The moon had warned him but Dorian does not believe anyone could truly be prepared for what it feels like to wield a sword in deepest darkness and cut through all that you ever cared for.
With all the Zacharys that followed he did not hesitate.
He had thought he would be able to tell the difference when he finally found the real one.
He was wrong.
Dorian replays the moment over and over in his mind, the moment when Zachary remained while the previous creature-worn guises had vanished once they were struck only to be replaced by someone or something or someplace else, followed by the slow, terrible comprehension that this moment and everything held within it was all too real.
And now this moment stretches on and on, interminable and awful, when everything had been constant, dizzying change before, moving too fast for him to catch his breath. Now there are no false cities, no haunted memories, no snow. Only a cavernous emptiness and a seashore littered with the wreckage of ships and stories.
(The darkness-lurking things that hunted him have fled, in fear of such grief.)
(Only the Persian cat remains, curled by his side, purring.)
Dorian thinks that he deserves this pain. He wonders when it will end. If it will ever end.
He doubts that it will.
This is his fate.
To have his story end here in this ceaseless anguish surrounded by broken glass and honey.
He considers falling on the sword himself but the presence of the cat prevents him.
(All cats are guardians in their own right.)
Dorian has no way to mark the time that passes with dreadful slowness but now the edge of the Starless Sea is approaching, the luminous coastline moving closer. He thinks at first that it is only his imagination but soon it becomes clear that the tide is rising.
Dorian has resigned himself to slowly drowning in honey and sorrow when he sees the ship.
excerpt from the Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins
I thought about giving this notebook to Z’s mom but I didn’t. I feel like I’m not done with it, even though it’s a bunch of pieces and not a whole anything.
I hope there’s a missing piece, maybe even a small one, something that will make all the other pieces fit together but I have no clue what it is.
I told Z’s mom some things. Not all the things. I brought bee cookies because I figured she’d say something if it meant anything to her and also because they’re delicious because honey-lemon icing but she didn’t say anything so I didn’t bring it up. I didn’t feel like dealing with secret societies and places that may or may not exist and it was nice to talk to someone for once. To be somewhere else and sit and have coffee and cookies. Everything felt brighter there. The light, the attitude, everything.
She also just *knew* things. I think she broke me down a little bit. Or put a crack in my psychic armor that wasn’t there before. That’s how the light gets in and all that.
At one point I asked her if she believed there was magic in the world and she told me, “The world is magic, honeychild.”
Maybe it is. I don’t know.
She slipped a tarot card into my coat pocket when I was leaving, I didn’t notice until later. The Moon.
I had to look it up, I don’t know tarot stuff. It reminded me that Z had a deck and read for me once and kept insisting he wasn’t very good but everything he said was pretty much on point.
I found stuff that said the Moon card was about illusions and finding your way through the unknown and secret otherworlds and creative madness.
Madame Love knows what’s up, I think.
I put the card on my dashboard so I can see it while I drive.
I feel like something’s coming and I don’t know what.
I’m trying to let all of this go and something keeps holding on.