Beneath the Apricot Tree

“Some goodbyes don’t echo—they settle, low and heavy, in the soil. You just hope something worth keeping grows there.”

Navigating the shadowy expanse of the study, I felt the darkness thicken around me, swallowing my presence inch by inch. It wasn’t just absence of light—it felt purposeful. The air was dense, almost viscous, and I moved through it as though wading through water. Even the feeble streaks of hallway light were reluctant intruders, barely penetrating the corners that pressed in like watchful eyes.

The carpet beneath my feet muffled every step, yet each one sent a subtle creak through the ageing timber, like a secret I couldn’t quite keep. The corridor stretched ahead, narrowing into a tunnel of shadows. The faint glow leaking from the living room offered little comfort—a flickering suggestion of warmth in a house that felt suddenly hollowed out.

I slowed as I neared the open doorway, heart beginning to tap an uneven rhythm against my ribs. My hand hovered near the frame, fingers brushing the chilled air. I wasn’t sure what I expected, only that I felt the tension thickening again. The silence wasn’t natural—it was brittle, as if sound itself had withdrawn, afraid of what might happen if it lingered too long.

Then I heard it. Quiet. Tentative.

A sniffle.

Not the kind people make when they’ve caught a chill. This was sharp and wet and stuttered—a noise born from something deeper. My breath caught. The hair on my arms lifted. It cut straight through the quiet like a thread of mourning. A sound that didn't belong in a house that had, moments ago, been so still.

I froze.

Some instinct inside me stirred—Guardian or sister or simply human—I didn’t know. I only knew I had to see.

Softly, I edged forward, the dense carpet absorbing my steps as the sound grew more distinct. Fragile, breathless, almost childlike. The kind of crying that isn't dramatic, but deep—hidden, barely controlled, seeping out in cracks. Something inside me tightened.

"Luke?"

My voice came out low, like I was afraid to startle the grief. It slipped into the room more as a presence than a sound, woven with uncertainty, hesitation, concern. I half-expected no reply. Maybe I even hoped for it.

Then—an abrupt snort. Rough. Unfiltered. It broke through the soft sobbing like a window cracked under pressure. A human noise. Raw and unguarded.

"Luke?" I said again, this time with more weight. The name tasted heavier now, leaden with worry. My hand found the light switch. I hesitated a beat—then flicked it.

The room flared into view.

And there he was.

The sight cleaved through me like a blade—not sudden, but slow, inevitable, a pain drawn out and cold.

Luke sat on the bed, cross-legged and caved in. His frame, usually so grounded, so sure, had folded inward like the world had shrunk too small for him to exist properly in it. His head hung low, his shoulders curled in tight, not from shame, but as if shielding something precious—or fragile. His face was pale, blotched with the fresh stains of grief. His eyes, wide and ringed red, looked impossibly young in that moment. Lost.

In his arms, he cradled Duke.

The dog was curled unnaturally, stiff and silent in a way that made my stomach lurch. His weight pressed against Luke’s chest, and Luke held him like something sacred—something worth remembering, even in stillness. His fingers moved slowly, rhythmically, through the fur behind Duke’s ear. A ghost of a touch. A desperate act of memorisation.

Another sniffle broke the hush—thick, unguarded. It sat heavy between us, a fragile thing that didn’t ask to be witnessed but was anyway.

I couldn’t speak. My throat was a knot. There were no right words—no gentle platitudes or deflections that could live honestly in this space. The air between us shimmered with grief and love, tangled so tightly I wasn’t sure where one ended and the other began.

So I stood. Still. Silent. Watching.

“Oh, Luke,” I murmured, the words slipping out more breath than voice—light, but laden. They hovered in the still air between us, fragile and aching. The sight of him—this version of him—bent low around Duke’s body, undone and silent, pulled something deep and unnameable from my chest. His sorrow was not loud, but it was vast. It filled the room without needing sound.

The way he held Duke… it wasn’t just grief—it was devotion, distilled. And it carved a hollow in me. My heart twisted, caught between the helpless ache of watching and the instinct to reach across the gap.

A quiet war unfolded inside me. One part held back, honouring his grief with space. The other—more urgent, more human—longed to break it. To cross the room and lay a hand on his back. To say something. Anything. Something that might not fix it, but might soften the edges.

And then I saw it—the way his shoulders curved inward. Not to shut me out, but to protect something small and breakable within. It wasn’t resistance. It was an invitation.

So I moved.

Each step felt deliberate, the floor suddenly an uncertain thing beneath my feet. As though even the air might fracture if I moved too abruptly. I approached like one does a wounded creature—not out of fear, but reverence.

I sat on the edge of the bed, slow and gentle, as though the mattress might recoil beneath the weight of our grief. The silence between us was dense. Not empty, but full—shared pain, thick and wordless. A strange kind of communion.

