Work Text:
1.
The first time that they meet, he thinks that she reminds him of something. He cannot remember what, exactly, thinks that perhaps it is an image from a dream.
2.
He has so much to do for someone so young, she thinks. But of course the responsibilities of his entire family are on his shoulders now. She thinks of the nights he sits up balancing the books, and the daylight hours when he spins music from his fingers, the notes like raindrops falling forth, telling his story in a language other than the spoken. She wonders how, though everyone else listens in rapt silence when he plays, no one else has really heard.
3.
Her friend, the one with the bob cut, has a habit of apologizing with every other breath. Even he notices that, from the few times they meet, when he still had spare time that had not been soaked up by his work and family duties. But she herself is very different from that, in spite of the softness of her words.
He says to her, as an observation and partially out of curiosity, I have never heard you say that you were sorry.
4.
You can understand something and wish it were otherwise, at the same time.
The sound of her reply surprises herself, though she has not raised her voice or changed her tone. We cannot be sorry if we are set on not changing our course.
5.
Later, when they have come to know each other better: two in the morning, summer rain outside the window, the book he is reading held in one hand. He combs through her long hair with the other, unconsciously, and it will be many more minutes before he realizes he is doing so, and how carefully she has tried to keep the smile small and contained on her face.
The next week she will pay him back in kind, and he will not know until someone at rehearsal points out that he is about five times fluffier than usual.
6.
Happiness is something that happens whether or not it has been beckoned for, whether or not the next moment will permit for its existence. If we worried about these kinds of things, then there never would have been any illumination in the dark.
7.
(Where are you?)
8.
He remembers, finally—the first time that he saw her, the simplicity and cleanness of her smile, her face, the light blue collar of her dress. She reminded him of the gentleness of light diffracting through water, the illumination of sun shining through the sea.
9.
On the first clear day after the end of winter, she opens her hands to the wind and water, says something toward the horizon meant for no one to hear. The sun is warm, and she thinks that after all she should be smiling. After a while she turns and goes back the way she came, the city skyline gleaming under a gradient of a thousand small clouds, the ground humming and vibrating beneath her feet, the crashing of waves behind her a thousand languages insistent on being spoken. She feels the sting of tears in her eyes but that is also something that comes whether we ask for it or not, that is the proof that we have been happy. The sky is endless, resonant blue. The entire world is singing.
End