I bounce these feelings off the moon, the echoes don't come back

Her loves are gone for the moment, and she's just returned from the oddest meeting in Steelhead, so her head, it must be mentioned, is not in the best place. She idly peruses stained glass, wondering if she will need to spend more of her dwindling funds to import more, because one of her loves wants a substantial redesign on the tower. She accepts this, but it's just further oddity, and now she stands alone in some sky-bound texture studio, perusing wooden columns and Victorian wallpapers.

And she's never done alone, particularly well...

To pass the time between research and contemplation, she idly peruses aether journals, reading those she hasn't in some time, reading ones she's read...and, out of nothing more than idle curiosity...she clicks to read the profile for one she's known before.

And there...at the bottom of the page...is a link. To another journal.

And she reads. She has just a moment, at the end of the second entry, to regret the traditional end of the curious cat, but she can't say she didn't have it coming.

So she might as well, she thinks, air her side of things.

Some I know have told me, he makes too much of it. Some I know have said he nurtures pain like young spring blooms, willing them to flower into agony with such tender attentions. I say he has his reasons. I say I've given him them.

I loved him. I still love him, it won't stop. There are few here that, once loved, manage to leave my heart entirely. It's something I live with.

Are the train wrecks manufactured? I'm too close to them to tell. But this much I do know, and I know the truth of it, it's engraved behind my eyes every time I close them, the truth I cannot deny: I left him, before he left me.

Intentionally? Never. Once I would have said I would rather have gnawed off a limb than harm him, in any way. But I know this, I know this, and I try not to lie to myself any more than I do....

There was an evening, one evening, of...magic. Rushed and breathless, forbidden, nearly, but after months of back and forth and argument and joy and silly jokes and friendship and serious discussion and absolute confusion and soaring love....one evening. It...was...in all senses of the word...magical.

And then I met the statue. And I realized, quickly, where before we had been that one, and my neko lad, and I...it was now a three-cornered thing, plus me, and there was conflict. Conflict I had, for the first time, no idea how to resolve.

There was a second night. I had been dizzied by newfound love, missed problems growing, obviously, I had not stayed as grounded as I needed to...and he asked to see me. And while I was there, my mind was...elsewhere.

And he noticed. Of course he noticed. It mattered not that two weeks later, the unevenness settled, all that could be worked out, had been, I understood--or thought I did--where I needed to be, who I wanted to be with. As usual, I'm too slow on the uptake. I'd already damaged the precious thing we had. One night, it was gone.

I held on for six months. Because I'm a fool who believes, in spite of all I've been through, that love should matter, that love should win out over all...even when I know it doesn't. Even when I've helped love die, out of stupid pride, in other situations.

I held on. I, not to put too fine a point on it, clung. Needy and afraid, desperate that every day would be the day he'd finally say it...

...and then, the day came. Only he didn't, precisely tell me. Leaving someone else to tell me, which...may have been harsher than he would have said, or not. I have no way of knowing.

I only know I managed to hurt someone I loved a great deal, deeper than any way I could have possibly conceived of, and that was me. That was what I did, my choices.

We drifted apart? No. I planted depth charges and detonated the relationship.

Do I blame him? How can I?

Do I blame myself? Always.

Does it matter? Well, on that, I think, I draw the curtain, and let the Unknown Viewer decide for themselves...