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Tissaia de Vries had never been a woman of faith. Her parents had her baptised, yet at some point the church picnics gave way to her school books and the heartfelt belief in a higher power to the conviction that she alone can control her life. The activities in the lap of the church were a good hook for her college essay, but nothing more. Until 10 years ago.
From then on, every 31 October, she goes to church. Sinking to her knees in front of a God she doesn't even believe in, praying for the soul of a poor young girl who used to be her student.
Most would ask for forgiveness. She knows better. There is no divine forgiveness for driving a young girl to suicide.
When she unlocks the door to her house, the sun has almost set. Colourful jack-o'-lanterns light up in front gardens all along the street and in the distance she hears the laughter of children ringing doorbells to ask for sweets. Without a sound, she pushes a small chair with a bowl of sweets in front of the door and closes it firmly behind her.
The hallway is dark. Gloomy and oppressive. A last bit of daylight enters the hall through the large window in the living room, painting dark shadows of her furniture on the wall. Tissaia is trembling. But despite shivering, she slips out of her coat, hangs it neatly in the wardrobe and props herself up on a small table, one hand on her back. It hurts. And that doesn't get any better when she glances at the laptop, left open on the living room table.
She was writing just before she left for church. At least she tried, even though she knows nothing can come of it on a day like this.
"It is normal for you to be distracted that day, Tissaia. It's perfectly fine to take a day off, you work a lot anyway. Why don't you try to use the day for something you enjoy?" her therapist suggested. She nodded. Although she knows it won't work. She can't rest that day, can't feel joy. Not since the day they found that poor girl in her room with her wrists slashed and all that was her fault.
"Yennefer," she whispers softly into the increasingly dusky room. "Yennefer." She can say her name, close her eyes, but it doesn't change anything. It doesn't change the fact that all she sees is the image of her burned into her memory. Deathly pale in a pool of blood on the floor. It doesn't change that it's her fault, after everything she said to her. It doesn't change that the laptop on her living room table is still blinking. Silently she steps up to the sofa, doesn't even sit down, but immediately opens her email account.
Four new messages. One is from her publisher, one is an invoice, the third is some kind of advertisement. The fourth is the one she has been waiting for, as she waits for it every year, despite her new email address, despite all her attempts not to be found by anyone. But they do find her. She can never escape them, them and their videos.
She knows she doesn't have to watch it, but it has almost become a tradition. A torturous, masochistic tradition. So she clicks on the video called 'This little Piglet'.
She has heard the song often enough. As a small child, her mother sang it to her. This little piggy went to market... but this video is different, even though it starts the same way.
A green meadow, animated animals in bright colours with huge eyes. Even though there is a photo attached to the piglet's head. An old photo of her face.
This little Piglet went to prison....
She sees the piglet with her face being herded into an animated prison. To an electric chair. Someone flips a switch and clouds of smoke rise from the Tissaia Piglet's head as she slumps in the chair.
... this little Piglet stayed at home....
The Tissaia piglet is standing at the window of a house not unlike her old one. The one she lived in 10 years ago. At the time when all this happened. It looks out at the street, doesn't see the man in the pig mask. He is standing behind her, a knife in his hand. For a moment nothing happens, then he strikes. Animated blood stains the windowpane, sparing her from seeing the carnage of screams and the sickening sound of a knife stabbing through flesh, bone and tissue.
Panicked, Tissaia spins around, eyes roaming the room, but there is nothing at all. No one is standing behind her, no man in a pig costume with a knife in his hand. The house is dead silent. All she hears is a soft creaking from upstairs. She knows it's not footsteps. It's just the old house around her, the October wind that has come up outside, swaying the branches back and forth, rustling the leaves in the trees. There are no footsteps. If she were to go upstairs, she would search everything in a panic and end up feeling completely foolish because she wouldn't find anyone. They are not footsteps. And if they were, it wouldn't matter.
... this little Piglet had strychnine....
The Tissaia Piglet falls from its chair, twitching, saliva dripping from its mouth as it rolls on the floor in terrible death spasms. Accompanied by the ghostly child's voice singing the song and the panicked squeals of piglets in agony. Until the movements become slower and finally stop altogether.
