Two years ago to nearly the day, Amalia considered very seriously stepping off this bridge.
She remembers it vividly, even now: the day before the Festival of Lights, and she had finished making two lanterns alone in the Antheneum's hall. One was old, the wound still raw, three years having done little at all to soothe the loss of her grandmother.
One, though... one was new.
Amalia had thought the year after her grandmother died might be the hardest of her life, but the year after her mother died had gone and proven her wrong. Who was she to live alone, the rest of her family lost to Ludo without so much as a goodbye? Who was she to survive when neither of them could have that chance, to light a lantern and guide the souls when she herself had none?
Who was she to try to be happy, when she had failed them both?
She'd stood barefoot in this very spot, her toes curling over the edge of the bridge, her dark eyes red with too many tears. She'd stood and looked into the mist and wondered who would care, if anyone would notice that she was missing or light a lantern for her ghost. A lean is all it would have taken to send her careening down and down, oblivion found in the bottom of the crevasse, freedom from a world she had never found a place in. She'd stood, and wanted, ached to jump.
Instead she stepped away.
She'd though that year was the hardest she'd endure, but today she is not sure. Today she wears the weight not of loneliness but of love, each person she has come to care for sitting silent on her shoulders, reminding her what it would cost if she were to take that step. She thinks about the blight, and the queens, and Safrin, and Ronin, and Jigano, and Remi. She thinks about Delah, and the fae, and how much her grandmother would have loved it, the world outside the barrier. She thinks about Jyoti, and Kiada.
She thinks about Deimos, and the cruelty it is to let him love her, and knows that no matter how unjust it is, she cannot bear to see him walk away.
She thinks that she should have jumped that day, for now it is too late. Amalia i've been watching your kindness keep
a lonely company - look at the fire and think of me
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