Forgotten
What do you do when you have a life split in two?
"Love is backwards, Rose," I said.
She looked up. Her blonde ringlets had been passed down from her grandfather, but she had green eyes, exactly like mine before my cataracts.
"I know, A'ma, "you've been saying that since I was a kid." She picked up a drawing of a well surrounded by roses. "I just don't see what that has to do with a forest."
"I haven't gone in a long time, you know?"
"Yeah?" She examined another picture, this one of a vibrant pink sky and a vine covered well. "I'd love to see it. Is it really there?"
"Yes, but it's hard to find."
"The forest isn't that big." She smiled.
"And it still has it secrets," I said. "Just like me."
She giggled. "Like dragons hiding in the trees?"
"Dragons? Where did you get such an active imagination?"
"You're the one always drawing them! And you told me you've seen dragons before."
I blinked as a pink sky with hundreds of majestic creatures soaring overlapped my vision. Rose stared at me with eyebrows crinkled.
"A-ma..."
"Anyway, it's past your bedtime."
"I'm nineteen." Rose rolled her eyes but put my sketches away.
"You're nineteen already? Where does the time go?" I reached out and took her hand. Looking into her blonde curls, I saw him again and my heart ached.
"I've heard that time is infinite." She grinned.
"What are you talking about?"
"Every moment goes to infinity and we keep just stepping from one infinity to another."
I thought about it for a moment. Infinity had messed with my head for a long time. An infinite life, or an infinite afterlife. I stared off into the distance, a heavy weight descending upon me.
Rose squeezed my hand and then let go. "The forest." She paused. "Why does it matter so much to you?"
"Another time." I waved her away. Rose gave me a kiss and left. I loved her dearly, she was a clever girl, and maybe she knew I couldn't explain it. There were some things that didn't fit into words, no matter how hard you tried.
I turned to my vanity. I looked older than I should have, my face a collection of wrinkles and foggy eyes. The older I got, the more I remembered. This morning's breakfast would vanish, but a world with pink skies and lilac clouds would be in its place. I didn't tell anyone about the memories I reclaimed because they wouldn't understand. They would call me insane, that my imagination had gotten out of whack, but they'd be wrong.
Because of her.
I lived in the same house all my life. Even when we could afford better, I put my foot down. Jacob had thought it was because I said goodbye to my daddy there. And eventually I had grown to love the house, for all its leaks and creaky doors, because of Jacob and later the kids, but that wasn't where it started. It had nothing to do with the house or the property, but the forest that lined the backyard.
I found the well at six-years-old. My parents were throwing things at each other and I ran away. The forest wasn't frightening to me; it was safe. Sunlight brought the bed of pink to life, the dew on the roses gleamed as they wrapped around a stone well. I peered down into its depths where a soft glow beckoned, and I leaned forward until my stomach leapt into my chest.
I woke up to the chittering of insects and the deepest night I'd ever seen. Trees closed in on me. The well had disappeared. My parents were holding hands when I came back, their eyes wet and wide, and when they hugged me, I thought they'd never fight again.
"Where did you go, baby?" Daddy asked.
"I don't remember," I said.
"What do you do in the forest?" Jacob rested his head in my lap where my fingers tangled and detangled his blonde locks.
"Some days I draw."
"All day?" he said. Luke chased his puppy around with the same blonde curls bouncing around chaotically.
"Anelle." He bopped me on the nose with his index finger. "What about the other times?"
"I don't remember the other times," I said.
His smile rolled up through his scrunched nose and his half-closed eyes. Those were his real smiles, the ones he used every part of his face for. My smiles.
As a child, I would run around the backyard, my father chasing after me with threats of tickles. Those were the good times. I frowned, remembering the many times I fled to the forest to escape the vicious words of my parents. I didn't need to go to the forest anymore. My parents had moved far away from me and each other. So why did I keep going?
"You're serious?" Jacob sat up.
"It's fine."
"No, but it's not. People don't just black out for no reason."
"Jacob-"
"Last time you went in the morning, and came back at dawn the next day... You said you lost track of time, and I trust you. I really do, but it just doesn't seem safe. Especially now with Luke-"
"I'm not in any danger." I cupped his face in my hands.
"But-" his protests died with a kiss.
"I can't explain it to you, but it's okay."
"What if you disappear?"
"I won't-"
"Promise you won't leave, for Luke and for me."
"I promise," I said.
Promise...
Promise me...
Promise you won't forget me.
I caught my fogged eyes in the reflection. The color drained from my face as my fingers started searching for the nearest pencil and pad of paper. I grabbed an uncapped pen, and a crumpled receipt. My muscle memory took over. I knew the exact lines I needed, but everything turned to squiggles.
"Damn it!" I grabbed my wrist and tried to force my limb into submission. But memory meant nothing when muscles failed.