Then, 9 years ago, when she first saw the video, she panicked and examined every bite she ate. Today she knows that you would taste strychnine from anything. And has a whole cupboard full of antidotes, just in case.
... and this little piglet went numb....
It could almost be tolerable to see the Tissaia piglet standing on a chair with a noose around its animated neck. If only it would just jump and the whole thing would end. Instead, the chair tips away and it hangs in the air, gasping, wriggling, trying to find a foothold with its short little legs. She closes her eyes as she hears it squeak, hears it whimper. She literally feels that it wants to live. But no one comes to hold it, no one comes to save it. It takes an agonisingly long time until the gasping becomes quieter and quieter and finally dies away completely. Urine dribbles down its limp legs on the floor. In the reflection of the puddle she can make out a corpse swinging leisurely back and forth. A human corpse.
... and this little Piglet fell down the stairs and ne'er got up.
She closes her eyes to avoid seeing it. Even looking through the tears that blur everything would be too cruel. So she waits, hears a frightened squeak, then the thump of a body falling down the stairs. When she dares to open them again, the Tissaia piglet is lying in a pool of blood at the foot of the stairs, panic-stricken eyes fixed on the figure descending with heavy steps, ready to finish what it has just started. The image fades to black, then she hears a loud, pained squeal before the music fades as well. A single image flashes up. Yennefer. Smiling and seemingly overjoyed. Even though she knows she wasn't. Two days after it was taken, Yennefer slit her wrists. Two days of her saying 'Piglet' who knows how many times.
How many times she punched a poor young girl who was already completely down, cowering in a pool of blood from fear and self-loathing?
The screen changes. Red writing flares up, overlaying Yennefer's artificial smile. It torments her. Even though it's so beautiful she barely wants to avert her eyes.
'We'll find you. ' It says on the screen, the letters running like blood dripping from a bathtub rim onto the floor. We'll find you and then we'll see who the Piglet is. The phone rings. Loud, almost deafening in the dark house, barely a second after the video ends.
"Hello?" The line is silent. She hears only a soft crackle. Breathing. "Hello?" Tissaia's voice trembles. It is little more than a shadow of the voice she once taught with. But why should it be any different? After all, she herself is barely more than a shadow of the woman she once was.
"Tissaia, hello?" She breathes a sigh of relief, leaning against the small dresser in the hallway when she hears Rita.
"I thought I'd give you a call tonight. Ask if everything's okay." She hesitates. She's going to hang up. She'll hang up because she can't bear to talk to her.
"I wanted to ask if you needed any help? If I hop in the car now, I'll be around before midnight..."
"That's sweet of you, Rita, but you don't have to," Tissaia replies calmly. Rita's voice on the phone reassures her, yet she is still afraid. Her computer screen casts an eerie blue light into the living room. The twigs and branches that the wind moves back and forth outside the window cast their shadows on the wall. Skeletal hands reaching out their bony fingers to her. She begins to tremble.
"Are you sure?" Rita doesn't sound as if she believes her. Quite the opposite. "You know I'm here for you , Tissaia. Even if those weirdos..." She pauses for a moment, but Tissaia just remains silent. She doesn't know what to say to that. "They sent you that video again, didn't they? Like every year?"
Tissaia nods silently. Rita is the only one who knows about it. Well, the only living person who knows about it. She usually deletes the mails every time after she has watched the video. It's the only way she can be sure no one will ever see it.
"You should call the police, Tissaia," Rita declares firmly. "They are lunatics! Call the police and they'll trace the mail or something and catch them."
"Rita, that..."
"Have you forgotten what they did?"
Tissaia shakes her head. No, she hasn't forgotten.
She remembers the days clearly, the weeks and months that followed the night Yennefer slit her wrists. The meetings with the other teachers, with the parents. The police investigation. No one blamed her. Aretuza has never been a particularly gentle private school. Parents send their children there to learn discipline and a girl like Yennefer should have considered herself lucky to be even admitted.
