A MAN'S SORROW CUTS DEEPER

Fight for what's his...

All the blood drained from his veins. This moment in time felt like eternity. He was dreaming. He was sure of it. There was his boat, and at the opposite side of the deck was Sanem, a mere few feet away from it. A dream of a beauty. The vision both symbolic and all too raw for him to digest.

She moved, hinting an uneasiness in having realized  she was not alone... And then, she froze. The man that stood before her was all she'd hopelessly yearned for, and everything she was now afraid of. Can seemed like a mesmerising mirage straight out of her dreams, one which by some virtue of divine miracle became reality. She fought each nerve and cell in her fragile body, and somehow found the strength to breathe again. She stood up, and realized he saw right through her skin and deep into her soul. And that he saw she was too fragile and too weak. She knew he did, because even though the time passed, he was her soulmate and he felt what she felt.

Sanem walked toward him, passed him, and his soft voice called out her name. His voice. The melodiously masculine tone of it. So familiar to her. So unmistakingly Can Divit. It sounded so healing. Yet it felt so painful. She stopped, and turned ever so slightly. And she saw the fear and loneliness in his eyes. Can reached out for her, and to her astonishment his hand trembled. His hand was leaner, and she dared not to look at the rest of him, yet one glance revealed he too was not left unaffected by time since they last saw each other.

It baffled her all the more...

The delicate touch of his hand braised her skin. Her bones shattered by the mere contact. She lost all consciousness in that tiny speck of time. His hand was as delicate as the touch of an Albatross's feather. It all but burned her skin in the cooling breeze. And immediately brought back all the emotions of yearning and longing for him that she thought she burried deep inside. She pulled her hand away from his. She was not well, not by any means, and she knew her voice trembled when she asked why he had come. He said he had returned. He was back. But that he was there because he did not know she would be there too.

Those words... Those harsh words as cold as ice, grasped at her aching heart, and crushed it all over again. She took a deep breath, as painful as it felt, and demanded her tears to remain at bay - at least for this moment. She left, not knowing where to turn. She just walked away, trying to breathe again. And she left him standing there.

How fragile she looked, Can thought. It seemed like hours passed before he could move again. It felt impossible to get back on his boat, not that the boat was too far away. It just felt unbearable to let his own feet to guide him that way. So, he sat on the deck for a while and thought of what had just happened. It seemed like a dream that turned all too real. His last few days flashed before his eyes... He's had nightmares each night since he left, but one dream from a recent night screamed in his soul long after he awoke. And he realized now that this dream was a premonition of this very moment.

In that dream, Can saw a thousand trees, with a single blue ribbon with a pink clip and a pink envelope. The envelope seemed to be of the same kind he had pulled from the Wishing Tree at their agency long ago. In fact, it WAS the same envelope. He pulled the envelope off the tree and pulled out the card. One letter appeared before his very eyes. 'C'. Yet it was smeared with Sanem's tears. He pulled at another envelope, and another, and another... and opened them one by one. He could have sworn the nightmare lasted the whole night, for he went through all of those trees, and left no envelope untouched. To his utter shock each envelope was drenched with Sanem's tears. And eack note bore only one letter.

When Can had woken up that morning the gut in his stomach was all tied in knots. The raw intensity of the nightmare shook him, and he could not calm down. Uneasiness he felt was becoming more severe with every second that passed. So he stepped out of his boat and onto the deck. The moon lit his face, and the pain in his eyes felt as if it brought more and more sorrow with each blink of the eyes. So, he chose to look down, deep into the water and its depths. Much to his surprise, he saw a little bottle not far from his feet. It gleamed in the moonlight, and he saw it contained a note inside. So, he walked slowly into the water and picked up the little bottle. Glad to have his mood improve because the bottle took his thoughts off Sanem, Can opened the bottle. He unfolded the note, and the moonlight hit his face. A single letter adorned the note. 'C'.

The bottle fell from his hands. And his mind went blank. How could any of this be possible to any logically thinking person? Suddenly, Sanem's words rang true in his mind and heart. Sometimes logic goes beyond all reason... He closed his eyes. And realized he no longer held the bottle. He reached down again, yet with the moonlight crushing the waves he had created he could not see where the bottle had landed. He reached the bottom of the shore underneath his feet. And then, he froze. His hands pulled out 3, no, 7, no, close to 10 little bottles. He gathered them all, ensuring he took all he had found, memorized the spot he found them in so he could look for more in the daylight, and went back to his boat. Pulling out one note after another from the bittle, he was left with hands filled with notes that all bore one letter. 'C'...

No longer able to look at the notes, he brought his hands to his face. He felt his own tears stream down his cheeks. And then, he woke up. Shocked, scared, and beside himself, Can ran his hands through his hair, realizing just how affected he must have been by his still-existent longing for Sanem to have experienced a nightmare within a nightmare...

Standing up on the deck beside his boat now, Can looked up at the sky above Istanbul. He needed to stay! For himself and for Sanem as well! The night filled with both nightmares seemed like the sign his Fate brought to him to make it clear he still loved her. At exactly the time he needed to understant it. And he realized he would need to fight for what would stand on his path. Fight for what was his. But not that day. This day was just too much. Too much for him, and too much for his aching heart. So he made the decision to leave. To leave and never look back.

And he would have, if it wasn't for Ceycey calling out his name as if someone's life depended on it. Because it did...