"What's wrong?" Rose appeared in the mirror wearing pajamas.
"My sketchbooks," I panted. "I need them."
"Sketchbooks?"
"In the closet, please!"
"Which one?" her voice sounded muffled.
"Any one." I had hundreds, my years marked by my drawings. But it wouldn't matter. She came to me, her eyes young and panicked. I took it from her and nearly dropped it. Why did bodies have to fail? I opened up to a random page, and my eyes blurred as my heart flipped between hurt and happiness.
"Who is she?" Rose asked.
"Who is she?" Jacob asked. I looked down at the girl I had drawn on the page, her nose slightly crooked, like it had been broken. She had pouty lips, but she'd hate you if you told her that...
I closed my sketchpad.
"What?" My heart pounded in my ears. I looked up at his soft brown eyes nearly covered by blonde curls. He sat close, his shoulder a charcoal stick away. Leaning against the blue lockers, he almost looked relaxed.
"That girl. I've seen you draw her before." He smiled. "Who is she? Competition?"
Giggles burbled out of me before I could think. He relaxed and slipped his fingers between mine.
"She's important," I said.
"Does she go here?"
"No, it's not like that."
"Oh, is she like a character?" he asked.
I stayed quiet because he had shaken me from sleepwalking and tested me on the details.
"You're really lucky. Whenever I come up with anything, it gets stuck in my head cause I suck at drawing."
"You're not that bad..." I said, but broke out into laughter.
"The truth is written on your face." He smiled and I felt like I was falling, but in a good way, like slipping away from all the bad things. We stood up. "Maybe you could teach me?"
"Sure," I said as we wandered past the old art room where they held the comic club. We had met there only a couple of months ago.
"Does she have a name?" he asked.
"I don't know..." I couldn't breathe as my mind spun. Don't forget me...
But I had, and I didn't know how to fix it.
"Who is she?" Rose asked.
Something slipped through and I exhaled. "Pheadora."
"But most people call me Phea, and if you don't, you're probably trying too hard," she said. With her lilac skin and snowy hair marking her as an Ether, her short stature stood out because they were normally tall and regal.
"It's a nice name. I'm Anelle."
"You're the girl who lives on the dragon ranch."
I nodded as Lola, a dragon pup that reached my shoulder, sniffed Phea.
"You must get to fly a lot, then." She reached down to pet Lola, who nuzzled her.
"Not really," I said. "I'm told that children aren't allowed to ride."
"I never listen when people tell me I'm too young," Phea stated.
"But aren't you-"
"Immortal? Yeah, but we all have to start somewhere. I'm fourteen."
"Oh, I'm thirteen," I said.
"Well, we're going to ride dragons."
"Isn't that dangerous?" I said.
"A little danger never hurt anyone."
"I don't think that's true-"
"Come on!" She grabbed my hand. She smiled with just a hint of teeth, but a whole lot of wickedness. So infectious, and the most beautiful thing in the world.
The notebook slipped through my fingers, and I wheezed in a desperate breath. I remembered Phea, in this world, Jacob's world, the one I was born in. But the other world, Phea's word, had slipped in even when it shouldn't.
"What's wrong?" Rose caught the notebook and wrapped her hand over mine.
"I have a choice to make," I said.
Rose watched me with eyes older than her years. "It's important?"
"More than I could ever explain to you," I said as my heart revealed its murky truth. Because what do you do at the end of a life split in two? You live your life always missing, missing something, but now it bled together. I touched the gold chain around my neck.
"try to explain."
Phea leaned against the broken down well in the middle of the ranch. Dragons were milling about, and I played tug of war with Lola. She had a slender build covered in reflective scales. On my eighteenth birthday I had been officially gifted Lola, but in reality, no one had a choice in the matter. No one but Lola, who had already been following me around for years.
"You know what I want to do?" Phea asked.
"Probably something dangerous," I said.
"I want to see the world."
"That doesn't seem too crazy." I let Lola have the toy as Phea approached me.
"I'l going either way but..." She took my hand almost timidly. "I'll go alone if I have to..." she grumbled, and I laughed. Phea pulled her hands from mine like I had burnt her. For once, I didn't hesitate.
I kissed her and treasured her lips and the way our teeth bumped as we both smiled into one another.
"I'll always go with you," I breathed and kissed her deeper.
I stared into Rose's determined green eyes and some of my uncertainty melted. Perhaps the naivety of youth ebbed off of her, but for a second I wanted to believe that I could find an answer.
"I made promises, Rose." I said. "I don't know how to keep them all."
I buried my face into Phea's neck as wind scythed across my skin. She laughed, and I clung to her for dear life. She always flew recklessly, pushing her dragon Needles, to the best of his ability. She had chosen him for speed, and my poor dragon Lola just wouldn't be able to keep up. Even after all these years, I wasn't comfortable being a passenger on someone else's dragon. The only person I would ever ride behind was Phea. I trusted her — she cackled and pushed needles into a nearly vertical dive — for some reason.
