Saying Goodbye

Writers: Heather
Date Posted: 9th January 2024
Series: This is How a Heart Breaks

Characters: Gyllie, Dysmin
Description: Dysmin reflects on his marriage to Gyllian and why it was doomed from the start.
Location: Amber Hills Hold, Barrier Lake Weyrhold
Date: month 10, day 1 of Turn 10
Notes: Mentioned: Gyllie, H’riv
This references the events of “Last Chance,” “The Other Man,” “Keeping Promises,” and “Red Flags” timelined on Gyllie’s persona page.

Dysmin stared down at his hands, slowly turning them over until he was looking at his palms. He studied the lines that ran across them, he noticed the callouses on the pads of his fingers from playing gitar. These were the hands of a Master Harper, they were used to create and compose… But they were also used to hurt and destroy.

He curled his hands into fists, his eyes squeezing shut as he thought about the bruises on Gyllie’s face. Eyllian’s face.

Why had he thought marrying Eyllian’s twin sister was a good idea?

Guilt crept in as he considered the answer. It was an ugly, dirty answer, one that he would probably never say aloud.

He had married Gyllie because she looked identical to Eyllian. It was like having a piece of his lovely wife with him. Marrying Gyllie had been his way of holding on to the woman he loved but…. He just hadn’t anticipated how _different_ Gyllie was to his sweet Eyllie.

Gyllie was infuriatingly different. She was brash, and unladylike, and the fact that he kept coming home to find some random man in their bed was really the nail in the coffin of them ever having a real relationship.

**I _tried_ to love her,** he thought, flexing his hands open. After he had slipped and called her “Eyllian” on their wedding day he had doubled down on his resolve to never do that again and to love her for who she was.

He’d done a good job of it, he thought, until… Well, until that night they were making love and he’d done _it_ again… In the throws of passion, he’d called her Eyllie. It had been an honest slip, he really hadn’t even been thinking of Eyllian but that hadn’t mattered to Gyllie.

The next sevenday he’d come home to find Gyllian in their bed with another man. That man had been the first of many. He’d been so angry, so hurt and betrayed, that he’d slapped her before the thought even crossed his mind. He’d never hit a woman before and doing so had rocked him to his core. Dysmin had never thought himself capable of violence against a woman but…

The look in her eyes the first time he’d struck her still haunted him.

Things between them had gotten so bad they’d moved to Barrier Lake to try and get a fresh start and yet… He’d still come home countless times to find Gyllie with another man.

That last one… What had his name been… H’riv? Had been the deepest cut because since then Gyllie had been different. Before when he’d caught her with a man, nothing much had changed but this time… She was a hollowed-out husk lacking any of the fire and defiance from before. Dysmin’s gut told him that unlike all of the other men, Gyllie had actually been in love with the brownrider.

**What am I doing?** Dysmin questioned himself for the millionth time as he shoved his hands through his hair. **Why am I clinging to this marriage?** It was clear that neither one of them wanted to be in it.

At first, Dysmin had told himself that he clung to his marriage with Gyllie because of his holdbred upbringing. Divorce just wasn’t an option. But that wasn’t the reason he clung and he knew it. The real reason he didn’t release Gyllie from the marriage was because of Eyllian. If he divorced Gyllie it would mean finally saying goodbye to Eyllie’s memory.

Was he ready to do that?

Maybe. But there was somewhere he needed to go first.

~*~

Amber Hills.

The wind was biting as it whipped along the hillside and down into the gulch where Gyllian and Eyllian’s parents lived out a meager life under the shadow of Amber Hills Hold.

On this barren hillside a grave maker stood overlooking the rolling landscape below. Dysmin sighed as he crouched down in front of the grave and laid a new bouquet of flowers. He allowed himself a moment to think back to the last time he’d seen Eyllian, when things had been good.

She had been beautiful, swelled with his child, glowing and radiant from finally getting pregnant after Turns of trying. They’d had baby names picked out for months. Dysmillia for a girl and Eysmian for a boy… He reached out a finger and traced the name “Dysmillia” that was etched into the wooden marker beneath Eyllian’s name.

“Well, Eyllie-girl, this is it. I tried to honor your promise. You made me promise that if anything should happen to you that I would marry Gyllie. That I would show her the same love and care that I had shown you.” He exhaled and squinted up at the sky for a moment. “I failed miserably, Eyllie. Seeing you when I looked at her… Made things impossible. I didn’t set out to make her life hard, to kill her spirit but… That’s what I did.”

“I can’t do it anymore. This isn’t what you would have wanted for either of us. So I’ve decided to tell Gyllie we should divorce. To free her. She’s at the Weyr now, where we all knew she really belonged. She thrives there around the different types of people. Without me there, I think she could be happy. But to free her…. I have to free your memory as well.”

The words became lodged in his chest. Hot, scalding tears flooded his eyes.

“This is my last visit. I love you and Dysmillia more than words can say. And since words are my life, I think that’s a testament to the mark you two have made on my life.” Dysmin blinked rapidly against the tears.

“Ere the light of the morning rises,

Faster than dragon wings can fly,

Stretching along the oceans’ horizons,

Written in the stars of the midnight sky,

My love for you is such that will never die.”

Bending forward he pressed his lips to the grave marker.

“Goodbye, Eyllian.”

Last updated on the January 10th 2024

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Saying Goodbye