“Well, I did. Not anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because my magic is sleeping, sweetheart.”
The girl nodded, pleased with the explanation. “When it wakes, can you make snow here? Eldric and I want to build a snowman.”
Alissa wasn’t sure if her magic would ever return, but she couldn’t bear to deny her daughter anything, not after almost losing her. She wanted Dhalia to have all her dreams come true. “Of course, sweetheart.”
Dhalia ran off, beaming and proudly telling the other children how her mother was going to make snow for everyone. Alissa shot a reprimanding glance at Eldric, whose mischievous expression made her question if the snow idea had even been Dhalia’s in the first place. His arms wrapped around Alissa’s waist, his lips brushing her cheek gently.
“You should stop telling her about my magic,” she teased. “At this rate, she’ll ask me to create an entire ocean if it ever comes back.”
“I didn’t doanything, darling,” he replied, though his tone said otherwise.
“Oh, so you weren’t secretly hoping to build a snowman?” Her laughter was laced in her voice.
“No.” He shook his head, grinning as he nuzzled her neck. “But have I told you how much I love you today?”
She knew he was changing the subject, but she didn’t mind. “Actually, you haven’t.”
“Maybe later I can show you instead of telling you,” he said with a wink, his suggestive smile painting a clear picture in her mind of what he meant. He kissed her once more before dashing off to go after Dhalia, who had decided that chasing a chicken was the best idea of the day.
Alissa watched them. In her mind, she relived every second of the past months away from home. She thought about thepeople she loved and lost, all the lives she had taken, and now tried to make peace with.
How many lives were worth the life of a child?
Countless, Alissa had learned along the way.
She would never be the same woman again. Pieces of her were forever gone, changed into something else she was still trying to recognize. In the end of it all, she was grateful for Eldric, for her daughter’s life, and for the freedom of her people.
Alissa looked around her with a bright smile on her face. Her greatest fulfillment in life was being given the chance to watch her daughter grow up, watch her live. She acknowledged she hadn’t been the best mother she could have been before Senectus Subita cursed Dhalia. There were times when she would constantly ignore the child’s wishes and calls for attention, when the obligations of adulthood seemed more urgent than spending time with her daughter.
None of that seemed to be that urgent anymore.
She had finally learned to appreciate the small things in life, to savor each moment with the proper value. Without the relentless ticking clock haunting her every step, she found peace in giving each second the significance it deserved. Every breath, every smile, every moment held an importance that she had once overlooked.
But is the race against time really over when life remains ephemeral?Alissa thought to herself.
Time was the force that ran in Alissa’s veins and, at the same time, a power so strong, not even the rarest of magics—that of aHozter—could control. Time had the strength to heal and harm to the same extent. After all, it would continue passing by whether she liked it or not.
Time would come, and without her ever realizing it, it would transform her life a little every day into a new week, a new year,a new decade, until she unnoticeably traveled to all different phases of life and asked herself:
Where has all the time gone?
Epilogue
Sunrise came with the promise of the change she had been craving for so long, the day she had meticulously planned for months. She swore she would feel at least a glimpse of excitement or pride in herself when the time came, but staring at her naked body in the mirror, about to get dressed, she only felt disgust.
The wrinkles that marked her features should not be so apparent for someone her age, and the recent burn scar on the right side of her neck and shoulder brought an insufferable pain and a flood of traumatic memories. Memories that were displayed in her body in the form of scars. She glanced at the long violet hair she used to adore and realized it didn’t fit her anymore, like she had lost all sense of identity since her husband was taken from her.
Her eyes were bloodshot from the rage she had been trying to tame and failed, the fury that weighed her shoulders for so long and that would move her on every day forward.
On impulse, she picked up a sharp knife, and with a single cutting blow, her long-braided hair was detached from her scalp. It was so heavy it fell to the ground with a thud. But the shoulder-length haircut still didn’t make her feel any more likeher old self, so with one cutting blow after the other, she tried to find herself again. While her hands cut out chunks of hair, her nose crinkled, and her nostrils flared with uncontrollable anger. She was so lost in herself that she couldn’t feel the warmth of the blood that dripped from the self-inflicted cuts on her scalp.
Olga only stopped when her blade was too large to reach the few hairs left on her head, when the violet strands were patchy and uneven, when the mess on her head perfectly matched the one she felt on the inside.
She had once thought that ending the life of the woman responsible for Breno’s death would ease the pain of the loss, but it didn’t. Not even now, many months after he was gone, could she spend a single hour of the day and not think of him, not feel his absence crushing her chest with every breath.