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Literature Professor

Mathieu looked out over the still waters, heavy hearted and determined. He still hadn't packed up his things for the year ahead. It didn't feel right without her. He didn't want to, but he had to. But first, this, just a moment. For her. He gripped the cold silver jar tightly, pushing the impending year from his mind. It would take effort to get through this without her, and he couldn't keep her with him any longer. The ashes had sat on the bookshelf all year, he'd taken them back home to Annecy and mourned for them all summer... he couldn't endure another year of it.

"It's said that in the army, they do more before seven AM than I do in an entire day," he began. He spoke to no one in particular. Perhaps, directly to the ashes in his hands. "But if I could wake up at 6:59 and trace the outline of your lips with mine, I'd have done enough and killed no one in the process."

He looked down at the silver jar containing her ashes. Bad idea. Taking a deep breath, he went on. "Darling, you... you continue to light up my life in more ways than I think you ever knew. You helped me see that there was more to life than words on a page, than committing ink to paper in the name of progress or posterity."

Mathieu ran his fingers through his hair. "And it, it pains me immeasurably to know that all you've done has been reduced to just that, for future generations to read and look at and hope to find even a glimpse, a fraction of the woman you were."

He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the words to come. "That the world saw fit to take you and our child from me... I can't even comprehend. I will never find someone like you again, and I won't even try. Because even if I did find a woman whose hair smells like peaches and saltwater, with a little peaked nose that she complains about in the cold and webbed toes that wiggle in the grass when we go walking on the shorelines of the Lac in the summer, she could never wear it the same way as you."

Mathieu broke off, thoroughly spent with no further words to say. He stepped into the waters of the lake, and opened the jar. Mireille's ashes poured gently from the silver jar, dissipating into the sea by their home.

Without another word, Mathieu left the shores and went back into the estate to pack his bags and head to the Academy.