There I sat, alone in a bathroom I didn't know, while the two people who used to stand closest to me were discussing how to separate Master and me forever. I could barely believe my best friend and my husband could be like this. 

I took my wedding ring off my finger and studied it. I used to wear it over my gloves, but when I stopped wearing them for Master, Ashley made it a bit smaller for me so I could wear it on my bare finger. The ring was made of white gold and it had a little gem in it. It wasn't a normal gem: if you looked really closely, you could see a picture of our wedding in every facet. The gems were made during our honeymoon and put on our rings when we were back. In the biggest picture you could see me and Rik walking into the hall, arm in arm: him wearing a black suit, me wearing my self-made wedding dress, that was black with stars in all shades of green. I had been working on it for months.

Green means happiness in my mind, and happy I certainly was. Literally everything about our wedding had been perfect: the hall, the guests, the cake, the weather and the music of course. My mother had demonstrated that she could still play the euphonium well and she had played "Charm of the Seer" and "Day Nine: Playground", both waltzes by Ayreon. Me and Rik had danced as if there was no tomorrow. It was like a fairy tale. 

Those golden days back then. I had been careful to not gain any weight since that day. I wanted to look as good on stage as I did on that wonderful day. But here in the bathroom, I looked down and noticed that I had failed. My plain white dress was too tight to be beautiful, but when I first wore it, it had fit perfectly. Seeing I lost that ideal made me sad.

However, I thought, I won't go back on stage anyway. Master will come and get me out of here and take me home. It felt ridiculous to pick up my old, crazy life, traveling from stage to stage, from concert hall to concert hall, dive into my studio HerrieHuis for a year to compose and record a new album and get back to touring. I couldn't believe how the stressful nature of that life hadn't driven me completely insane. It was clear that living with Master was so much better for me. 

I put my ring back on my finger and started swinging my legs back and forth, carefully, because the edge of the bathtub was thin. Out of the window I could see the houses on the other side of the street. Above those houses was the blue sky. It was so blue that it looked like God just took an enormous piece of blue paper and glued it to the underside of Heaven. There was not a single cloud up there. I wondered if Master located me already, and whether he would convince Kasper and Rik to let me go, or just secretly take me away.