{ Nonverbal Starters }

This was it, of course. The moment he had known was inevitable, as inescapable as any other fact of life. As sure as death itself, this loss had been perceived from the very moment of its birth, for no joy could mask sorrows that tracked so deep as this for long, without turning to bitter ash upon one’s tongue. 

It was all he could do, to contain within himself every ounce of his rage, to restrain behind his teeth the venom that pooled upon his tongue like the forgotten taste of sweet and perfumed wines. He would remember this moment for years to come – with the same cacophony of frustrations echoing inside of himself as he recalled so many more, but for the singular difference of pride. 

Too long had he been haunted by the times in which he had been helpless against those who wronged him. Terrorized by the sensation of being dragged to his knees screaming by the force of all that which stood against him – figurative and real alike. And in this moment, when the power rested solely in his hands – he refused to sound as he did then. 

He would not be the animal hauled howling into its confinement, but rather the man who would – with every ounce of dignity remaining to him – wash his hands of it. The chains that bound him to the past had been lifted – and he would be damned if he let his wife and his lover tangle him back up, until at last he was strangled by the suffocating weight of what they claimed had been done in his name. 

Drawing his hand away from the wall it braced itself upon, he faced her one last time. Allowed for her to see his resolve – the stubbornness she claimed to have fallen in love with, and the ferocity that lay behind it. When he spoke, it was not in fury but rather, in the natural finality of what he knew must be said between them.

He had loved her, once. In his own way, he had found the very stars to guide himself in her smile. Her laughter had been incentive enough, at times, to carry on when it felt as though it might be wise, just this once, to not pick up the fight. She had soothed his storms for years, as surely as she had fuelled them. He would do what he could to preserve that between them – it was the last of the promises he owed her. For better or worse indeed – just as death, surely, had parted them.

The death of the life they had once shared together. Of the man he had once been, and the woman who had loved that man. Whomsoever stood before him now – this Miss Barlow – was no more his wife than James Flint was his lover.

“Goodbye, Miranda.”