-18 - Q -desire- -

The girl stepped closer, holding out the paper. “It’s from my brother. He’s sick again. He asked me to write down his question for you.”

Her name was Elara, and for seventy-three years she had lived in the gray village of Llowen, where the sky was always the color of wet slate and the sea below gnashed its teeth against the rocks. The villagers called her “Q” because she had been the question master in the schoolhouse for four decades. She had answered every why, how, and when until her voice grew thin as thread. But she had never once answered the only question that mattered to her. -18 - Q -Desire-

“Right now,” she said, “I want to walk you back down the path so your mother doesn’t worry.” The girl stepped closer, holding out the paper

But now, at the edge, she felt a new desire. Not for youth or love or escape. Something stranger. He asked me to write down his question for you

The old woman on the cliff’s edge had one final desire.

She desired to not want.

Elara looked past the girl, past the cliff, past the gray sea to the place where the sky touched nothing at all. She thought of her desire for emptiness. She thought of the boy’s question, still warm in her hand. She thought of seventy-three years of why.