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This was not like she thought it would be like.
It wasn’t steady, like the dull throbbing of a healing wound, or the ache of an old scar.
It wasn’t swift, like the breaking of a fallen body on stone.
It wasn’t hot, like a blade cutting through armor, searing as it twisted through flesh.
“Why does it hurt so much?”
As she knelt over him she felt her heart fall apart.
It didn’t break instantly. It didn’t shatter in seconds like she had thought, leaving her with an instantaneous feeling of hurt that was replaced quickly with numbness. It came apart slowly, deliberately. Like a marble statue gradually crumbling. Or a stone in a quarry being chipped away piece by piece, fragments falling away one by one to the ground. And as each fragment fell to the ground, another wave of hurt washed over her.
She clutched her chest trying to quell the swells which crashed over her, but they swept over her head, overwhelming her, until she was drowning in her own sorrow, unable to breathe. She grabbed at her heart attempting to salvage what was left, but the pieces were slipping through her finger.
“Because it is real.”
This was not what she thought it would be. It was not steady. It was not swift. It was not hot.
She gazed at his closed eyes, and held his face in her hands. She knew that this was beyond any pain.
When she was younger she had wished to feel the lively passion of love, never understanding the cold disdain her people held for the emotion. As she knelt now, clutching the dark ruin stone, as cold and smooth as the hand she held, she finally understood what it was like to feel love.
And as the damp cold of anguish settled into her bones, and the heavy shroud of grief constricted her chest, she finally understood the price that came with it.