So it went on for days. Comforting smiles, tea to soothe her trembling hands. Police officers and judges assuring her it was an accident, her husband's gentle hands on her shoulders when she came home and could do nothing but cry.
No one blamed her and the case was closed.
No one, that is, except for her students. Yennefer's friends who never said anything when they called her 'Piglet' and suddenly came to class wearing pig masks.
"Tissaia, they stalked you. They threatened you, they made you quit a job you love..." She nods silently to herself.
Silence turned to insults, insults to assault. She did what was right. She left Aretuza in Ritas hands and fled. She resigned and retreated home. When they came to her home, threw paintballs at her house, smeared 'Piglet' on her garage, she persuaded her husband to move. A new house, a new town, a new school where she could teach. Maybe it would do them good. Maybe it would be the right environment for the baby they so desperately wished for.
"They've been chasing you!" "I know they did, Rita," she murmurs....
They didn't stay long, in the town they moved to. Or the next one. Or the next. They always found her again, scratching her car, graffitiing her house, stuffing threatening letters in her letterbox or worse.
Vilgefortz endured longer than she could have expected from a loving husband. Even though he no longer loved her at that point. After six years, they were staying at his parents' house. She had adopted his name in the hope of making it better, but in the end they just kept silent.
So that he wouldn't have to accuse her of being paranoid and she wouldn't have to accuse him of not taking it all seriously and not loving her anymore.
Although it was the truth. They didn't love each other anymore. She only kept the baby because it was the ninth cycle of IVF and she was exhausted and on the verge of collapsing from it. She thought a baby could change things. Be a future for her, for her marriage, for her whole life. They had been living in the house for nine months at that point and everything was quiet, everything was peaceful, nobody knew who she was or where since she had given up looking for a job.
Then Halloween came. The 31st of October. The anniversary of Yennefer's desperate effort to find peace in the death she never let her have in life.
"I know what they did," Tissaia declares into the phone, clutching it as another crackle pierces through the house. It's just the wood. Just the old wood. It's not footsteps. She knows exactly what footsteps sound like on wooden floors, pawing around upstairs, looking for their prey.
She can remember the footsteps, back then. They ignored the threatening letters, thought the graffiti on the garage was a child's prank. When she found a blood-soaked little baby hat right in their driveway and wanted to call the police, her husband just rolled his eyes and told her he was going to find her a therapist for her paranoia. When the video showed up in her email inbox, as it did every year, she didn't finish watching it. If she had, she would have seen a picture of her house at the very end. At the very end. With herself in the window, one hand resting on her barely visible belly.
But the footsteps during the night, she couldn't ignore them. The bedroom door on the first floor barely scraped across the floor, quietly, but it was loud enough to warn the intruder. To make him hide until she was all the way down the hall. Right in front of the stairs to the ground floor.
"Tissaia? Tissaia!" She doesn't answer. She doesn't answer because she clutches the phone with one hand and the small dresser with the other, pressing her lips together and her eyes shut to keep from crying or sobbing. She does not think of the sight of the figure in the pig mask that suddenly rushed towards her. She does not think of the pain as she fell down the stairs. Not of the moment when she laid at the bottom and looked up at him, saw him slowly descending. Not the moment she realised she was losing the baby, the only pregnancy she would ever have ending in miscarriage. Or when she realises she is going to die.
"They fucking set your house on fire. If you don't get the police, I will!"
"I'll be fine, Rita," Tissaia whispers, her eyes fixed on the wall as if in a daze.
To this day, she doesn't know why she survived the fire. Why not her husband, who was sleeping peacefully in her bed upstairs and had nothing to do with it at all? Why not his parents? Why not his sister and her husband who had come all the way for Halloween? Why not their adorable little son, who just the night before had blithely torn the glittery wrapping paper off chocolates to stuff into his mouth, who at one point had curled up tiredly on her lap and smeared chocolate all over her dress?
Why not her baby?
