My wife leans over and gently adjusts it for me, frowning. She’s all in blue and thinks I’m being ridiculous, refusing to abandon my permanent garb for a few hours. I think the blue clashes horribly with her hair and told her so.

Emotions are strained and people will say anything to cover what they really feel.

I never wanted to wear this blue. In a way, the black is better. It’s something that has passed, so long ago that I suspect few can remember but me. I can remember it vividly. It’s like it happens again, every day, played out in gruesome detail in my mind. An everyday event, as regular and predictable as my morning cigarette, or my evening drink. An everyday one, but never mundane. Goddess Zamta strike me down, never mundane.

This - this should never be something to happen on a daily basis. I had hoped that by shunning the blue I’d be able to deny the reality of the situation. Damn her for not letting me live in miserable ignorance.

I light a cigarette, compulsively, and take a long draw. Only my wife frowns, lightly, but lets it pass. He would have approved. She would not, but would have sighed tolerantly.

Is this why madness is such a fear for us? It’s chaotic core lurking at the centre of our very souls, held in only by the bonds of friendship? Or does the fact that we’re fools enough to form friendships, brief things though they are when compared to the stretch of eternity I see before me in my mind’s eye, cause the madness? Would I be better if I never let another life touch my own?

If I had not let their lives touch mine, would I still be alive? Would I be as sane as I am now, if it hadn’t been for them?

Weeping starts around me, from all sides. Soft sniffles, dry gasps, heavy sobs, silent shaking that treads the thin line between hysterical laughter and sorrowed sobs.

Nothing escapes my own lips, nothing vocal wells up in my chest to strain against the jail of my rib cage. Tears run silently down my face, salty as the ocean, warm as the sunlight burning my skin. It’s a wonder there aren’t furrows running along my face because of tears. I’ve shed so many, for so long, that their presence is almost comforting. No matter what I am, I can still feel sorrow as intensely as anyone else.

I don’t bother to wipe them away. They run down my cheeks, drip off my chin, splash on my collar and the front of my shirt, creating damp patches everywhere. I don’t care. I’m not proud. They both shed tears for me, countless times. It rips at my heart that this is all I am doing for them now, and makes the tears come in greater force.

I could have saved them.

“But it’s really easy! I’ve checked in books and everything! You have a knife, we could use that!”

“No.”

“But if we did it, then we’d be like real brothers. Blood brothers. Like pirates sometimes do and everything . . .”

“I said no.”

“Don’t you like me? If we did it, then we’d never have to live without each other. We’d be together forever!”

“No.”

“But . . .”

“Oh, Mercus and Zamta, please don’t cry . . .”

“But they’re sending me away to that awful place and there’s no ocean at all and you won’t be there and I’ll be alone except for Glori and Dash and it’ll be terrible and I’ll have no one to play with at all and I don’t want to have to live without you, not ever! You’re my best friend and this way I’ll know you’ll be here when I come back!”

“Look, look, I’m not going to go anywhere for years and years, I promise. But things can’t always be fair, you must see that. Not everyone can be like you. The world wouldn’t work then and nothing would ever change. Mercus, please stop crying . . .”

My shoulders shake and one gloved hand twitches. I want to banish the memory, send it back to whatever hideous demon conjured it up to torture me with, but I can’t. Memories are all I have left and who knows how long they’ll last. It’s already been so long. How much longer will they remain? How long before I forget the way his voice carried, the way his fingers danced while he worked, the way his eyes sparkled with amusement and his lips could thin into murderous displeasure a second later? I won’t always remember his gentle words, his rude jokes, his comforting hugs, and our fierce, stupid, passionate fights. Mercus, how could I waste such time fighting with him when I knew we had so little time? How could I neglect her for work, rarely finding time in my schedule to just sit down and talk? He I’d known all my life, it’s almost impossible to imagine ever forgetting him, my brother in spirit, my best friend, my fierce protector.

And her? It seems like it was only an hour ago that I teleported from the palace in a frantic hurry to escape Kervain, and ended up sliding down a chimney, and presenting myself to her and her other mature, adult, incomprehensible friends. They were snide, sarcastic, and spoke so quickly that I could never keep up with their conversations. I was little better, sullen, rude, and surely twice as confusing to them in my speech as they were to me, lurking in the shadows indulging in deplorable habits I could never shed. Why bother? They won’t kill me. She was Zamta personified, a goddess on earth. She spoke gently, and was eternally patient with a child’s hopeless confusion. She took me under her wing like a soft-hearted mother adopting an ugly, unmanageable, dying infant. Forgetting her is unthinkable. I would sooner kill twice as many as before than have the memory of her laugh and wicked smile taken from me. Zamta forever curse me if I forget the soft words she consoled my broken soul with time after time.

Stupid of me, to allow two so brief lives to burrow their way into my heart, impossible to willingly dislodge, only to leave a gaping hole in my very being when they’re snatched away, too soon. No matter when, it would have always been too soon. No amount of time would make the pain any less searing, burning in me like icy fire. To live without them would have been madness. If they’re gone, if this pain persists, madness is again inevitable, it seems. Is it possible for time to ease wounds such as these? How long will it take before I can lie in bed without thinking of them, of this. Surely I will remember the sight of their shells, perfectly clean and naked, lying in the small boat to be taken back into the ocean, to be taken into the cold embrace of Uncle Death when the first storm comes. Years could not purge this from my mind, nor centuries, nor, even, millennia. Time is weak when confronted by such things as these.

In this world, everything that should last forever withers and dies, while unworthiness continues. If I could give my worthless life in exchange for theirs, I would.

But I can’t.

They never wanted to live forever.