A weak tapping sound awoke me. The sound was of wood reverberating. My heart began beating rapidly. My eyes lit up with a flicker of life once again. I rose from the couch and scrambled to the door. I hesitantly reached out my hoof, begging that it be her. I gripped the cold doorknob and twisted it. I pulled the door open, feeling a great force pushing it towards me.
The frigid night swept in. The room was filled with butterflies. They poured in like a pink avalanche and rose to the ceiling. They cleared from the doorway, leaving her standing before me, lit by the pale moonlight. She collapsed into my hooves. I staggered back, but supported her body. I embraced her tightly and said nothing.
Her body was gaunt. Her wings were featherless. Her mane was tattered and matted, and its massive length dragged on the doorstep. Her eyes were frozen, grayed and glazed over from the thousand nights alone in the darkness. Her face was sunken in and bony, her once soft delicate features angular, with her skin tightly wrapped around her skull like a drum. Her breaths were short and stuttered. Though her body was frigid, I felt warmth again, for the first time in months.
In tears I carried her up the stairs and to her bed. I laid her gently on the mattress and pulled the comforter over her. I lied beside her, tucking myself beneath the comforter, and held her close to me. I wrapped my forelegs around her limp form, gripping to her warmth. I sobbed quietly, pressing my face against a pillow. She slowly moved her hoof over to my face. I raised my head. She rubbed against my cheek, wiping a tear away. She stared deeply into my weeping, drooping eyes and slowly blinked, nodding her head slightly.
She opened her frozen lips and whispered to me. Her voice sounded like a spring breeze blown over the strings of a harp.
“I’m so sorry. I brought this plague upon all of you. I tried to flee. I tried to lead them into the forest, but I… I failed.”
I gripped her tighter. She was so brave. Her sacrifice had left her body ravaged by the cruel forest. I knew she was fading. I knew any of her weak breaths could be her last. I did not care that the butterflies landed all over the comforter and gently extended and contracted their wings.
I was with her. I could see her delicate figure, feel her velvet body and the gentle beating of her perishing heart, and hear her every breath and her melodious voice. All of this time waiting, the light had finally drawn her back to me. And the myriad of days spent in the frigidity of that awful forest had not been for nothing. I had not lost the daylight. We would greet it together and take in its warm light. I felt comfort, regardless of the death she brings upon her featherless wings. All of this pain, all of this suffering was all for me. They had been for this moment. She took far greater pain upon her frail back, carrying it on her weak little wings, away from all of us. But it was too much for her. She could not manage to carry away the plague. It was inevitable.
I finally found words to say. I choked up as I took in a breath. It hurt my throat to speak, but I managed a strained whisper through my weeping.
“Hush now. It’s okay. You don’t have to run anymore.”
Together we looked at the ceiling. Their shadowy wings hovered over us. They covered the windows, the portals into the frozen night, smothering the moonlight. They devoured the air around us. There was no dread between us. There was no fear. That hope that I feared so terribly had been fulfilled. There was only togetherness, and this moment.
I gripped her tighter as they began to fall upon us. She weakly wrapped her hooves around me. I shuttered at her touch, then sighed happily. She rested her head against my neck. I felt her breath on my face. I could feel her chest tremble more every time she exhaled.
They swarmed around us and enveloped our bodies. I saw her eyes begin to slowly close. My eyelids grew heavier as each one landed on the comforter. Some fell on my face and I did not flinch. I could feel my consciousness drifting away. My eyes shut completely. I felt as if I was slipping into a beautiful, forgiving dream, one with her. The pain was drowned in the fulfillment of that wonderful hope. We were not joining the necropolis upon which this cottage stood. We were leaving this awful kingdom of loneliness together on the wings of a thousand rosy insects. At one minute past midnight, the room was filled only with butterflies.