“I could have done more,” Luke said.

The words cracked into the space like splintered glass. Fragile. Vulnerable. Each syllable carried too much. The sentence didn’t just live in the air—it settled in the chest.

My hand moved before I could think. A soft, instinctive gesture, fingers resting on his shoulder with care. I didn’t squeeze. Just placed it there. Solid. Present. The tension beneath my touch was unmistakable—his muscles wound so tightly, as though one wrong breath might undo him.

“I know you did everything you could, Luke,” I said, and the words came out quiet but sure. “You’re a great dog dad, and Duke was lucky to have you.”

I didn’t care how small the words sounded. They were true. And sometimes the truth, even in its plainest form, is the only balm we have.

He looked up at me then—his eyes red-rimmed and glassy, swollen from the weight of everything he couldn’t say. There was something unbearably raw in his gaze. Like he was asking me to read between the lines, to see the guilt that lived beneath the grief.

“I just wish I could have done more. I feel like I let him down.”

That broke something in me.

Without thinking, I moved into the space between us, arms folding around his shoulders. It wasn’t calculated. It wasn’t about comfort, even. It was about anchoring him to the world, to the truth of what remained.

He didn’t pull away. He folded into the embrace like someone who hadn’t realised how tired they were until the weight was lifted—even briefly.

“You did everything you could,” I whispered, my voice close to his ear. I didn’t bother to hide the emotion threading through it. “Duke knew how much you loved him, and he was grateful to have you and Jamie as his family.”

I felt it then. The breath he released. Ragged. Uneven.

But real.

The silence that followed wasn’t empty.

It had substance, shape. It filled the room like steam after a boil—clinging to skin, curling into lungs. It wasn’t awkward or waiting to be filled. It was the filling. Laden with the things we couldn’t say aloud, and perhaps didn’t need to. A silence made of shared mourning, not absence. Of the mutual ache that comes when two people are grieving the same loss, in different languages.

So we sat there.

Side by side on the edge of the bed, the air thick around us. Wrapped not in comfort exactly, but something adjacent. The quiet companionship of someone who gets it, even when the words have failed. Especially then.

And it was in that stillness—dense, but not suffocating—that I found the thread of courage needed to speak. Not to shatter the silence, but to ease its grip.

“What are you going to do with him?”

The words came soft. A breath wrapped in syllables. They barely disturbed the air, but they landed between us like a ripple in the dark. Fragile, uncertain.

“I don’t know.”

Luke’s reply arrived hollow, thick with grief. Honest in the way grief so often is: not poetic, not structured—just raw. The kind of truth that trails off, because finishing the sentence would require looking too closely at the pieces.

The words drifted in the space between us, insubstantial but heavy all the same. I nodded, though he wasn’t looking. There wasn’t anything else to say to that. Not yet.

But even in grief, the world demands things of us. Practicalities. Decisions. Rules that don’t pause for mourning.

I shifted slightly, grounding myself with a breath that felt too loud in the quiet. Then I spoke again—more steady this time, though I could feel the shake buried just beneath the surface.

“That Charity woman said it’s too dangerous to bury Duke in Clivilius. His body will attract creatures worse than shadow panthers.”

It sounded clinical. Almost cruel. The kind of sentence you hate yourself for saying aloud—but say anyway, because someone has to. Even death isn’t allowed to be simple when portal’s are involved.

Luke didn’t respond at first.

Then, slowly, he blinked. Not the automatic kind you don’t notice, but deliberate—drawn-out. The kind that speaks of internal effort, as if his mind were dragging itself over something jagged and real. His jaw shifted—a slight tic, muscle tight against skin, like it was the only part of him willing to betray the protest beneath his silence. Then, finally, a nod. Barely perceptible.

But it was enough.

He understood. Of course he did.

Clivilius didn’t leave space for sentiment. It didn’t mourn with you. It didn’t pause or soften. It was ancient and untameable and beautiful in the same way storms are beautiful—at a distance, through glass, where you can appreciate the aesthetic without being swept away by it.

You couldn’t bury a Guardian’s grief in wild ground and expect the world not to bite back.

Even in death, Duke remained part of the fabric. And Luke… Luke was still tethered by that truth, just like the rest of us.

Then, without a word, he rose.

There was no grand gesture, no dramatic exhale—just a shift. A quiet unfurling of resolve. The kind that rearranges the air without announcing itself. He bent with reverence and gathered Duke in his arms. Not as a body, but as something more. A creature who had been family. Partner. Witness. His grip was careful, protective. It looked like a promise—wordless, but deeply meant.

I rose too, not out of instinct but necessity. There are moments when grief is sacred, and you’re meant to keep your distance. And there are moments when it needs to be accompanied. I didn’t need to ask which this was.

So I walked with him.

Outside, winter swallowed us whole.

