It had been almost a year. The time had passed slowly and far to fast at the same time. She had thought she had done a good job of controlling her thoughts and covering the hole in her heart but as she sat on yet another bus traveling to her new home she was becoming aware how poorly she had done. The air was thick with the smell of past travelers coming and going from their lives and the activities that they engaged in the middle. The seats had the indentations of those with questionable hygiene practices. The windows didn't show much, not because of the late hour of the night, but because the remnants of traveled road were splattered across the edifice.
She didn’t notice any of this. She barely noticed the violent starts and stops of the bus. In the last year since she had lost her light she had worked hard to believe that it hadn’t mattered very much. She was over it. It no longer mattered. She was better off. She had heard characters on television recite these same lies to themselves over the years. She hadn’t realized at the time that she was giving Him her light. That was always something to be protected and cherished. She didn’t even know that she had such a special light until this moment. A year after, sitting on this repulsive bus and she finally realized what she had lost.
Of course she hadn’t really lost it. He had taken it and then used it like a child’s toy that you through and it sticks to the ceiling. It had been slow and covert but all the same He had done it. Just the memory of it made the place in her heart were her light used to be ache. The knife He had used to cut it out of her wasn’t like a regular knife. This knife had been made to look like it was soft, caring. This was a knife that looked like it could heal the world. In the end it did damage like any other knife. The one thing that was different about it was how it stopped the healing process after something was removed. She had tried to pretend that she was healing after that awful night, then all of the other nights that were awful.
It had been a year and she had stopped crying. She had traveled the world. She had moved to a new place were she found people who loved her more than she had ever thought possible. And yet that hole was still there, aching, and haunting. The light was gone all the same.
It was just then, sitting on that stinking bus, something happened. She realized that the hole had not healed not because it was still a hole, but because an illusion had been placed in the hole so that it could never be filled in. She would have to make a cut herself.
When she got off the bus of hygiene forgotten she went home and prepared to make the cut. She knew that like the first time it would hurt and push her to the brink of despair. It had to be done. She couldn’t continue to let this cancer fill her life. Her light may have been taken but she had heard stories were people had gotten a new light when theirs had been ripped from them. The new light was often brighter and more dazzling that the one they had lost. She had no hope of this happening but at the very least that space could fill with something other than the blackness that now filled the space.
The first cut was the hardest. She thought the pain would kill her but by the end she could already feel some healing happen. Days and weeks went by. To everyone else nothing had changed. She, on the other hand, knew that the hole was filling up. It was filling up with friends, good days gotten through, jokes made, goals made, and love shown. She thought that this was as good as she could ever hope for. She still didn’t have her light, that was gone, but she had the best one could have without light.
She was wrong. Her life was good. One year after her own painful incisions she meet a merchant. He didn’t know that he was a merchant but that didn’t change who he was. On that day She meet Him. Just as he didn’t realize that he was a merchant, she didn’t know that she was receiving a new light. She didn’t get it all at once but with each visit to the merchant she got a little more of the new light until there was the last bit of light to get. This last bit had a string. That string was attached to the merchant’s light. If she took this last bit she would be choosing to connect her light to the merchant’s forever, because it was only through the string that connected the two lights that either of them would ever work again.
On that day the light that came from those two hearts out shone the sun and it never dimed again.
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