That's what she asks the doctors. Not what's wrong with the baby. Not why she can barely feel her legs, not if she will ever walk again. She doesn't even ask how they all are because deep down she knows they are dead. She sees it in the faces, in the eyes of the nurses, who furtively wipe away tears. In the eyes of the police officers and the lawyers who come to visit her in hospital to ask her questions. Not in the eyes of the psychiatrist who explains to her that the man in the pig mask never existed. She is in terrible shock and that is understandable after all she has been through. But it was an accident. A fire that broke out, quickly engulfed the whole house and trying to get out, she fell down the stairs. He tells her so many times that she almost believes it herself, and she lets him have his reality. Agrees to more sessions, therapy to deal with all this, hospitalisation if necessary.
She is a 34-year-old widowed woman with no baby or family left. Everything she had in terms of personal possessions was in the house, which is now just ruins and ashes. In return, she has money. Millions from countless life insurance policies are to compensate her for loneliness. More millions from a big old house that was massively over insured in terms of value and inheritances the people she lost. Half the insurance policies they both used to have, and which Rita made such fun of, are paid out to her. And she realises she was wrong. Insurance doesn't offer security. You pay in for years and when the claim comes in, you're still in a wheelchair with no baby and everyone you loved is dead. The only difference is that you get a lot of money out of it.
She makes it through two weeks. The played down handshakes of the insurance clerks telling her how much money they will pay out to her in the next few weeks once everything is processed and then asking her out on a date. She gets through two weeks of picking out headstones and organising a funeral for ashes that have long since blown in the wind. She gets through two weeks of living when she should be the one who is dead. Then she realises that death would be a mercy in comparison, a relief. A redemption. Dying is easy, staying alive and suffering is harder. More brutal.
So she does exactly what Yennefer did. Two weeks after all this, she sits alone in a wheelchair in her hotel room, looking up at the dark November sky and slitting her wrists.
"I'm there for you, Tissaia. You know, just so you don't forget."
"Don't worry, Rita, I won't forget. Have a nice evening and don't worry about me. I'll be fine. And you're probably invited to a party, aren't you?" She knows she is. Not a holiday without Rita having an invitation to some party. "I'd rather stay on the phone and just be there though, if I knew it would make you feel better."
"You know it won't change anything," she tries to explain to her friend, but she just sighs softly. "Then I'll just stick with it until it does make a difference."
"That's sweet of you, Rita, but..." A loud crack. The small lamp on the dresser next to the phone flickers, then goes out. Only her laptop, running on battery power, is still on, casting its brilliant blue light across the living room. "Rita?" she asks quietly, her hand closed anxiously around the phone. "Rita?" Again. But she can hear nothing. She hangs up the phone, dials again... but when she lifts it to her ear there is not even a dial tone.
It's the wind. Or the electricity in the bloody old house. If the electricity doesn't work, then her phone doesn't work and then....
She can't finish the thought. A scratching interrupts her. A loud, piercing scratching, right at the front door. Wind has risen, howling around the house, rain whipping against the windows. The house is still creaking, but this scratching is not a sound of old wood, not a creaking of beams simply coming from the wind. It is real. Someone has caused it.
Silently, Tissaia runs through everything she knows. Every way she could defend herself. The knives in the kitchen. The vase in the living room. Even the lamp standing right in front of her would be a viable striking weapon if she could reach for it. Yet she can't. Her whole body is petrified. She trembles, her legs threaten to give way beneath her. She can only prevent it by clinging to the railing. Lifting her gaze upwards. A shadow glides across the wall. A shadow as of a tall, human figure descending the stairs with heavy steps. "No!" she whispers softly, squeezing her eyes shut. "He's not there," she murmurs to herself, over and over, a never-ending mantra. He is not there, he is not there, he is not there.
When she opens her eyes again, the shadow has disappeared. And with it the heavy footsteps, the creaking from the stairs. It was nothing more than imagination. A trick played on her brain. Maybe her therapist was right. Maybe she really did imagine the figure in the pig mask. Maybe it was just too much after all the pig videos and pig masks in class and after her students grabbed her late at night, put a plastic bag over her head and locked her in a closet as revenge for Yennefer. Maybe it really was just...
