The outdoor alcove that was the home to a dozen or so graves were not the most splendid. Most were strewn together sticks in the form of crosses, pieced together by knotted twine and stabbed in turned soil haphazardly. One in specific, off in the corner, was dazzled by the stereotypical chunk of stone; a worn epitaph gracing its surface. It?d been there for countless years, forgotten amidst the more recent additions to the courtyard-turned-memorial acreage.

Elisa?s white leather boots were silent on the freshly cut grass that saturated the air full of spring-time pollen. The day was too cool to be so late in Spring, the sky blemished by the clouded haze of distant storms. It set off a doleful atmosphere that darkened a mood already sullen from countless hours sprawled across a lonely, cold bed. Although her heart ached and her mind was steeped by her own selfish depression over current events in her own life, something more profound stuck out, giving her the resolve to step out the door into the wild, unknown reality and arrive to the very spot she was, today.

Her legs were heavier than twenty tons of steel, each footfall heavy and cumbersome and making it difficult to take her strides with a certain strength required in moments such as this. Moments that defined a person?s determination to see another for that last, final time.

One stick-marked grave possessed an otherworldly glow to it that the others did not. It was marked by woman?s intuition, telling her to focus on it and devote her attention indefinitely to its presence. Words were scrawled across the surface by a wrap: ?OBY ARADA? -- the angle she was at diluting the full length of a name she had never come to fully learn throughout the years.

Sister Caren?s presence was diluted by the memorial that was far too small, far too simplistic for her own tastes. Its size was horrendous and left a scorned taste in her mouth. Stopping several meters from its sacredness, she glanced aside to the nun, nodding once in thanks. ?Thank you. This?ll be fine.?

Caren returned the nod, bowing deeply. ?Take as long as you need. I will be inside finishing my morning tasks if you require something else, Lady Elisa.?

She was gone in what felt like seconds. The time spent in silence, however, felt like centuries.

Reaching in the wide, flared sleeve of her dress, a thin wire band dressed in twenty separate beads, all a different color from another, was hooked in two of her fingers. She picked at it with her thumb as she stared long and hard at the grave before her, studying it as if it had just opened a mouth and starting speaking.

??I never?? she croaked when she finally found something she wanted to say. It was impossible to punch past the boulder in her throat. ??I never? I never??

Those two words continued to fall from her lips, so weak and so silent that any breeze at any strength could blow them away and never grant them the asylum on the grave site's presence. Her lip was tremulous, her voice volatile, her body weak. She fell to her knees when she couldn?t support herself over gravity, the small band tumbling from her grasp and rolling across turned soil to the crudely constructed marker. It bumped against the bundle of sticks and came to a rest beside it, shadows of encroaching rainfall dulling the sparkle and shine of polished plastic beads.

A choked sob spewed from her, her hands shooting up to cradle her mouth with her palms and stifle it. Where one quietly ended, another began in force, air pluming and pushing her hands away.

?I never wanted? to see you go,? she finally said between the crack of several sobs, water already overflowing and running zigzags down her cheeks. The act wasn?t knew to the woman, already having spent the past five days crying over many different issues. They just seemed to get worse as time went on.

??when I heard about it? it was a long time ago to me. ?A thousand-something years? and I thought, the moment I could actually s-see?? sob, ?with my own eyes, I could? I could do something? or be prepared to handle it.

??I wasn?t.?

There was no use in stemming the flow of tears with the back of her balled fists or the sleeves of her dress. The company of rain soon joined in, as though the world itself was weeping for the blonde woman whose hair burned with the luster of campfires and thousand watt light bulbs.

?We? We were supposed to stay together in this world. We promised each other that we wouldn?t go anywhere. We?re? we?re all that we have. A team. A unit. Companions to the very end? ?I can?t? do this by myself if you?re not here with me? ?I?m? I?m nothing without you here, Toby? Who's going to look? after? see to my dishes, my room?

"?me?"

She reached out, dressing the tiptop of the wooden cross with the base of several fingers, running down its length until she met the horizontal cross-section. She let her hand hang, the other sweeping in to take the bracelet she?d made and hooped it around the apex. The splash of beads were engraved with various small phrases and letterings, the prominent, most large reading: ?T-M ♥?

Collecting herself but not her emotions, she lifted back and away, chancing a breath that made her lungs shrivel and her throat shake. ?Good? bye? I?m going to miss you more than you?ll ever know? I?m? sorry that I never got to? got? to??

She fell silent and turned, the burst of motion throwing tears away with the rain and making the shroud of embers in her hair to drizzle the air. Silently, she stalked away from the grave site, her sobs forever silent, forcing out the burn in her chest that made every part of her slowly break apart. She couldn?t even make it to the door of the courtyard before she sank down on her hands and knees, splattering mud and water every which way.

It took several minutes for Sister Caren to realize she was there and quickly rushed out to see the woman inside, leaving behind those final few words and a bracelet that said more on it than she ever dreamed she could.