The pink sky passed in a haze and I closed my eyes, focusing on Phea's damp hair that smelled like lilacs.
We landed, and I stepped on to solid ground that felt less real than the air around me. I collapsed onto the grass, watching as Phea scooched needles on the head before dropping next to me. She pulled her legs against herself.
"I'm going to find the elixir of life." Phea stared off into the horizon where pink bled into iridescence.
"What?"
"It grants immortality and undoes the scars of time." It almost sounded like she recited something she had said countless times before. She had developed the ageless beauty of Ethers over the years, but at that moment, she looked young and lost.
I laughed. "You're already immortal, Phea."
"But you're not." She met my gaze.
"Oh," I said.
"You're getting older, Anelle."
"I'm still in my twenties," I said.
"It's going too fast." She scanned my face. "You vanish for years at a time, and you act like it's not happening-"
"What are you talking about?"
"Where do you go?" she whispered.
"I don't..." My mind swirled down upon itself, as flashes of blue skies and a man with a precious smile lit up my thoughts. "I don't know."
"You don't remember anything?" She took my shaking hands.
I nodded.
"It scares me," Phea said.
"I'm sorry." I leaned my forehead against hers.
"Promise you won't forget me?" Phea asked.
"I promise."
"I'm going to find it," she whispered, and I knew nothing would stop her. That should have comforted me, but it didn't. Memories of a blonde child with eyes like mine, and a kind man with the same curls popped into my head before slipping away and leaving a dull ache in their place.
"I made promises, Rose," I said. "If you had the chance to be immortal, would you take it?"
"Sure." Rose scrunched her brow. "Wouldn't you?"
"But you leave everyone behind."
"The same things happen if you die," Rose said.
"What do you think happens when we die?" Jacob looked up at me from where he cut carrots for dinner. He had smile lines, some people would call them wrinkles, but no one put their whole face into a smile like he did.
"That's a bit morbid for a Sunday afternoon."
"I'm serious."
"I haven't really thought about it." I set down the pan I was drying.
"This guy at work keeps trying to convert me. No one else seems to have the problem. I just feel too bad telling off the guy who says I'm going to hell." He chuckled.
"Well, what do you think?"
"Not much. I'd just like to go to the same place as you."
"Even hell?" I asked, and he kissed my forehead.
"Even hell." He lifted my chin and pressed his lips to mine. I shivered as warmth ran from my head down to my toes. He pulled away, and I stood there cold. I gazed out the window, where trees swayed in the wind. Lilac skies pressed into my mind and my stomach twisted. I blinked, and the memory disappeared, leaving a hollowness in its place.
"Your carrots are all different sizes." I kissed him on the cheek.
"Is immortality and death truly the same?" I squeezed Rose's hand.
"They're like two sides of the same coin, two different infinities." Rose drew a figure-eight on my palm.
"But if you believe in something more, you get to stay with everyone in the afterlife."
"Do you believe, A'ma?"
I woke up to pink skies and a dragon snuffling in my face. It looked like Lola, only miniature. I sat up and found myself surrounded by dragon pups. Lola curled up around the well, watching anxiously. I said hello to all the excited pups and reached out to her, but she just growled and turned her head. I pulled out a piece of paper sticking out from my pocket. A note to myself.
I fell into shadow as a set of wings blocked out the sun. I flattened the note a hundred times before the dragon landed. Phea, she always came even when she shouldn't. She didn't smile.
"I found it," Phea said.
"I-immortality?"
"Yes."
"Congratulations." The wind howled as I traced the lines of my note.
"That's it? I found it for you. Where have you been?"
"That's what I came to tell you." I looked at the words on the paper. None of it seemed real, but the scribbles were in my handwriting. "I'm from another world. In that world, I go to this well and I wake up a couple of hours later, but I have visions of another world... of you."
"What are you talking about?"
"I can't remember here when I'm there and vice versa. What I mean to say is I have kids-"
"You have kids?"
"Yes, and I meant to come here more often, but I just got so busy and Jacob didn't understand-"
"Enough!" Phea grabbed my shoulders. "Anelle, do you know how long it's been? Twenty years. Twenty years without you. I thought you weren't coming back," she said, her voice hoarse. "You're getting old."
"I know."
"We can fix that." She pulled out a diamond shaped vial on a gold chain. "You just have to drink this." She placed it in my hand, her hopeful eyes burned me to the core.
I stared down at the vial in panic. "I...can't."
She stepped back like I slapped her. "No?"
"How...how can I? I can't even remember my kids or..." I pressed a hand against my eyes. I didn't know what to do. I'd never know what to do. Not when I couldn't remember everything...maybe even then...