All her newfound self-assurance collapses again the moment the scratching at the door starts up again. It gets louder and louder, more and more piercing, until finally....
The door is pushed open. Icy cold wind blows against Tissaia, rain peeks into the hallway. It is dark outside. Very dark. But in the light of the porch light she can make out who is standing in the doorway. What is standing in the doorway. She tries to scream, but no sound escapes her lips. She wants to run away, to get to safety, to hide, but her legs refuse to obey her. She wants to look away, close her eyes, tell herself that it is all just a dream. But even this ridiculous movement is not possible for her. Instead, she can only stare at the figure standing in the doorway. It is huge. Huge. Taller, stronger than her. Dressed in a pink pig costume, face obscured by a matching mask, and holding....
"Tissaia!" the figure's voice booms through the hallway. It is icy. Cold. Eerie. It didn't speak to her then. It just pushed her and as she lay at the foot of the stairs she fainted before she could hear what the figure was muttering to itself.
"Please," she whispers softly, not knowing what exactly she is asking. For her not to die? Or to die, but for it to be quick? That she doesn't have to suffer for long. She does not know. And if she knew, she wouldn't be able to say it anyway. "Please," she whispers only once more. "Please. Please..." Her words fade to a whimper as her gaze falls on the knife the figure is holding. Blood drips from the blade, as well as from the filthy sack it holds in the other.
"You cannot escape me, Tissaia," the massive pig hisses to her, taking a few steps in her direction. "I have found you. You cannot escape me..."
"No!" she whispers, holding her hands in front of her face in a desperate attempt to protect herself. Even though it is in vain. "Please don't! Please don't hurt me," she begs the figure through her tears, slumping down, huddling on the carpet against the cupboard. "Please don't kill me. I want to live, please. I'm so sorry! I should never have done this. Never. I shouldn't have said it, Yennefer! I'm so sorry, so infinitely sorry!" She can't see anything through the tears in her eyes. All she feels is the carpet beneath her and the coldness emanating from the figure now standing right in front of her, a hand outstretched. The last thought she can grasp in her panicked brain is that she should have washed her hair, changed her clothes. This dress is too good to be soiled, with urine or with blood or bile and whatever else pours out of her as the figure works her over with the knife it still holds in its hand. Disembowelling her, like cattle for slaughter, slashing her like Yennefer did her arms back then.
"I'm so sorry," she whimpers softly. Blood rushes in her ears. Her breath comes faster and faster, she cannot calm it down. Everything blurs before her eyes from hyperventilating, but she cannot lift her hands to press them against her mouth.
"Tissaia," the figure's voice booms through her head once more, then everything goes dark.
"Tissaia." She doesn't dare open her eyes. Instead she just probes around her, feeling the soft cover of her couch, a blanket someone has placed over it. A fleece blanket lying over her. "Tissaia, hey. Open your eyes. Look at me, darling. Please."
"Yennefer?" Her voice trembles. Slowly, tentatively, she opens her eyes and is rewarded with a look into Yennefer's beautiful lilac eyes. Even though they are swimming in tears.
"Tissaia." She doesn't speak further, just pulls her close, burying her face in her neck, her hands in her hair.
"Oh Tissaia, I'm so sorry. I... I couldn't have known..."
"What...?" Slowly she raises her hands, pressing gently against Yennefer's chest and immediately she lets go, giving her the chance to fall back into her pillow. The whole living room around them is filled with warm light. Yennefer has turned on the lamps, but set the dimmer as high as it can go. So that the room is gloomy and warm and cosy. She sniffs the air a couple of times and the smell of Chinese food from her favourite take-away joint hits her nose, mixed with Yennefer's perfume of lilac and gooseberries.
"I was just trying to do something fun. I thought it was fun. I didn't know you were afraid of pigs. If I had known what they did to you...Tissaia..." Yennefer sobs, pulling her tightly once more, only to let her go immediately. Tears run down her cheeks in unstoppable rivers, there is nothing in her gaze but a desperate desire for forgiveness. The one she can see in the mirror every morning when she has just risen from bed, watching Yennefer sleep peacefully.
