d play too rough. DaiSzek was the only family member Kane and I could rely on. The only one alive that would never hurt us.
My grip on Dessin’s hand tightens.
DaiSzek lifts his head. Nose quivering at something he cannot see but can feel off in the distance. His ears perk up, listening to a sound that does not exactly belong to this world. The rain quiets. The leaves stop trembling. And the forest exhales as the void pulls a curtain back for me to see.
The tears come as I see her standing there, a few trees away, watching my boy.
Warmth brushes over skin like fingers made of sunlight.
A small but mighty Ginger Wrathbull standing, glowing in the honey streams of light.
Knightingale came back for him.
I throw my hand over my mouth, sobbing at the sight of DaiSzek’s tail thumping, his soft excitement seeing his old friend again.
“What is it?” Dessin asks.
I choke on my words. “It’s—Knightingale!”
Dessin releases a slow breath, clenching his jaw and watching stoically.
Knightingale wiggles and gives DaiSzek a happy chuff, calling to him.
“Oh, Dessin. I think she’s here to take him home.”
Dessin nods, though he cannot speak.
And after a moment, a tall young man steps out from the cluster of trees too. Grinning that golden boy grin we have all fallen hopelessly in love with.
Tears gush down my face as I see my brother, as young as the day I first met him in the asylum. He wears no signs of age, trauma, or ever knowing a life of pain.
“Niles. It’s Niles!” I cry out, sobbing as I grip Dessin’s arm.
I let the void pull him in, sharing my sight as clearly as I can with my husband. Dessin’s eyes widen and his chin lifts as he enters the glimpse I share.
My brother flashes his old friend that classic smile and waves to us from his place next to Knightingale.
At this, Dessin lowers his head and pinches the bridge of his nose with a slight trembling of his hand. He’s struggling to hold himself together, but I knew that’s what does it for him. I’ve known for a long time that Dessin never really got over losing Niles. I could see it in his somber expression when Ruth and I would laugh at a silly memory with him. An obnoxious thing Niles would say that wasn’t funny at the time, but after he left us, we couldn’t believe how we didn’t notice how humor poured off him relentlessly to brighten our days.
In those moments, Dessin would usually leave the room or go quiet.
