Stones

The sun sank slowly beyond the horizon... beyond her reach. Every passing minute widened the chasm and brought about an irrevocable change. The tears refused to come anymore, the blade refused to cut anymore, but her heart continued to bleed. Who could hear its screams in the midst of a thousand anguished souls? Who would listen to her cries of need, her need for another chance, her inability to turn back?
The water rushed up her ankles and wet her long, olive legs. The water surged faster, the tide rose, pushing her forward... the salted water licked her wounds, but it didn’t sting her anymore. Her body was numb, paralysed, frozen... broken. Her hair flew wildly in the breeze and her eyelids fluttered still. The waves brought in a hard, brown, jagged stone. She picked it up, held it in her palms and squeezed it tight, oblivious to the pain.
The memories played in her head... over and over again... taunting her, teasing her, mocking her. She wanted to reach out to those memories, change everything... anything... something. She lay down, looked up at the stars, and cried again.
She’d lost her boyfriend, but more importantly, she’d lost her best friend, the one person who she could confide into unwaveringly, confidently, immaterial of the subject... because he had loved her for who she was... he never was judgemental with her and she loved him for that.
She had preserved each memory of each day she’d spent with him... each moment of laughter and each fight... their first ‘I love you’s and their first kiss. It was special, their way of storing these memories. Each day she’d spent with him had been overpowered by one emotion... love. But this love took different forms every time.
On the mantelpiece, in a jar lay stones... stones of different colours, sizes and shapes. The pink, smooth ones for their happy days and at the centre lay a big, pink one, the shape of a heart, which they had miraculously found on the beach the day after he first said he loved her and she said she loved him too. There were small green ones which stood for the small arguments they had, they were pointed and sharp, but they filled in the gaps between the big pink ones, they made their relationship more wholesome. There were four purple ones, each one signifying a year completed and new year of togetherness.
She fell asleep under the stars as the tide slowly receded. The brown stone still stayed in her hands, clenched tightly, close to her heart. As she opened her eyes the next morning, she saw his face, haloed by the sun, his blue eyes twinkling, his features sharp, yet soft, smiling down at her extending his arms to help her up. She smiled at him and kissed him.
He held her for a minute and then he walked away... a receding figure, leaving behind no footprints for her to follow.
She walked home barefoot and placed the brown stone in the jar. The last stone.
She’d kept up to her promise. The last, brown, sharp stone embodied his entire life in it, now that he had finally succumbed to death; she’d only got the stones to keep.