"I'm sorry, Yenna," she breathes, mechanically beginning to stroke Yennefer's back. She doesn't notice the tears on her cheeks until they drip from her chin. "I'm so infinitely sorry. I shouldn't have done that, Yenna. Back then. I should never have called you that. I don't know why I did that. I don't know..."
"It doesn't matter," Yennefer breathes softly into her ear, stroking her back. "It doesn't matter at all!"
"But I..." She carefully releases herself from Yennefer's embrace, fumbles for the sleeves of her cosy full-body pig suit, pulls back the pink fleece fabric until she sees the scars. The slowly fading horizontal stripes on Yennefer's wrists that will forever remind her of what she did. That it was her who made Yennefer want to take her own life. Her with her eternal Piglet. The scars will be there forever, never fully fading, never fully gone. Her guilt is forever burned into Yennefer's flawless olive skin, how could something like that not matter?
"It doesn't matter, Tissaia," Yennefer tells her firmly, pulling back her sleeves. "What does matter is that you get videos like this and don't report it to the police. How many times have you gotten something like that and deleted it? How many times?"
She is silent. "Once, twice? Tissaia, please tell me..."
"Every year, Yenna." She doesn't dare look at her.
"Every year since...?" She nods in silence, her gaze still lowered. She can't see it. How hurt Yennefer is, the look in her eyes as she realises she has betrayed her. "You've been getting this for ten years? Why have you never gone to the police with it, Tissaia? Why...?"
She is silent, shaking her head, eyes lowered to the blanket in her lap, hands clawed into the sleeves of Yennefer's XXL college hoodie she wears instead of the uncomfortable black Sunday dress.
"You're not serious." She remains silent, eyes continuing to lower. She does not stir, gives Yennefer no indication of what she is thinking. Yet somehow she seems to realise.
"You're not seriously telling me that you think you deserve this, Tissaia! That you think you have to do this to yourself and you can't fight back because you have to repent somehow or something. That's complete..."
"Yennefer, please understand..." she puts in, but Yennefer just shakes her head. So rabidly that her wet, black hair flies in all directions. Water hits Tissaia in the face. Wakes her up enough to realise that Yennefer has not taken off her soaked costume, nor even grabbed a towel for her hair. While she is changed and wrapped in blankets on the sofa with their communal dinner set up for them next to her along with a steaming cup of tea.
"You don't deserve this!" she tells her harshly. "No one does, but certainly not you."
"But what I did, Yennefer... the way I treated you when you were my student..."
"Here." She grabs her wrists and holds them in front of her face. The grip is not painfully hard, not so tight that she cannot break free. But she lets it happen. "Look at this." She nods silently, letting her eyes slide over the long, reddish scars on her forearms.
"Yennefer?" she breathes softly feeling tears well up in her eyes, but they do not flow down her cheeks. Instead, Yennefer is with her, gently leaning her forehead against hers, kissing her. Again and again and again, on lips, nose, cheeks, forehead, all over her face, until she no longer thinks about the tears.
"You have suffered enough, Tissaia," she tells her softly. Tissaia feels a warm hand make its way onto her cheek. How the soft fleece fabric of Yennefer's Piglet costume wipes away a tear that has crept onto her cheek. "It's been enough ages ago to make up for everything. Since we have found each other again."
It's a miracle, doctors say, as she wakes up from her coma. A week and a half of unconsciousness, no permanent damage except for a few scars on her arms and in her soul. The nurses agree with them and giggle when they think she is asleep, about how 'Yenna has been sitting by her bed all this time'.
She sees Yennefer again, as a nurse in a hospital in the middle of nowhere. Far away from the place where she tried to take her own life that time by slitting her wrists. The first thing she thinks when she comes up to change the bandages on her arms is that maybe she must have died after all.
The first thing Yennefer asks her after all these years is 'Why?'
"I don't know, Yennefer," she replies in a raspy voice, weak from long sleep and blood loss. "I don't know why I called you Piglet. I regret it, believe me. I keep trying to..." "Fuck Piglet!" Yennefer stares at her with an irritated look and raises her own forearms in front of her face. Pale skin, streaked with bright red, held together by stitches. "Why did you try to kill yourself, Tissaia?"
