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[Note: Old blog. Events in this blog are almost a month old]

It had hardly been a few months and Valaryia was numb. Because she had somewhat unconsciously acknowledged that her relationship with Mela was over, she seemed to fall out of pain and into numbness quite quickly. But the thoughts of what went wrong flew through her head. I just keep thinking, what if I had been more this, what if I hadn’t done this, would she still love me?

Mela’s answer was old now. Don’t think those things. You didn’t do anything wrong. She wanted Valaryia to let go of their romance.

But how do you release yourself from a woman who’s captivated you and held you heart and brain for what seems like forever? How do you stop daydreaming of a woman you used to daydream about every single day? How do you stop yourself from staring at her picture, kissing it good night, and imagining how it would be to touch her lips? To taste them?

She had torn up all the pictures she had of Mela but one. Two, counting the one she drew of Mela. Valaryia never told Mela she had drawn her. And even so, it was only a portrait of the picture Mela had sent her. It was beautiful, that picture. Black and white didn’t do justice to the radiance of her skin, her hair, her eyes. She had her hand behind her head, and her black mess of hair trailed all down her. Mela’a gaze pierced Valaryia’s heart from the photograph, and suddenly Valaryia felt weak. She couldn’t bare to tear this picture up. Mela loved it. Valaryia wished she had one with her smiling. Mela never smiled in photographs. And since photographs were all that Valaryia had, she started to see Mela as cold, as unsmiling, and therefore unloving. She never loved Valaryia. In a haughty way, Valaryia wished Tigara good luck with Mela silently. Regardless of what Mela said (that she had no feelings for Tigara,) the two of them were going to spend a lot of time together seeing parades and landscapes, and Valaryia just knew they were going to end up naked in the same bed. Her mind threatened to wander in where their fingers and tounges might travel, but the thoughts were so painful she had to sometimes physically cut herself to distract from them.

Valaryia took a stroll to The Lake. It was beautiful and clear today, much like Mela’s eyes. She took off her cloak, and, feeling repressed by clothes, took off her dress as well. She waided into the deepness and coolness of the lake in only her undergarments, tight with lace and not good for swimming. But Valaryia could care less about that these days. A water spirit popped its head up from the lake’s depths, holding a letter in it’s mouth for Valaryia to take. She took it, and as the water spirit disappeared as quickly as it appeared, Valaryia wondered how the letters always stayed dry. She opened the letter to see it was from Lucasia. She set a small smile on her face and swam towards a jagged boulder, which she promptly sat on and began to read:

Lady Valaryia~

Well I just thought that since you and Mela are over, you should make sure she can’t get your letters anymore. I don’t really want her reading what I’m writing you. I’m sorry you two broke up, by the way.
I just saw a photograph of hers, and I read the back and it said “Katarina” on it. I asked her who Katarina was, and she said it was this woman who she was in love with. Her boss, I think. I asked her, “What about Valaryia?” and she said, “Things are over between Valaryia and me. Whatever. I don’t really care.”And this was before you guys broke up.

Valaryia took a brief pause from the letter, her hands shaking. Katarina. But of course. The angel in charge of Mela’s assignments. What a fool Mela was – was Katarina not married? But it wasn’t so much her love for another woman that bothered Valaryia so much at the moment – it was the fact that Mela had dismissed Valaryia like she didn’t care. Without taking the proper time to seethe over the fact that Mela was a lying hypocrite, she kept on reading:

I’m not telling you this so you’ll be mad at Mela, but I thought you should know. She did the same thing to me too.
She was my girlfriend for a while, and we were together all the time. She’d always say things like, “I love you,” and “You’re the only one for me,” and such. Then one day, she tells me she’s found someone else. She was like, “Her name’s Valaryia. She’s a vampire but I really like her. You can have her address if you want.” I don’t know why she’s doing this. She’s kind of acting like a player. It may take a while to get over her, but eventually you will. Your right; she’s not worth these kinds of tears.

Valaryia was in shock. Mela had always referred to Lucasia as this annoying ex-girlfriend who wouldn’t leave her alone. Mela had dismissed Lucasia as if she were a one-night stand. She never told Valaryia she loved her, or at least pretended to, but Valaryia got an idea when she looked through Mela’s old pictures and found a bunch of her and Lucasia with words such as “Mela + Lucasia” on the back in a heart.

The letter went on for a little bit longer: Lucasia talked about an ear injury she was recovering from, about a famous songtress she was going to see. Valaryia yanked herself out of the lake, the air freezing her skin, and grabbed a pen and paper out of her pocket. She slipped back into the lake, onto the submersed rock she had been sitting on. The lake was like a blanket on a winter’s night. Valaryia began writing back, thoughts racing in her head. But she had hardly even written Lucasia’s name before the thoughts consumed her and she had to stop.

Katarina.

She remembered the dream.

The name Mela had spoken in my dream I remember, began with a “C” sound.

Valaryia realized how she had ignored a long ago premoniton about Mela’s lies.