"It's your choice, Anelle." Phea whispered before the sound of wings drowned everything else.
"Do I believe in going somewhere when you die? Like heaven and hell?" I asked.
"It doesn't have to be like that." Rose looked up at me and then out at the window, biting her lip.
"What can it be?"
"Anything," she said. "So, do you believe?"
"Your grandfather did."
"Tell me, what does it mean, that thing about love?" Rose asked.
"It's just something your grandfather liked to say," I said.
I sat in a cold room filled with the scent of antiseptic. The endless beeping its own kind of clock, one that told a more precious time. I didn't cry, something about the chemistry of my brain, but pressure built behind my eyes like the feeling before a storm.
"I knew I would fall the moment I saw you." Jacob lifted his bruised hand an inch towards me, his IV trailing after him. I carefully laced my fingers with his. "I didn't know what it was then, but I had this feeling that meeting you would change my life."
"You just see it that way now. Back then, I was just the shy lanky girl." I raised his hand to my lips, and he smiled with all the energy he had.
"No, you see, love is backwards. It moves from the now and colors every interaction we ever had until you can't catch when it began, and in the end, you see it even in that first meeting." Jacob looked at me with the clearest eyes in weeks.
"You're just agreeing with me."
"Nope." He closed his eyes and exhaled. "I knew it."
The next day, the beeps ceased, and the storm came crashing down.
"You said it earlier, the thing about love," Rose said.
"Love is backwards," I said. "I couldn't help thinking about it every day without him or..." I trailed off and clasped my hand around the gold pendant on my neck.
I stepped out of the well and onto the dragon ranch. The house I had grown up in had decayed, part of the domed roof caving in. A deep ache emanated from my chest and I crunched the paper in my hand. I looked down at it and unfolded it. Flashes of another world went through my mind at the note, and I remembered him. I fell to my knees. Why had I done this to myself? I could have just forgotten him, the pain, everything… Could you really? I let the crumpled paper fall to the grass.
Staring at the ground, I heard the dragons land rather than saw them. Heavy footfalls ran towards me. I didn't look up.
Lola's head landed on top of me. I let out a grunt and nuzzled into her neck. Her scales had grayed around her mouth, but otherwise she looked the same. Tears bubbled in my eyes.
"She missed you," Phea said. "Every day." Her harsh voice cracked.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"What's your excuse this time?"
"My husband died." I looked up at Phea with her pale violet skin and white hair.
Her mouth twisted into a scowl. "Do you want my condolences?"
"No," I said. "I don't know what I want."
Phea stayed silent, her eyes drooped yet her teeth bared. She trembled.
"I know I could stay here. I could run away from the pain. My children are all grown up, they don't need me anymore. Jacob's gone. What is it that keeps me there?"
"Will you take it then?" she murmured.
"No," I said. "Not yet."
"Why?" Her voice trembled.
"I haven't decided," I croaked.
"Do what you want," Phea said. She hopped onto Needles and prepared to take flight. She looked down at me, biting her lip. "I'll always be waiting."
I stared at the picture of Phea, her wicked smile punctuated by a dimple. Then my gaze locked with my picture of Jacob hanging on the wall. A young Jacob, with his goofy smile igniting his face covered by unruly curls. I smiled to myself, looking between my two lovers, my two lives, and a tear slipped down my cheek. A choice couldn't be made. How could someone weigh two infinite loves against one another?
"Did you know that infinity can be different sizes?" Rose stared down at Phea and then up at me.
"What?" I startled and traced my fingers over Phea's picture.
"The interesting thing is that since infinity contains everything, it has to contain every infinity."
"I don't understand."
"Immortality and death both last forever, or for infinity. So then somehow the two options have to fit together somehow." She laced her two hands together.
"What would you do?" I asked.
"I figure eternity's long enough to do both."
"When did you get to be so wise?" I inhaled, suddenly feeling like I could breathe again.
"Must be hereditary." She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. "Goodnight."
Rose left me alone in my room with a picture of Jacob on the wall and a sketch of Phea on my lap. I unclasped the gold chain around my neck.
I had promises to keep.
If you enjoyed this short story you may enjoy my other speculative literature queer romance “The Bridge Where We Met.”
I wrote this story back before I knew I had Dissociative Identity Disorder and has themes of identity that explore my DID. If you would like to learn more about DID check out my post “Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder,” or if you would like to hear from my system check out my post “Dissociative Diary.”
Thank you for reading!
-Aether
my god this is beautiful! i've been looking for more short stories to read lately and this is literally the most perfect thing ever. i love the "love is backwards" discussion the main character has with jacob, and i love how there's dragons and parallel universes and impossible choices. i hated to see the story end because i swear i could keep reading about anelle forever 😭 i love this!!!
Written absolutely beautifully— I love the fragmentation and yearning you captured