The First Goodbye
863 Words
The first person Lucian ever let himself need left without warning.
Her name was Anya.
She arrived at Havensport on a Tuesday afternoon in early harmattan, when the air was dry and the sun hung low and pale in the sky. Lucian noticed her before anyone told him who she was because she walked differently—slow, careful, as if she were listening to the ground before stepping on it.
She was seventeen. Nearly grown, by the orphanage’s standards. Too old to cry loudly, too young to have learned how not to care.
They put her in the bed beside Lucian’s.
“She’ll be staying with us,” Sister Agnes said. “Show her the rules.”
Lucian nodded.
Anya sat on the edge of her bed, hands clasped tightly together. Her hair was braided neatly, but strands escaped and brushed her cheeks. She looked around the dormitory with eyes that did not hide their fear.
That night, Lucian lay awake, as he always did.
Anya did not sleep.
He could hear her breathing—uneven, shallow, as if she were afraid of what might happen if she closed her eyes.
“Do they turn off the lights every night?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Lucian replied quietly.
“How long?”
“All night.”
She was silent for a moment.
“Oh.”
Lucian waited.
“Does it ever get easier?” she asked.
Lucian did not answer right away.
“No,” he said finally.
Anya turned her head to look at him.
“You’re honest,” she said.
Lucian shrugged.
It wasn’t honesty. It was experience.
Over the next weeks, Anya became part of his routine.
They sat together during meals, their shoulders brushing. They walked to school side by side. She talked when the silence grew heavy, filling it with stories—some true, some clearly softened for survival.
She had lived with her aunt once. Then a foster family. Then another. Each goodbye chipped away at her voice, leaving it quieter than it should have been for someone her age.
“I hate packing,” she told him one afternoon as they folded laundry. “It makes everything feel temporary.”
Lucian nodded.
He had never unpacked fully in his life.
Anya laughed sometimes—quick, bright bursts that surprised him. She laughed when Lucian corrected her math. When he pointed out constellations in the sky he had learned from a torn book in the library. When he told her dry observations about people that were far older than him.
“You’re strange,” she said once, smiling. “In a good way.”
No one had ever said that to him before.
Lucian felt something warm and dangerous stir in his chest.
Trust.
He tried to ignore it.
Anya had nightmares.
Lucian learned this when she shook him awake one night, her hand trembling against his arm.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay,” he said quickly.
She sat on the floor, knees drawn to her chest, tears streaming down her face without sound.
“They always leave,” she said. “Every time I think maybe this one will stay… they don’t.”
Lucian sat up.
He did not touch her.
But he stayed awake until her breathing slowed.
From then on, Anya sat beside him during the worst nights. They did not talk. They did not cry loudly. They simply existed near each other, sharing the burden of being unwanted together.
Lucian did not name what they were.
Sibling felt too permanent.
Friend felt too fragile.
So he called it temporary safety.
And then, one morning, Anya was gone.
Her bed was made perfectly. Her belongings missing. The space beside Lucian felt wrong—too empty, too exposed.
He stood frozen.
“Where’s Anya?” he asked Sister Agnes.
“She’s been placed,” she replied briskly. “A family from the city.”
Lucian’s throat tightened.
“When will she come back?”
Sister Agnes hesitated.
“She won’t.”
The words hit him harder than he expected.
He nodded.
That was what he always did.
No goodbye.
No note.
No last glance.
Just absence.
Lucian sat on his bed that night, staring at the space where Anya had been. He remembered her laughter, the way she whispered questions in the dark, the way her presence had made the nights slightly less unbearable.
He felt the ache rise.
And then—something new.
Fear.
Because this time, the pain came from letting someone in.
From believing, even briefly, that something might last.
Lucian pressed his hands together tightly, nails digging into his palms.
He did not cry.
He did not ask questions.
He did not let anyone see the way his chest felt hollowed out.
He learned the lesson quickly.
The first goodbye is never the last.
But it is the one that teaches you how to leave before being left.
From that day on, Lucian loved with half his heart and guarded the rest like a wound that had learned how to hide.
Because permanence was a lie.
And goodbye was inevitable.
- Writer