About her lies… lies… she lied…

Mela had always been big on “telling the truth”. ******** liar. Valaryia never completely trusted Mela – she had been much too hurt in the past to completely trust someone again – but Mela always said she’d tell Valaryia the entire truth. And just when Valaryia started to believe her, Mela had to go and ruin it. The real truth swallowed Valaryia whole, and she felt she was sinking in it like quicksand, so close to suffocation. The more she struggled with her thoughts, the deeper she was pulled down. Mela had lied to her from the very beginning about Lucasia. That hurt, but not as much as lying about Katarina. Instead of telling Valaryia about Katarina, she chose to lie to Valaryia, telling her how “empty” she felt, that she was so “empty” because she was alone for so long, and because the distance was so far away. She was so fickle. Dumping Lucasia so cruelly like that. Not to mention Valaryia had evidence that Mela often flirted with Tigara while she was with Valaryia. It was sick, how she treated these women she “had no feelings for”. Apartently not, if she was willing to lie to all of them, willing to decieve them into thinking she loved them. Valaryia felt sick. Mela was the sweetest, goofiest lovely piece of perfection Valaryia had ever known. Until Tigara. Until Katarina. Until Lucasia. Until the next unwilling suspect.

Who the hell are all these women?! Lucasia, Tigara, Valaryia. All had been sucked into the mistake that was Mela. Beautiful, charming Mela. Deadly Mela. She had these women crawling at her feet, and yet she chooses Katarina. The married one. The uninterested one.

Katarina had been spoken of, even if Valaryia had not known her name. Mela would praise her boss, and Valaryia knew she had a crush on her. She thought it was adorable. Valaryia didn’t mind if Mela had crushes on married women, because she knew they were no threat for Mela to become unfaithful. (It was women like Tigara, more beautiful than she, seducing Mela at every chance they got, that frightened her.) But Valaryia had never expected Mela to fall in love with her boss, this woman who she had no chance of being with. Katarina was married; she did not care for women in the romantic or sexual sense. It seemed she “loved” a girl until she met someone “better” – then she dropped her old love with more repulsion than if she was dropping a bag of human bones. Katarina was aparently better than Valaryia. More sophisticated. Older. An angel. It made Valaryia nauseous with jealous when she thought about how easy it was for Katarina to give Mela a hug and think nothing of it. If Valaryia was allowed one hug from Mela, she would treasure it forever, holding her tight and kissing her face. And then she’d write songs about it, poetry regarding it, pictures that portraited it, dances that interpretted it.

But she knew now that she’d never get into Heaven. She knew that even if she got into Heaven, Mela wouldn’t want her there.

Valaryia was lost in thought for quite some time. Then it occurred to her that she held pen and paper in her hands. Valaryia got out some extremely concentrated misery, anger, and feelings of betrayl in her letter to Lucasia. She felt bad that she should complain to Lucasia, so she made sure the letter was also full of fun things she was looking forward to. And a thank you, for letting Valaryia know what was really going on.

A water spirit popped up from the lake. It was kind of cute, in a way. If a dog were to give birth to a frog’s child, that would maybe be a water spirit. It looked a bit like a seal, or an otter. Valaryia sealed her envalope and addressed it to Lucasia. The water spirit was impatient and twitching with eagerness, and Valaryia was too broken to tease it. The water spirit munched down on her letter and disappeared into the great mysteries of The Lake.

Valaryia went swimming in The Lake only occasionally know. It was getting harder and harder to sneak past the guardians. She was friends with many of the creatures that dwelled in the Lake, including the mermaids, the fish, and all the things that came to visit it. This was where she had met and married Death. The Reaper. Of course, now divorced and Valaryia recognizing her true sexuality, she felt sometimes awkward around him. She started to talk to other creatures that visited here, including Tigara. Tigara was so sweet. She loved her very dearly.

And of course, she had met Mela here. Valaryia pushed it back into her head.

Valaryia jumped in surprise when a water spirit burst out of the water, with a letter. It was from Lucasia. “That was fast,” Valaryia said, almost breathlessly. All water spirits were impatient; this one danced around and shoved the letter in her face.

“Okay, fine! Grah!! Sheesh,” Valaryia yanked the letter very unhappily out of the water spirit’s mouth, who flipped in the air and plunged into the watery depths. Show-off. Valaryia unfolded the letter and was shocked at it’s length. Lucasia really could write back fast.

They sent quick letters to each other, again and again, and even though they hardly knew each other, Valaryia felt she trusted Lucasia. She had been honest with Valaryia; why couldn’t Valaryia be honest with her?

And so she was. She wrote about Mela. About what Mela had told her about Lucasia, which she was finding not to be true (Lucasia did not seem flirtatious in the slightest). Excluding the part about being promiscuous. She saw, in Mela’s eyes, that it was a promise to be made about not telling everything.

Valaryia sent the letter and waited. Waited some more. She waited an unusually long time, even a couple hours, and the letter did not come back. Valaryia began to feel nervous. Uh-oh. What if that had been Mela, sending me those letters? No, the handwriting was too different. Maybe she just had to do something. Sounded suspicious that she’d pick now of all moments. I was too forward. Now she hates me, and she hates Mela. Yep, sounds about right.

Valaryia slounched against the rock. She felt as if she had lost one of her only friends.