Waters of Europa

Word Count: 892 Words


They said the waterfall had healing qualities, that it could help someone in need. No, not just someone, not just anyone, but her.
Her.
It didn't help.
I feel so stupid. I listened to them. Maybe I could have made it to a real doctor, someone who could have taken care of her and... what? Stalled the inevitable? Even I have to admit, now, sitting down, that it was futile. That I had to take a chance, even if it was absolutely insane, even if it was unbearably impossible.
I almost hear her laugh as I sit here, on in my rocker, looking out at the vast forest. I almost see her eyes, twinkling in those branches. I remember when I first took her in the heart of that place. She wanted to go so badly. She was also so adventuresome, probably too much, for a girl her size, a girl her age. I should have protected her.
But could I have? Would I have been a better father if she would have been in my stranglehold, a prisoner in disguise? Maybe she would have lived, if you can call shackles and locks and lead balls strapped to chains as living, if I would have been strong. Isn't living, even in the worst conditions, still better than the alternative? Of dying and not being alive and not being here?
Somehow, I doubted it.
So why do I feel so awful?
The last time we went into the heart, it was no different than any other time, certainly not than the first, which was years before. We walked out there, into the forest, into the grove of trees. Nothing could have ruined that day, I told myself, as it was too perfect. She was giggling and I had her by the hand and was guiding her. I tickled her and she told me to stop in that please don't stop kind of way.
No, that day was perfect, and I knew that nothing could ruin it.
Something ruined it.
Isn't that how it goes, though, when all is said and done? We feel like the entire planet is at our bidding, and we get comfortable, and there is nothing that can touch us, that's how we feel, that we are an impenetrable slag of rock. And then one day, nature or God the Almighty or the Reaper, whichever truly has the audacity, strikes us down. It puts us back down to a level where we can understand who is boss, that we are nothing but ants rolling in the dirt, building and building a dome that will only one day be crushed by impeding feet.
I should have seen it coming, that the place had changed, even just subtly. That the brightly colored flowers of the corpsonatia was abundant.
She got sick. I didn't. I was lucky, they say.
I say I was unlucky.
It should have been me.
Go to the waters of Europa, a villager said. They said it was only a myth, a legend of the oldest quality, but what did I have to lose?
Time, I said. I could lose time. Time that could be better spent helping her, or if there was no hope, at least time in that special place where you no there is no hope, where you can live out the rest of the days in sorrow, yes, but also in a strange sort of peace that there is no going back. That the best happened and there is nothing you can do about it. You go to that place and you spend the last moments with the one person you really love in harmony, in your own little sanctuary.
Instead I spent the last moments of her life searching for a goddamn impossible thing. It was the type of things fools, desperate men cling to when all other hope was lost.
I was the fool.
I remember coming to the waterfall, to the mouth of the place they dedicated to Europa, and bending down and touching her to it.
I don't know what I expected. Angels to come singing, a great lion to leap out and touch her with his meaty paw and cure her outright, a host of petals of some unknown flower which would be the cure no one knows of.
It doesn't matter.
Nothing happened.
I sit and I watch the forest and I think about how lucky they said I was, that I should have caught it, that in fact people of my age, of my condition, were much more likely, ten to one to be exact, to become sick and diseased fatally than a child. I think that as I climb out of my rocker and walk from my porch towards the wood.
The world around me is lost and lonely and desolate and horrible. Without love in a world, without love anywhere, not even in a sunset or the singsong of birds, the world becomes useless. I long to see her again, to her that giggle, to see that grin, to see those eyes like the ocean on a particularly sunny day.
I loved her.
I walked into the forest, the looming trees following me as I go.
I sigh a deep sigh, and trudge further.
I can only hope that this time, I won't be so lucky.