Leya’s yelling at me again, telling me her heart is broken, asking me how could I do something like this to her.

The pain radiates off her and penetrates me. I drink in her anger and sorrow, followed by a chaser of emptiness. This void saddens me most because its measure is that of the love she once held for me.

I wasn’t expecting such an encounter when I came home. When I greeted my roommate, sitting in the candlelight on the couch, she exploded. The red energy of her anger as it dances around her is startling and beautiful.

Though she is a roommate not a lover, and a friend not a wife, she is reacting as though she has a claim to me. She is looking at my misbuttoned shirt, mussed hair with an air of someone who thought it was her arms I should have been in. Perhaps in a perfect world she would be right.

She doesn’t realize my current state has nothing to do with sex or love for someone else. There are many types of abilities Mage manifest. Some are clairvoyant and can tell the future or remote view activity once given a proper target. Others are able to bend the energies of the elements. Some come into the world with an ability to drain off energy, a practice which can be useful for healing.

Mine happen to be of the empathic variety. My energetic and physical bodies take on the physical sensations and emotions of those around me. Since empathic Mages generally have so much energy from others in our system, we are often willing donors to our energy vamperic brothers and sisters.

Yes, sometimes such “donations” leads to sex. Opening up to someone and letting them truly take you in can be quite blissful — as if being embraced by the first night of a new moon, where every sense is on high alert. However, tonight wasn’t one of those nights.

Yes, Marcus and his four friends, names unknown to me, laid their hands on me. And yet there was no love, no warmth or sensuality to the night’s sharing. They were hungry. I was basically their dinner. That was that. I had lost a little bit of myself, but what I gave up, I gave up willingly. They gave me a momentary respite from the suffering – my own and that of others.

I’m unsure how to console Leya. I know any truth will be painful and cold, but I haven’t enough art to keep lies alive long enough to provide effective comfort.

“What I did tonight, where I was, wasn’t about you, Leya,” I say. “I had no intention of hurting you, or, for that matter, making you feel good.”

“Well that makes me feel so much better,” she hisses.

“Sorry,” I say. “Just making a point that you can’t consider yourself the source of my every thought and action. Setting expectations for me based on your personal desire will only disappoint. You can’t imagine what I’m capable of. You haven’t a clue.”

She gets quiet then and pulls a bit back into herself. I’m grateful for the slight dimming of pain. She has never gotten used to the lack of boundaries between us and it’s hard for her under the best of circumstances to not flood me with her emotions. She forgets all together at times like this.

“I used to laugh when you’d say such things, Melanie. But I can’t anymore because sometimes I think you’re serious.”

“I was,” I say.

“Oh,” Leya says. “Oh” in that way that tells me she never had really comprehended my darkness before. The disappointment grows in her eyes. Well, she can’t help it if she can’t see the world’s colors in quite the same way I can. Sometimes it takes the Mundanes a bit longer to gather information. The disconnect can be difficult and that is why most Mages don’t have close relationships with them.

With friends and lovers, Mages form an intricate weave of energy cords. There is a flow back and forth of information and emotion. Such a connection with another being is something that Mundanes cannot fully understand. They only have a vague awareness of such things and usually dismiss their inner wisdom instead of listening.

I’m simultaneously saddened and horrified as I watch the energy of her feelings morph her features. She, of course, hasn’t a clue of the show she’s giving me. She has dropped her defenses enough that I’m finally seeing her vision of me and apparently I’m a monster. I feel like the breath was knocked out of me and I’m not sure if it’s her emotion, mine, or the combination of the two feeding each other.

“It hurts,” she says, forgetting she doesn’t have to tell me. “You have to feel however you feel, but I can’t deal with this so-called friendship. I love you. Did you think I could handle knowing you are with someone else, sharing things I can never share with you?”

The only honest answer is yes. So I say that.

I don’t say I expected her love would, in the end, somehow save me. I expected her to be enough, but she is right. She isn’t.

Though I have never truly wanted her as a lover, there had been enough amusement in her gifts of flowers, poems, and listening that I’d hoped I’d warm to her heart and body.

“We have a problem,” she says. Then she lets out a long sigh. My monosyllabic responses are beginning to grate on her nerves. I don’t intend to make thing worse, but it happens anyhow.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. And I hope she realizes I am apologizing not only for this moment and the torn-up heart beating chaotically in her chest. I’m sorry for all of the times when I used her love to keep me alive through another day; when I’d steal the promise of a better me that she had fallen in love with and pretended I could be that for a time; for not being able to do more than just pretend.

If I could have been healed, whole, I would have been for her. I consider telling her that – how special she was because she inspired me to even try. But I’m not sure if the motivation would be to let her know she had been loved in the best way I could, or if it would be manipulation to keep her around and me feeling good. On the off chance it is the latter, I keep silent.

She doesn’t realize how much stronger she is than I. Long ago she cut her trail through the wild in search of love and found women to be her destination. Even more she thought home would be found in me. Sadly, I’m still lost and trying to get my bearings. Sure the men are darkness and she is light. But the shadows and illusions have become my comforts.

“It’s nice that you are sorry,” her voice and eyes softening some. “But I am afraid it doesn’t fix anything.”

I know her possible future right now, looking at the blacks and reds swirling within and around her, changing her. I don’t want her to become like me. To prevent it I will even let her go.

She turns away from me now. She is quieter, but still verbally venting off the grief that has been boiling up within her over the course of the night.

I scan the room and see the silver ritual knife on the breakfast nook of our kitchen. She had probably been harvesting herbs from the garden earlier in the day with it. I’ve asked her time and again to not use my tools in her Mundane tasks but she does it anyhow. Her innocent naiveté was always a charm and frustration.

I pick it up and cut the ties that bind us at the heart and mind. Only I see the momentary energy bleed. I quietly chant the words and make the gestures to close the subtle body wounds on both of us.

She pauses in her speech. She feels the shift. She turns to face me.

“No,” she says looking at the knife in my hand. “You didn’t.”

The threat of tears causing my eyes to glisten is answer enough. She has learned enough about Mages during her time with me to posit what I’ve done and its consequence.

Suddenly the void is mine alone. I feel an emptiness that has my heart panicking, looking for its lost half. There is an urge to tear around in search of something, something as vital as breath.

I put my hand on the table to steady myself then sit down. I should have thought it through more. Such connections, if meant to be broken, will slowly release of their own accord. I didn’t realize it would be so violent when done by my own hand. The sense of loss and loneliness is extraordinary.

Leya comes to me and drops to her knees at my side. Her colors have returned to their usual brightness and warmth. At least it was worth it.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“I will be,” I answer.

There’s nothing for her to do for me, except hold me. So that is what she does. Total healing can only be granted by Chronos.

I rest in her embrace doing my best to experience the moment. I’m aware of her perfume, the tickle of her long ebony locks, the softness of her body.

For now that is all there is. We are dying, but for now I can enjoy the final gasp. I push away all of the thoughts of the moving boxes, goodbyes, and quiet to come.

The glaring morning and her absence will arrive soon enough.