"Because I killed you." She replies quietly. In the end, she has to ring for another nurse because Yennefer is curled up on her bedspread, crying uncontrollably, and her arms hurt too much to stroke her back and comfort her.
"It wasn't just the Piglet, you know," Yennefer tells her quietly. They lie together on the sofa under the cosy blanket. Yennefer holds her, never taking her eyes off her except for the five minutes it took her to call Geralt. Her ex-boyfriend. The policeman who was on duty today, so she went door to door with his 6-year-old daughter. In a pig costume including a curly tail, bobbing up and down the whole time, while she screams at him through the phone to do more than 'see what he can do' when her girlfriend is threatened by a mentally ill maniac.
"It was the school, the others. I felt ugly and unloved, my family didn't want me. On top of that, I had a crush on the most unattainable woman imaginable, who was married and who I thought was so straight..." She presses a kiss to the tip of her nose and beams at her. But as much as Tissaia wants to, she can't return Yennefer's gaze.
"But I haven't made it any better with this, Yennefer," Tissaia murmurs softly, still half buried in the blanket. It gives her warmth and security. The feeling of love and safety, even though it usually only takes a few minutes for her past to catch up with her again. "It was completely unacceptable of me to call you 'Piglet'. It was cruel. I should never have..." She tries to sit up, but sinks back into the pillows with a faint groan.
"Your back?" She nods silently, feeling her cheeks flush. "Nothing wrong, darling. We stopped at the pharmacy on our ramble and I brought you your heat lotion. I'll bring you some, shall I? Then we'll put some cream on it..." The rest of Yennefer's sentence is lost as she stomps back into the hallway to rummage in her bag of Halloween sweets for Tissaia's prescription heat cream. The bag with the elaborate blood look to make it look like she's a piglet on the prowl for human flesh.
The paralysis turned out to be reversible. A spinal cord concussion, maybe a small bruise from the haematoma. Months of exhausting physiotherapy and she can walk again and no one notices the difference. Only the pain in her back remains. Forever, according to the doctors when they write her a prescription for her heat cream or some compresses.
It's not the life she had before and the hopes and dreams have vanished into thin air. So she tries to get a new life, to become someone else. She changes her name back to Tissaia de Vries and dyes her hair blonde. She doesn't even try to be a teacher anymore, instead she stays at home, writes books, lectors academic literature. She doesn't know how much she earns with it and she doesn't care. Money has lost its value since she has too much of it. But she is beginning to realise the advantages of having too much money. By the time Yennefer and she move into an old cottage and fix it up nicely, that is. Even though they tell themselves it's only until they find something else. Something that might have another bedroom, just in case....
Tissaia sniffles softly and buries her face in the blanket so Yennefer doesn't see the tears in her eyes when she comes back and gives her a bright smile. She won't have another baby. Never again. And maybe it's better that way. She's 15 years older than Yennefer and she cringes just at the thought of having to explain to her child one fine day why Mummy tried to take her own life.
" Turn around?" She nods silently, buries her head in one of the pillows and cries into the soft fabric as Yennefer pulls up her XXL hoodie and carefully applies lotion to her back. The warmth helps against some kind of pain. But not the one that is strongest at the moment.
"I killed you, Yenna. I ruined your life."
"Have you ever asked me how I feel about that?"
She shakes her head. Of course she hasn't.
"Well...," Yennefer drops back onto the sofa, smiling, and holds out an egg roll to her. "Eat, your therapist says you really should eat more. Especially when I'm away for a night." Tissaia nods silently and takes a bite. Three years of therapy and it's still not good. But it's getting better. Maybe that can be enough for now.
"If none of this had happened, I don't think I would have ever met Geralt. And Ciri. Then I wouldn't have been in that hospital that day, and I wouldn't have met the love of my life..."
"Stop it," Tissaia retorts quietly and is about to turn away, but Yennefer holds her head.