The air hit first—a sharp slap across my cheeks, biting and clear. Hobart’s night sky hung low and unmoved, smothered in dense grey that pressed down rather than hovered. Wind whispered through the branches, stirring dry leaves that skittered across the pavement like a nervous thought.

The contrast was jarring. Inside had been warmth and stillness. Here, everything moved—edged, alive, merciless.

Luke turned slightly, not looking at me directly, his voice folded low against the wind.

“Beatrix, I don’t want to go back yet. Can you get me a shovel or something from the Drop Zone?”

“Sure,” I replied, too quickly. The word was a reflex, simple and serviceable. It slipped out before the knot in my stomach could argue with it. Not because I didn’t want to help—of course I did—but because of what it meant.

We were crossing into something final.

And I wasn’t ready.

But readiness wasn’t the point. Luke needed steadiness. And I… I needed a function. Something practical to anchor me to the moment. To push back against the helplessness chewing at my insides.

I glanced once more at Duke—silent, still, beloved—then turned and started towards the house. My steps cut through the darkness, methodical. The wind pressed against my coat, tugging at the hem, sharp and insistent.

The cold seeped in.

But the real chill lived somewhere deeper.

Back in Clivilius, I moved with purpose—sharp, unwavering. The air wrapped around me like gauze soaked in cold, brushing along my skin with a warning that felt too late. My feet knew the path to the Drop Zone instinctively, but each step felt like an echo—louder than it should’ve been, like walking through a memory that hadn’t quite faded.

Don’t delay. Don’t falter.

The mantra pulsed in time with my heartbeat, steady and relentless.

---

When I returned, the garden had settled into that strange, breathless hush, like it sensed something sacred—or dangerous—was unfolding. The backyard lights cast a warm spill across the grass, the sort of glow that might’ve felt comforting on any other night. Now it just revealed the quiet ache etched into the edges of everything.

Luke stood beneath the apricot tree.

He didn’t turn when I approached. He didn’t need to.

The tree’s bare winter branches stretched upwards in brittle lines, stark against the deeper shadows of the forest beyond. They looked skeletal—bony arms clawing at a sky that offered no comfort. I couldn’t help but think how Duke had once raced in circles beneath this very tree, chasing fallen fruit and sun-dappled shadows like he believed the garden was his kingdom.

"Duke loved this garden," Luke said, his voice cutting through the stillness—not loud, not seeking attention, but spoken like a truth he needed to name before the act could begin.

The words thudded through me.

They were simple. Devastating. Full of something too tender to carry for long.

Then, without waiting, he began to dig.

The shovel bit into the earth with a sound that felt almost obscene in its violence—too raw, too final. The rhythm was harsh and unflinching, each thrust unearthing not just soil but the weight of what we were laying to rest. The clink of metal against stone. The soft crumbling of turned dirt.

I joined him without needing to ask.

We didn’t speak. There was no need. The silence wasn’t empty—it was filled with every moment we couldn’t put into words.

Breath puffed from our mouths in faint clouds. The soil was stubborn in places, yielding in others. And still, we dug.

When the hole was deep enough, we stopped. Silence flooded in again, wrapping around us like a second layer of skin.

Luke cradled Duke in his arms—still wrapped in a plain white sheet, the fabric soft and too stark against the dark soil.

He didn’t carry him like a weight.

He carried him like a goodbye.

And when he knelt to place him gently into the hollow we had carved, it wasn’t just a burial.

It was an act of love. Quiet. Utterly final. And heartbreakingly human.

We stood for a long moment, shoulder to shoulder, our shadows stretched long and strange across the churned earth. The stillness below us felt too quiet, too final. It pressed against my ribs like a held breath I couldn’t quite release.

Then came the earth.

No words, no signal. Just the dull scrape of metal against soil, the steady cadence of farewells rendered in motion. We took turns. Shovel after shovel. Each weighted with more than soil—grief, guilt, memory. The sound was deceptively gentle, but each muted thud was a knell.

I watched the shape of Duke disappear beneath layers of cool, damp earth, and something in me recoiled. As if my brain couldn’t reconcile the physical act of burial with the vivid, bounding life I’d known only days before. He’d been warmth and breath and movement. Now he was stillness. Now he was gone.

When the last of the soil was laid, we pressed it smooth, our hands stained, our silence fuller somehow. The breeze tugged gently at the branches of the apricot tree, a soft rustle that felt like the world exhaling for us.

Standing there, the mound of earth before me, the finality of it struck like a blade.

Duke is gone. And there’s nothing we can do to bring him back.

The thought echoed, hollow and merciless, lodging somewhere beneath my ribs. Not dramatic, not explosive. Just true. And it settled in like the cold.

Luke spoke then, his words quiet and even. A tribute. A goodbye wrapped in memory. I couldn’t catch all of it—not because I wasn’t listening, but because part of me didn’t want to. His voice wavered at the edges, and I knew what was coming before it arrived.

