" Don't Let The Past Consume You. " - For Leta??

" Don't let the past consume you. " - for leta??

Breath came in shallow, shuddering gasps, lungs could no longer remember how to fully expand, constricted by the vise-grip of anguish. Tears would have welled unseen behind her expressionless facade, an opaque veneer concealing the tempest of emotions raging within the innermost chambers of her soul. There, entombed in the silent archives of her mind, Leta Lestrange wrestled with the specter of a future bereft of the possibility of Corvus' laughter and love - an existence as bleak and colorless as the unforgiving void that had torn him away.

The voice addressing her registered only faintly, like a distant echo reverberating through the cavernous hollows of her grief-stricken psyche. Each question circling around topic of past made her breathing feel like a Herculean feat, each inhale a laborious act of will, drawing in air that felt devoid of life-giving essence.

In the labyrinthine recesses of her consciousness, Leta wandered, a forlorn specter haunting the ruins of sibling bond, now reduced to a silent mausoleum of nostalgia and regret. Her presence back on the ship - vibrant and achingly poignant, Irma's call saturated her thoughts, rendering her mien an inscrutable cipher - a fragile mask concealing the maelstrom of anguish that raged akin with that fated storm within the innermost chambers of her shattered heart.

' Don't let the past consume you.' Words tasted foreign on upon tongue as she repeated to herself in mere whisp.

The bride of sorrow stared vacantly ahead, detached listlessly, untethered from the present moment. The words spoken to her hung in the air, fading into a distant, muffled echo as if emanating from the far end of a long tunnel. Heart felt leaden in her chest as she managed a typical honey-liquoriced answer as if nothing bothered her, " Past is but all-consuming. "

But how could she explain the weight of her grief? How could she articulate the way it wrapped around her like a suffocating shroud? ... Thoughts of Corvus like any day prior consumed her consciousness - flashes of what could be joyful memories now forever tinged with the grey pallor of his absence. The well-meaning words of comfort, offered by a faceless stranger, dissipated into the ether, powerless to penetrate the all-consuming miasma of despair that enveloped her, a suffocating shroud woven from the unraveling threads of a life forever altered by the cruel machinations of fate.

And somewhere out of this room of glamour, full of feathered hats, coquettish applause, pearls, and sparkling champagnes the sun dipped below the horizon, casting a warm glow across the room she couldn't see -- but concurrently felt the first stirrings of possibility. The past would always be a part of her, but perhaps it didn’t have to define her completely. That's what she always told herself, what her best --- her only friend told her. With each step forward, she could honor her little brother's memory while also reclaiming her own life. And for the first time in a long while, she felt a flicker of hope despite not purposely answering any further.