Parting glass...12 Kilos
Melissa pulled the cap free and downed the contents and followed that with another quick drink of water. She laid flat on the earth and looked over at Garrett. “I’m sorry I got distracted. I’ve always been a klutz. I was trying to keep up and stopped looking down at my feet.”
Garrett didn’t dare recline but he knelt down long enough to take Melissa’s bedroll and push if under her head and shoulders. “You have nothing to be sorry for. We burned through dozens of kilometers today, enough to make any tribe proud. I once read that the first foot sore soldier to ever run a marathon died from the effort, yet here we are.”
Melissa smiled, if for only a moment, “Do you have another vial of that stuff?”
“Why?”
“Because this feels great already and I can tell it’s only going to feel better. I know I’m going to fall asleep soon. Once I do, you’re going to leave me here. You won’t wait for Gris, she’d fight you rather than let you leave, she’s stronger than me, smarter too. I think she really does love me, but I don’t…I can’t. I’m too broken to.”
Facing her, there like that, Garrett couldn’t find anymore levels of himself to build lies on. There wasn’t much of anything left to say at all. It really was the end. Later he would think of grand words and eloquent speeches. Later he would find kind and gracious and also thankful words. Later, after it didn’t matter anymore, Garrett would thank Melissa for all she had brought into his life.
A burden? An unwanted appendage? An anchor around the necks of others? Melissa wasn’t any of those things, hadn’t been that for a very long time. She was the best of all of them, the best of everyone he knew and had traveled with. She deserved life, real life, and better life.
All Garrett could manage, exhausted and distracted at the time was to point out the realities as well as his meaningless largesse. “Gris will be here by morning if not sooner. I know that in my bones. I left something for you back at the camp. The rest of the gold I had stashed away over the years and a copy of my map. The two of you can go anywhere you want with those. Ask Gris about Staff town, she was there once. The two of you could go there and be well off.”
“I’d rather have another vial of this stuff, or two. Tomorrow is just going to hurt, no matter what, and the next day, and the next...”
“That won’t solve anything. Poppy milk gets everyone feeling philosophical, just think about better times and go with the feeling.”
Melissa sighed and turned away, “You’re such a fraking hypocrite. Marching off to your death because you think there is nothing else for you. Somehow you imagine life will be any different for me. I thought you knew me, I thought you really saw me, finally. I guess I was wrong.”