Movement Thirteen — Redemption for Both

I think, in the end, that this is simply what happens to beings carrying memories large enough to flood the whole of a mind. Some of us learn to settle for very little — a carved bird, a length of ribbon, the particular rare mercy of being remembered at all. Others of us need considerably more, an entire impossible everything, and cannot, however hard we try, teach ourselves to want anything smaller.

I don't think either kind of wanting is wrong, exactly, though I understand mine has cost considerably more than hers ever will. I don't think anyone in this whole gray, burning, complicated world is purely good, and I don't think anyone is purely bad either, whatever simple story either of those words might promise. I was cruel, once, entirely and unforgivably. I am also, now, simply a woman who loves something she can never have, burning for it the same slow, patient way this place burns for no one in particular. Both of those things are true. I have stopped expecting either one to cancel the other out.

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And I believe — though I have no proof of it beyond the particular stubborn hope that has kept me from joining the sleeping souls scattered across this landscape — that time is going to hand both of us, that other girl and myself, some kind of redemption before too much longer. Not the same redemption. I don't imagine mine will look anything like whatever gentler ending waits for her. But something. Some small movement, after all this stillness, toward whatever comes next.

Here I end. I don't say anything further than this. Here I stop the telling.

— End of Chapter —