COURIER IN THE BIRD MASK

TRIGGER WARNINGS child death, suicide, abuse, plague, sickness, breakdowns, first person, spouse death, starvation

Day Seven

The plague spoke to me. 

There’s a second wind, howling as the animal inside me claws to get out.

The plague sings to me, her mouth the heart of the Earth, laughing at me. Can’t you hear it? She can hear you, she can hear me. 

The plague spoke to me.

Her laughter rattled the cages around me.

These days melt together, the scratching louder and louder behind my eyes as the hollow heart within me frees the bird inside me.

Then my dream ended. She spoke to me- it spoke to me. The plague SPOKE to me- and I am unaffected from the effects of her touch. Why? Why me? Why am I free?

-

One year ago, I sat there. I was entrenched in the war— unable to feel emotion as I shot and killed people of my own kind. Hollowed inside, I wondered if I could love or even feel for another person- remorse, grief, sadness, anything to prove I was human. One year ago, I watched as men became nothing but empty dolls— they could have emotion, they could feel things I couldn't do. Things I wanted to do. They could say "I love you." to another person and mean it — and in one bullet to the head, their words and emotion became nothing as the hollowness grew inside of me with each life I took. It felt like that hollowness was an empty void that ate and ate and on days I starved, that was what I fed on. One year ago, I was simply a being of war. Born into it, continued into it, and eventually I left it. I can't tell you what about the war made me stop fighting, but I knew I had to leave because the little bit of emotion I had left was begging to leave me. I think it was when I was posed this question- what is the war being fought over? Why do I keep killing people with families, killing people with emotions I thought I lacked when I deserved it more because I could not feel.

So I journeyed the world and asked the stories of others. I felt so much, so many stories and so many emotions I thought I'd never feel. I learned things, remorse, guilt, patience, longing for a time better than this, hope that the future is better than the war, even if that time has never existed. Hope that things can get better, even if it seems like there's nothing but agony and suffering— that maybe one day I could feel these things too. I learned of agony and suffering. I learned OF LOVE. The feeling of family, of unconditional care. I learned of these but never ever felt them, at least not yet. I learned what Love was, but not what it was like to experience it. But I learned empathy, the one thing that stuck with me. How to feel for others, and soon I'd learn to feel for myself.

Six months ago I met you, a cold and unfeeling person on the outside. Much like myself, except you know how to feel and you did— you just brilliantly hid it. I asked you what your story was, and you laughed. You laughed and asked why I had the right to know as the smell of twyrine filled my senses. I responded with a few words "Because I want to learn how to feel." You dampened and softened, almost cracking a smile as you took another drink, commenting on how "I need a lot of alcohol to get through this." You told me about your family, how you lost all of them in the First Outbreak, unable to be there and unable to say goodbye to your mother. How you grew up 4 years as an orphan, now a fresh 18 year old trying to get ahold of your life. As another 18 year old trying to get ahold, I laughed and took a drink too, explaining how I lied my way into the war and didn't know how to feel… except when you put your hand on mine and told me I was able to feel, I think I learned. I have to feel because that's what makes us all human— I just forgot what it was like to be loved. Maybe I drank too much twyrine, maybe you just felt like you could relate, but I decided to stay with you because you offered me a bed.

Because of you, because of your actions and because you told me I could feel, I did. I felt love, I felt like I belonged when you took me into your home and gave me shelter. When we kissed for the first time, when I fell into bed with you and we laid, staring at the ceiling, listening to each other breathe, your head on my chest, our hearts in sync like a rhythm of the Earth. I felt sadness when we first argued, remorse when I saw you cry and scream at yourself because you blame yourself.

Now I feel agony, grief, genuine true fear knowing you might die from this damned Pest like your family did. I would offer my life and soul to the birds of death if that means you are alive and I'm dead— and I think that's love. To want to love another so much, to care and agonisingly hurt when they're gone. To miss their embrace in bed as all hell breaks loose outside. It's silent inside of our home, nothing but my own yearning for you, nothing but awaiting the day my lover will return home, no longer sick.

I know what love is, I know how to feel, and I have friends and a real family because of you, because of someone who told me I wasn't a lost cause.

Thank you, Nikolai. For telling me I could feel, and for loving me endlessly for these six months. If you don't make it, I'll keep trying to live, for our children and our friends- to feel that hope I learned of just a few months before I met you. If you live, I promise we will get married within days of recovery in hopes you can be my husband.

— With all love, your Fiance, Konstantin.