Becoming: Trude from the Ruins

The rain had already soaked through Trude's sleeves by the time she stepped through the rusted gate of St. Elerra Cemetery. Her boots sunk into the mud, but she kept walking, her fingers curled around a folded letter in her coat pocket — a letter she'd written and rewritten, but never sent.

A flash of lightning lit up the crooked gravestones. Somewhere under that electric sky, a willow tree wept above the grave she hadn’t come to visit. Not anyone else's. Her own. The one she dug years ago in silence.

She stood there, shivering, not from the cold but from memory.

They had all called her Trude then.

Before the accident. Before the fire. Before silence swallowed her whole.

The town forgot. Or chose to. No one said her name anymore.

She took the letter from her pocket. The ink had smudged a little at the corners. She had imagined this moment hundreds of times, each version different. Sometimes, she spoke aloud. Sometimes, she screamed. Today, she just held it like a relic. Proof that she had something left to say.

"To the girl I used to be," the letter began.

She didn’t read it. She knew every word. Knew the tremble in her penmanship when she wrote the part about the fire. About her sister. About the scream she swallowed and the one she didn't.

She pressed the letter into the soil.

The willow above her shifted, leaves sighing like a voice half-remembered.

Once, she had danced under this tree.

Once, there had been music.

Her sister's laugh — brittle and brave — had echoed through the hollow.

It had been a birthday. Trude couldn’t remember whose. Maybe both of theirs. They were twins, after all. Minutes apart, but worlds in between.

Clara had always been louder. Sharper. Brighter.

But Trude saw things Clara didn’t. Shadows in corners. Names in the bark of trees. Shapes in the smoke.

The fire came the summer the lake dried up.

No one talked about the heat, but it cracked the roads and curled the paint from every doorframe.

Trude remembered the scent first. Burning pine. Then the roar. Then the screaming.

She had been too late. She had gotten Clara out. But the house fell behind them.

So did the dog. The piano. The letter she'd meant to send.

She'd never speak again after that. Not really. Only to the willow. Only in dreams.

Years passed like whispers.

She moved to a city. Changed her name. Learned to exist without mirrors or birthdays. People called her Ruth now. Sometimes Ellie. Never Trude.

But every year, on this date, she returned. Silent. Soaking. Shaking.

"You should come inside," said a voice.

She turned.

A man stood a few paces behind her, umbrella useless against the slant of the rain. He wore a caretaker's badge. His hair was silver, his eyes soft.

"It gets dangerous in storms," he said, nodding toward the lightning.

She didn’t speak.

He didn’t expect her to. "That your sister?" he asked, glancing at the grave.

She nodded once.

He lowered his voice. "She used to come by here too. Back when they said you were dead. Before people stopped asking questions."

She looked up. Her lips parted, but no sound came.

He didn’t push.

"You can stay as long as you like. I’ll be in the chapel if you need dry clothes."

He turned and left.

Trude stayed.

The ground around the grave had softened. The letter sank in.

She imagined roots curling around her words, carrying them deep.

She imagined Clara reading it. Laughing. Crying. Forgiving.

The willow bowed. She bowed back.

And then she walked. Out of the mud. Past the rusted gate. Into something like light.

Not Trude.

Not TRuth.

But someone in between.

Someone becoming.

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