His composure buckled.

It started with a shiver that passed through him like an aftershock. Then his breath caught—a small, stuttering hitch. And then, finally, he broke. The sound that left him wasn’t just a sob. It was a rupture. Raw and involuntary, dragged from some part of him that had been holding far too much for far too long.

He dropped like the ground had given out.

At the base of the tree, Luke collapsed in on himself—knees drawn tight, arms wrapped like a makeshift armour. But there was no defence left in him. No shell. Just a man trying to keep his soul from falling out. His hands covered his face as the sobs tore through him, loud and cracked and helpless. Each one a jagged tear in the night air.

I didn’t move. Not because I didn’t want to—but because I didn’t know how. My body refused to interrupt his grief, even as every part of me wanted to do something. Anything.

Each tremor of his shoulders sent an ache ricocheting through me. Not just for him—for all of it. For what we’d lost. What we were still losing. My own eyes burned, not from tears but from the strain of holding it together. Of being the one who had to be steady.

The apricot tree, once full of fruit and shade, now loomed over us like a grave marker. A quiet witness. A monument to change.

Luke finally looked up.

And his face—

It was devastation. Laid bare. His eyes were rimmed in red, glazed with the kind of grief that left no space for dignity. His gaze locked on the freshly turned soil, and I saw it in him: the impossible wish. That if he stared long enough, hard enough, something might shift. The earth might undo itself. Duke might stir.

But nothing moved.

“We have no resources, almost no money, no security,” he said, and the words dragged themselves out like scraped metal. “What are we going to do? Do we really have any hope of helping the Bixbus settlers survive?”

It hit me then—how deep the fracture went. This wasn’t just about Duke. It was everything. The fear that we were outmatched. That we were playing heroes in a world that didn’t believe in saving itself.

The truth was, I didn’t know either. Not fully. Not enough to reassure him with any real certainty.

But I did know one thing: I couldn’t let him drown in that uncertainty alone.

I moved to him without thought, my feet crunching softly on the dewy grass. The cold bit at my ankles, nosing up beneath the hem of my coat like an unwelcome guest, but I barely registered it. Grief has a way of making the body forget itself. I just knew I had to be beside him.

I lowered myself slowly, deliberately, as though anything abrupt might snap what little remained of this fragile moment. Sitting close, I slid my arm around his shoulders, drawing him into the circle of my quiet resolve. He came willingly, without protest. His body was warm and trembling against mine, his sorrow still so vivid it seemed to pulse in the air around us like a second heartbeat.

"We'll figure something out," I said, my voice low and steady, trying to anchor us both. The words felt small compared to the size of what we were facing—like throwing a rope across a chasm and hoping it held. But they were all I had to give. A promise, scraped together from sheer will.

Luke sighed against me. Not a breath, but an unravelling. It carried fear, fatigue, and the kind of resignation that comes only when you stop pretending you can carry it all on your own. His body leaned into mine—not with defeat, but with the silent plea of someone who just needed a moment's rest from being strong.

"I don't know, Beatrix. It feels like everything is falling apart."

His voice was thin and hoarse, woven with defeat, but the words hit with a terrible clarity. They weren’t dramatic. They were just… true. I felt the truth of them in my own bones, in the ache behind my eyes, in the unvoiced worries I’d been shoving deeper with every new problem we didn’t know how to solve.

I didn’t speak straight away. There was no comfort to be found in easy reassurances—not tonight. I let the silence stretch, honest and heavy, while the branches of the apricot tree creaked softly above us like they, too, were grieving.

But somewhere in that silence, something shifted. A glimmer of something broke through the fog—unshaped, insistent. A thought. A plan. Still fragile, but breathing. It flickered at the edges of my mind like the first spark from damp flint.

"Hey, why don't you grab your laptop?" I said, the words out before I could polish them into anything clever. "I have an idea."

Luke turned to me slowly, like a man waking from a deep dream. His eyes lingered on the grave—on the barely-settled soil that marked the end of a chapter neither of us had wanted to close. But then, faintly, I saw it. A shift. A flicker of curiosity breaking through the smog of grief. He didn’t ask what the idea was. He just nodded, stood, and began walking, his steps slow, each one deliberate—as though he were stepping from the past into whatever came next.

I stayed behind, just for a moment. Long enough to glance once more at Duke’s resting place beneath the shadow of the apricot tree. The garden had turned colder. The soil still held the texture of upheaval.

I lowered my head slightly, words forming without sound.

You’ll be remembered. Not just for how you left, but for how you loved. And how we go on because of it.

Then I turned and followed Luke inside, passing through the doorway like crossing into another kind of war zone—this one fought not with weapons or sorrow, but with resolve and ink and fragile hope. And maybe, if we were lucky, with answers.