The clocks had stopped ticking a long time ago.
All six of them, hanging crookedly on the peeling wall of the small attic room, each frozen at a different time, as if time itself had once tried to comfort her, then gave up. Elirys sat on the edge of her narrow bed, tracing the outline of her palm with a blunt pencil, not drawing, not writing, just tracing. Like she was trying to remember she was still here alive and alone again and again.....
Outside, snow pressed softly against the window glass. It hadn't stopped snowing in days.
Her phone lay face down beside her, long drained of messages. The last one had come two weeks ago. "I'm sorry. I just can't do this anymore." No name. No goodbye. Just one more door, softly closing in her life.
She used to keep track of all the people who left - friends, lovers, almost-lovers, family she tried to impress, strangers, she overshared with just to feel known. She had pages of their names written in ink. Now, she didn't bother. They all felt the same in the end: empty echoes in her ribcage.
She didn't cry anymore. She stopped doing that years ago. Instead, she did small things that made no sense to anyone but her.
Like counting the cracks in the ceiling beams. Or whispering forgotten lullabies into her pillow. Or walking barefoot into the snow at 3 a.m. just to feel something soft touch her skin.
Tonight, the snow had come again. Thick, slow, like a curtain being drawn across the world.
She stood up and looked in the cracked mirror leaning against the wall. Her reflection looked blurred, not from the glass, but from something deeper. She tilted her head.
"Do you think someone will ever love me?" she asked.
No answer, of course. Just the snow outside, always listening. Always saying nothing.
She wrapped herself in her coat, too thin for winter and slipped out the attic door without a sound. Down the stairs, past the quiet kitchen with flickering bulbs, past the letters no one opened anymore. Out into the world that never looked for her.
The streetlights were dim. Snow clung to everything like forgotten kisses. She walked without direction, like someone drawn by something invisible. Her hands were cold, but she didn't care.
Maybe tonight, she thought. Maybe tonight I'll find something. Or someone. Or nothing at all.
The wind answered with a hush.
She kept walking into the night, into the snow, into the silence that had always been more honest than the people she used to love.
And somewhere, far above, a clock she'd never seen before quietly began to tick.