“Thank you for coming.”
She was dressed in her finest garb, a flowing ballgown of ocean greens and ethereal blues, shimmering with hand-sewn pearls. Her hair was the color of the sun, flowing down from her silver crown, the same silver as shone in her eyes.
The Sorrower looked down the length of the table at her, and offered a bow. “I was humbled to receive your invitation.”
Her smile was a sunbeam on a cool winter’s day. She reached into the ornate wooden box on the table, and withdrew The Sorrower’s crown, a diadem of copper and gold, intertwined like vines. He strode up to her, and knelt so she might place it on his head.
They took their seats.
“Do you know why I’ve asked you here?” She inquired politely.
“I have an idea,” he said slowly, deliberately, not wishing to misspeak. “But I was hoping you would tell me.”
“A shame,” she said. “I was also hoping the same from you.”
“You mean to say you don’t know?”
“Not completely,” she responded, leaning back comfortably in her seat. “I think I’m meant to relay to you a message, though what it is, or even who it’s from, I’m afraid I can’t say.” She reached up and, in thought, idly twirled a lock of her red hair.
“The spread is lovely,” The Sorrower said politely, take a sip of his drink.
“Thank you for saying so,” she replied earnestly with another smile.
“Tell me why you think I’m here,” The Sorrower went on to say, “unless of course you’d prefer not to discuss it.”
“Is it because,” she hazarded, “I’m dying?”
“Not solely,” The Sorrower replied.
“But I am?”
“You are. In fact, one could even argue that it’s already happened.”
“Well,” she said with all the exasperation of someone mildly inconvenienced by a fly in one’s soup, “then I suppose I’ve called you here to share in my last meal. Such as it is, anyway.” With this, she gestured broadly to the spread before them on the small table, empty plates and empty cups.
“I suppose so,” The Sorrower agreed. They picked up their empty cups, and tapped them gently together before each taking a sip.
“Tell me, Sorrower,” she asked, “do you know what waits for me?”
“First,” he said, “The coachman will come for you.”
“And my destination?”
“That is for you to decide,” he replied. “Either the station, or perhaps The Hotel.”
She leaned forward excitedly, reveling in the arcane secrets being shared. “And where to from the station?” She asked.
“That’s not for me to know.”
“Oh, do pardon me.”
“You meant no offense, and I interpreted none.”
“Enough about me, then,” she said, picking up her fork to spear a bit of food on her empty plate.
The Sorrower interjected “I do believe you’re using your dessert fork for the salad.”
“Goodness, so I am.” She looked up sheepishly before moving past it by imploring The Sorrower, “Do tell me about yourself. Who is The Sorrower?”
“I am The Sorrower,” he repeated plainly.
“And what do you do? What are you?”
“Both questions share the same answer: I am nothing more than the lessons I have to teach.”
“And what lesson do you have to teach?”
“There is always meaning in Sorrow.”
She yawned unintentionally, innocently. She seemed not to even notice, as she went on to ask “And where did you come from? What circumstances make a Sorrower?”
He hesitated, but obliged her in her dying wish. “I was not the only one like me,” he said. “There were four of us. The Lamplighter was first; they taught humanity what meaning there is to be found in finding oneself, like so many points of light along a dark street. Next, there came The Postmaster. He taught connection; the meaning of finding each other.”
“And you were next?” She asked.
“I was the last,” he said. “There was one before me. The Joyous.”
“What did she teach?” She asked, looking across the empty table at The Sorrower, reaching up to rub tiredly at one brown eye.
“That no matter the circumstances,” he answered quietly, “There is always meaning to be found in the beauty of life’s joys.”
She cast a sidelong look at her own body, laying huddled in its dark alleyway, before rubbing away a spot of dirt on her brown dress. “Did you work a lot with her?”
“I did,” The Sorrower said with a nod, his tone drifting towards paternal. “I work with sad people, to teach them about what their sadness means. Those same sad people are often ones who need a reminder in Joy.”
“But didn’t she make them happy?”
“Not quite,” he said. “The saying goes, ‘always look on the bright side’, as if life with all its Sorrows and Joys, and loves and losses, is a coin. One with goodness and happiness and Joy on one side, with pain and Sorrow on the other. But it’s not like that at all. Life is…” He paused. “Do you like picture books?”
She nodded emphatically.
“Life is like a picture book, where the words are the Sorrow, and the pictures are Joy. When people say ‘look on the bright side’, it’s as though they’re trying to look at all the pictures, but they don’t have the words that are supposed to go with them. So the pictures make no sense, not really, but the people pretend they do, because they think you must look at either the pictures or the words; they refuse to see that to understand the book, you need to see both.”
“Hey,” she said, “That was what I was supposed to tell you.” She paused to yawn once more before her innocent eyes peered back at The Sorrower, “About reminding sad people about Joy. If I’m supposed to tell you that, does that mean, Sorrower, that you’re the sad person?”
“I suppose so,” he said.
“What happened to them?”
“They taught all they had to teach. We are nothing more than the lessons we teach,” he repeated, “so in that way, they live on, just as much as they did when they were things that could be seen and touched.”
“What about you?”
The Sorrower sighed. “Some lessons are harder to teach than others.”
She huffed. “No wonder you need someone to tell you not to be sad.”
He smiled, genuinely, down at her small form. “It’s more than that,” he said, “but you’ve got it well enough.”
“I’m glad I got to have tea with you,” she said, her voice slowing, her words coming harder and harder. “It makes dying less scary.” Another yawn caused her small form to shudder. “Is it time?”
