She was still waiting. There were some roads that she may have considered taking, but in the end she decided to stay inside the old house at the left corner, hidden behind the oak at the end of the hill.
Nobody had seen her in a very long time, and yet she could see no one approaching her door. At first, her disappearance had been just a rumor suspended in the midst of the words whispered ear to ear in the village. The grass had grown outside her house, reaching the path towards to top of the hill, but you could hardly see any soul crossing that spot in the town to reach the top. There where the mystery still lied.
Her house was majestic, its roots carved and settled inside the pit of the rocks of the mountain. It had once been the first reunion place in Blackrope Heights. People came in and left their blessings, shared their hopes, drunk with pleasure. It was back then when they were two.
One day, he left. In the night, silent, stolen from the bed where he had hugged the love of his life for countless nights. No word, no written note, no trace of footprints from outside. He just vanished and she never had any news from him.
Months, years, and a decade followed and she was still alone.
The window used to be her mirror, day and night. She would spend her time diving into the images of her brain mixed with her own reflection at dusk. Slowly her image faded, erased by the rusting weight of her thoughts in the sands of dusting time.
She forgot the light, and embraced the dark. Her bed was always open, and yet she never got back to it. Her lustful body remained intact. White and soft, naked under the spell of the moon's embrace. She gave away her desires, her dreams and her happiness to pay the price to keep all the melancholy inside her. She fed on the anxiety and learned to be one with her. Present and Future dissolved under the acid touch of doom.
And finally she ceased to breathe, to care, to move. But her eyes did not close. She stared and glanced through the window outside the world that used to be hers. Inside, all was dead and black, forgotten and abandoned. Lonely and mourning, her organs gave up and remained motionless too. The pulse slowly fading, the blood drying under the last sounds of drums from her heart.
....
And one night, the legends say some neighbors could hear a horse walk up to the last house, on the left corner behind the old oak. And old woman still says she swears she saw a black shadow emerge from the own oak's reflection under the full moon light. The shadow knocked on the door, and after some minutes of wait it finally left on the horse again. Instead of returning downhill toward the river, the mysterious knight continued his path uphill towards the cross on the top where nobody dared to go. And then all became as black as it had once been. The woman claims the shadow eclipsed her vision of the moon and that no trace of light could be seen any more during that night.
"The shadow swallowed the moon and didn't return it to the sun"
A man was there on the river side the following morning, listening to the woman's words about the events of the previous night . He listened to the story and then let his horse drink some water while he walked towards Blackrope Heights. Nobody had seen this man before, and yet he seemed to know where he was going. He ascended towards the old oak and entered the blinding light that covered the space beyond it. The door opened to him and he got in finally, leaving all that he had lived behind him.
He entered the bedroom and found the bed just has he had left it. He could smell her perfume, the sweet essence of his love that he had always kept in his heart and soul during the enduring moments he had been forced to live. He followed the trace of her beloved to the window. There, right before the window glass he found three red blood pearls, the last tears from her wife resting solid as a witness of her presence.
And finally he looked through the window. He touched the webs that collapsed his vision towards the outside landscape. When he'd done that he could finally see her, arms stretched and loving eyes looking at him from the outside. He cried and touched the image from inside and stayed like this for the rest of his time.
.....
The legend says that during the night of full moon in November, if you dare to visit the last house in town, behind the shadow of the old oak you will see the beautiful statue of the most gorgeous woman Blackrope Heights ever had, next to the right side of the abandoned mansion. Her hands are placed on the window glass, her eyes looking inside the house...
...if you dare to enter the house at your own risk, you will see another statue. A man is standing beside the window in the bedroom. His hands are touching the hands reflected from the other side of the window. If you stand there for enough time, right where the lovers touch, the moon light will entirely disappear into the surface of the lovers' stones. And maybe, just maybe, you will disappear too.
