the calamity of so long a life

CW: mentions of death and violence

Act I: The End

Ophelia took a breath. 

She woke inside her own coffin, dressed for a funeral she would never attend. Flowers covered her clothes, twining around her neck and hair like a spreading affliction. Luckily, they had not lowered her into the earth just yet. She was to be admired once more before she was mourned.

It was not the first time she had died and come back, but it was the first time she understood it not as a near-death, or a miracle, but a curse.

She couldn’t die. She wondered if she could age. She wondered if, had she gone to greater lengths to destroy her body, perhaps she might have succeeded in her own annihilation.

She tried to remember what made her want to drown herself in the first place and found her reasoning lacking, now that some time had passed. Such was the way of madness. 

Her betrothed was there. He was not relieved to see her. He had been right in the middle of a soliloquy, finally saying everything on his heart as soon as she could no longer answer, and he didn’t get to finish. Besides, she had ruined the whole presentation of herself upon waking.

He pretended she was a ghost, a product of his own burgeoning madness. She let him. She was unsurprised by his denial. Her spirit was never what he desired of her, after all. 

She left Denmark and walked out of her life as easily as stepping out of a loose garment. It would not be her only life, or her only death, or her only love. Just the first of many.

Act II: The Beginning

A few short centuries later, Ophelia stood in front of a painting. She found herself in a post-war decade, everyone around her finally waking up to what she had known for many years: men are cruel. The best die young. Nothing really matters. Might as well go to Paris, and raise the hem of your skirt.

The painting shared her name. It depicted a girl, half-drowned, surrounded by flowers.

“You look good for your age,” a voice beside her said. 

It was a woman with golden brown skin, and hair, lips, and eyes the color of a wine dark sea. She looked at Ophelia, and then back at the painting.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Ophelia demurred. 

The woman fixed her with a challenging smirk. “Oh come now. No need for that. Can’t you tell?” 

There was something about her that Ophelia couldn’t name. It was as if she was the subject of a photograph and everyone else around her was blurred in the background.

Oh. So that’s what it was. Ophelia had never met anyone like herself before. 

“It's flattering, certainly,” Ophelia said, glancing back at the painting. “I just remember it a bit differently.”

The woman laughed. 

“What about you?” Ophelia asked. “Do you look good for your age?” 

“Mhmmm,” the woman sighed, and that one exaggerated breath contained a millenia. “Very, very good.”

Ophelia was inclined to agree. 

“Oh-fee-lee-ah.” The woman said, tracing the plaque beside the painting. “I like that. It sounds like a song.”

“It sounds like an illness.”

The woman laughed again. “You know there used to be a name for people like us.” 

Ophelia could think of many words she’d been called over the years. 

“Gods,” the woman said. 

Ophelia liked that word. She told the woman so. 

“Oh it wasn’t all it’s made out to be,” she said with a dismissive wave.

“And what were you the God of?” Ophelia asked. 

“Love, if you can believe it.” The woman answered. 

Ophelia could believe it. 

The two of them went back to the woman’s apartment. It was in Montmartre, with a view of the Sacré Coeur from her balcony, and the whole of Paris a glimmer below them. An Olympus, of sorts. 

They played a game: worst death, best life; a drink for every story.

“The pyre,” the woman said with a dramatic wince. “Ugh, religious fervor. I’ve had enough of that for every lifetime.”

“And your best life?” Ophelia asked.

“This one,” the woman said. “Always, this one.”

Then it was Ophelia’s turn.

“Drowning,” she said. It was the only death she had chosen, and the one that proved the impossibility of all the rest.

“Mhm,” the woman hummed sympathetically. “And the best?” 

Ophelia just shrugged, and sipped her wine.

“Oh,” the woman said, tenderly. “You poor thing. You never learned, did you?” 

“Learned what?” Ophelia asked. But she knew.

“Oh-fee-lee-ah,” the woman whispered, one hand grazing the hem of Ophelia’s too short skirt, her mouth on the shell of her ear. “Breathe.”

Then she kissed her. 

In five centuries, all manner of affection and harm had been done to Ophelia, and yet somehow this, now, felt new. Five hundred years, and in this kiss she was naïve.  

“Teach me,” she begged. Teach me how to breathe without drowning.

And so the woman did.

Act III: Always

Heartbreak, again. Madness, again. Men and Gods could be so fickle. 

Ophelia stood on the bridge looking over the Seine. 

This river was worse than the other. Dirty with all the sins of the city. If they pulled her from it in the morning, would they dress her with flowers this time? Or had she lost even that?

The wind whistled through the trees, and the birds sang a song that sounded like her name.

What was the point? She thought, staring at the water. What was the point of surviving this pain if the world loved her so much more when she didn’t? 

She leaned out over the edge of the bridge.

But the birds. The wind said. But the wind in the trees. But her name, a song. But-

“This one. Always this one.”

Ophelia took a breath.Then she stepped back from the ledge, and walked on.