“It is,” The Sorrower said.
“Can you hold me?”
“Of course, little one.” He stood, walked around the wooden box between them, and sat beside the girl’s own body, lying in the alleyway, its fingers and lips dark blue, its body too tired even to shiver.
“How come,” the girl asked as she settled into The Sorrower’s lap, “I’m not dead yet, but I’m not in there?” She asked this question with a glance to the body next to her.
“Because,” The Sorrower said, “Just as there is a Joy for every Sorrow, the world contains benevolence for every cruelty.”
She peered up at him, confused.
He clarified. “The world can be… bad. But sometimes, I can make it less bad. Just for a little while.”
The girl nodded. She closed her eyes, and fell asleep.
The Sorrower waited for the coach to arrive.
***
“Did you have to use her?” The Sorrower asked. The alley was empty, save for him and the girl.
“You know we did,” The Lamplighter said, as suddenly the alley was empty no longer. The Lamplighter held in their hands a long pole with a burning wick atop. They nested it easily into the crossing of their legs as they sat in the snow next to The Sorrower; it was organic to them, part of their posture, their presence.
“It always does come back around to the end, doesn’t it?” The Sorrower asked rhetorically.
“The source of all Sorrow,” The Lamplighter agreed. Casting a glance to the world outside the alleyway, they went on to say “They’re quite funny, aren’t they? Death is the one truth they all share, and the one they cannot accept. They build entire lives to protect themselves from that one truth, they put up walls, they close off their hearts, and in doing so, close themselves off from… Well, from everything.”
“You truly believe that I need you to tell me this?”
The Lamplighter chuckled. “I suppose that is your bailiwick. But you know why I’m here, Sorrower.”
The Sorrower sighed, and he did not answer.
“It’s a truth that you’ve begun to close yourself from as well.”
“It’s-... I can’t blame them,” The Sorrower said as his gaze dropped from The Lamplighter’s. “The truth may be necessary, but it is not desirable. To open one’s heart to the anguish of humanity: It hurts. Empathy is as cruel a fate as it is a kindness. I cannot blame them for keeping their hearts closed.”
The Lamplighter let the snow and the silence settle around them for a time. “And yet,” they said, “it is necessary nonetheless. Accepting the truth of inevitability is the only way one can truly engage with, and understand, the entirety of the human experience.”
“If it’s so necessary,” The Sorrower said slightly too harshly, “Then why must it be so unpleasant?”
“Because,” The Lamplighter said readily, “accepting death is, in itself, a form of death. A death of the self. Accepting that the idea of you will die requires a sacrifice of one’s self to the end; it is a death of the ego.”
“But the idea of me,” The Sorrower said, “Will never end. There will always be Sorrow. I will always exist in the lessons I teach.”
“And the last lesson I taught,” The Lamplighter said, “was you. You’re straying from yourself.”
“So you came back to keep me from getting lost in the dark.” The Sorrower’s exclamation had the form of a question, but the spirit of a statement. He knew it as fact, just as well as The Lamplighter did.
“I did,” The Lamplighter said, humouring The Sorrower in that despite both of them knowing the answer full well.
The Sorrower sighed. “Is it different? Existing as you did, instead of how you do now?”
“It is,” The Lamplighter said, owing The Sorrower an unpleasant honesty. “Existing as lesson is far easier than existing as teacher or student. The pain I feel for them-” The Lamplighter gestured to the world outside the alleyway- “weighs less upon my being. I no longer have to find deeper and deeper reserves of empathy to teach yet another lost soul how to find their way. Instead, I see only the successes, the lessons learned well; the lost finding each other, instead of finding themselves alone.”
“The last lost person, then, is me?”
The Lamplighter chuckled darkly. “Far from it. But they all have each other. None can truly understand you well enough to teach you; not as truly as I do. We have the same burden to bear, Sorrower.”
“The Postmaster and The Joyous,” The Sorrower said, “and you; your time teaching is done. They’ve learned everything you had to tell them. But the Sorrows proliferate as freely now as they did at the inception of humanity.” The Sorrower finally brought his eyes like stormclouds to meet The Lamplighter’s gaze, and he asked in a voice of thunder, “Why will they not learn from me the same way?”
The Lamplighter considered this. They leaned back into the weight of the question, closing their eyes, lifting their face to feel the gently-falling snow on their skin. “You know why,” they replied. “You said it yourself: Some lessons are harder to teach than others.”
“My watch is to be eternal, then?”
“I hope not, but I fear so,” The Lamplighter said. “And as your companion for tea so aptly put it, it’s no wonder you need someone to remind you not to be sad.” The Lamplighter reached out and took The Sorrower’s hand solemnly. “The rest of the world must face their ego death by means of accepting they will, at one point, end. Your ego death must come from the truth that you will not.”
“The worst part -truly, the worst- is knowing full well that were our roles reversed, I would have the same advice to give myself.”
“There is meaning in Sorrow,” The Lamplighter said. “And that is the meaning in yours.”
“Do you recall,” The Sorrower asked, “when you first helped me to find myself? When you and The Postmaster and The Joyous had no lessons left to teach, yet there were still lessons that needed to be learned? So you came to me, and I asked you, ‘What am I?’ Do you recall what you said to me?”
The Lamplighter closed their eyes. A weary breath escaped their lips before they repeated:
“You are The Sorrower, my child; I could not be more sorry.”
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