"It is the truth," she declares in perfect seriousness. Much more serious than Yennefer is likely to look in a piggy costume. "Maybe not that I saved your life. That's what the others say. But that I love you. And that I want to be with you. I forgive you. I love you. Why can't you do the same?" Yennefer's voice trembles. She looks like she's about to burst into tears. So that Tissaia can't really help but sit up and press a kiss to her lips. Yennefer tastes of overcooked broccoli and beef swimming in curry sauce.
"You can have some of my food if you like it that way," she smiles at her before placing a hand on her cheek and gently returning her kiss.
"I would love to make it up to you, Yenna," Tissaia murmurs an hour and a half later as they lie together wrapped in blankets on the couch, staring wearily at the television. A pumpkin bounces happily across the screen and explains to them the numbers in the numerical range up to ten. They are too tired to wonder why there are children's programmes on so late at night. And too lazy to reach for the remote control to switch to the umpteenth repeat of an episode of Ripper Street. Instead, they alternately reach into Yennefer's bag, which is lying on a plastic bag on the floor, and stuff colourful sweets into their mouths.
"You have nothing to make up for," Yennefer replies quietly, her mouth full of chocolate with a nougat centre. "After all they did to you..."
"I don't know if your classmates would go that far," Tissaia reminds her immediately. "I don't even know if that pig-man I saw then was real or imaginary. Maybe I was just scared and..."
"And then who pushed you down the stairs?" Yennefer gives her a critical look. "And who graffitied your house, scratched your car, sent you that video? Even if you did fall then, the rest wasn't all in your head."
"Threatening me and intimidating me does not mean that someone wants to murder me, Yennefer," Tissaia reminds her gently. Even as she nestles a little closer to Yennefer, a little tighter in her arms.
"Geralt will find them, Tissaia," Yennefer promises her softly. "Geralt will find them, and I swear to you they will not get away unscathed. He promised me that he would take care of it first thing tomorrow. That he'd pick up the laptop tomorrow and see where that email came from. And if they find whoever is behind it, then..." She falls silent, swallows all the hate and contempt in her words and reaches into the bag instead. Deep, very deep. "And until then, I have something for you to counteract the trauma. For both of us, if I'm honest."
"And what would that be, Yennefer?" Tissaia smiles, though she can't help raising a brow sceptically. She loves Yennefer. She loves her and she has lived with her for three years, overjoyed. But there are things she can never quite put aside. And among them is a healthy scepticism towards Yennefer's 'ideas'.
"When I bought it, I didn't know you had... well... such a problem with them. I might as well exchange it and get a puppy or a kitten..."
Yennefer shrugs before pulling something small and pink from the depths of the bag.
"A cuddly toy?" Irritated, Tissaia reaches out a hand and strokes the back of the little piglet with the peculiar collar. It's almost like the necklace with the black star that Yennefer sometimes wears.
"Meet Yennefer."
"Yennefer, this isn't..."
"Don't worry, we'll get a real one from Triss' next litter of pet pigs. But she said I'd better check with you first and... you know how she is." Tissaia nods. She knows what Yennefer is like, more than anything. Someone who just buys a pet pig without saying anything about it. "I thought you said you were going to grant me a wish," she grins as Tissaia's gaze just slides back and forth between her and the little stuffed animal, aghast. "And ever since you called me Piglet, I've always planned to buy a real piglet, name it Yennefer and then march it through the corridors of Aretuza."
"That's mad, Yennefer," Tissaia whispers to her, hugging the piglet close to her chest.
"It might be." Yennefer shrugs and moves closer to her, so close she can feel her warm breath. "Most of all, I'm madly in love with you," she breathes before pressing a kiss to Tissaia's lips.
Neither of them looks out the window. Otherwise they would see the tall form in the pig costume standing on the lawn, eyes fixed firmly through the dimly lit living room window. It is still raining, but the wetness beads off the pig mask with empty eye sockets that hides its face.
"...and this little Piglet fell down the stairs and ne'er got up.", a faint singing resounds in the night. But the wind still howls around the house, swallowing the words entirely, erasing every sound irrevocably and forever.