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“Phil?” Tommy said quietly, peeking from the door into the living room.
His father lifted his eyes from the glowing purple axe he was polishing. An invitation to talk.
Tommy entered the room, his heart beating fast.
“What is it, Tommy?” Phil asked after Tommy’s unusual silent pause.
“I just wondered…” Tommy started. “I… I would like to learn to fly.”
Phil’s blue eyes felt like ice when he was staring Tommy down for a moment before letting his gaze slip down onto the wooden floor.
“No,” he said simply and returned to cleaning his weapon.
Tommy let out a frustrated sigh. “Please.”
“No.”
“But Phil, what do I have my wings for if I can’t fly? They’re useless!”
“Then they’re useless. I’m not teaching you how to fly.”
Tommy turned his hands into fists. “That’s not fair!”
“Life isn’t fair.”
“Fuck you!” Tommy was shaking with anger.
The insult seamlessly bounced off of Phil’s icy defenses.
“I’m gonna ask Wilbur,” Tommy announced and crossed his arms. “He will teach me.”
These words seemed to have more of an effect on Phil. He looked at Tommy again and opened his mouth as if to say something, but no words came out. Not that Tommy would listen anyway. He had already left and slammed the door behind him.
Tears were threatening to spill from his eyes as he walked across the hallway to a closed door on the very end. He knocked twice and entered without getting permission.
The curtains were closed, letting in only a slim ray of sunlight. The bit of light was enough to reveal the amount of dust filling the air. There was a desk full of books, some of which were open, and a chair pushed slightly to the side, as if the owner of the room had left just a moment ago. In the corner of the room was standing a guitar, just in reach from the desk. Tommy knew the owner loved to grab the guitar from where he used to sit at the desk and sing something, and then promptly write it all down.
Tommy paid no attention to any of this right now, he went straight to the bed and sat down there. He leaned on the wall and pulled his knees up to his chin.
“Did he say no again?”
“Yeah,” Tommy peeped.
“I’m sorry.”
Tommy looked to his side and saw his brother’s comforting smile and kind eyes. That’s when the tears finally spilled and he buried his face in his knees.
“Shhh, don’t cry…”
“Why is he like this, Wil?” Tommy looked back at his brother.
Wilbur’s smile turned into an apologetic one. “You know why.”
“It’s not fair.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“He barely talks to me, Wil… Did I do something wrong?”
Wilbur sighed. “Aw Tommy… of course you didn’t do anything wrong. You know that. He knows that. I think he just…” The thought was left hanging in the air for Tommy to finish in his own mind.
The silence of the room felt heavy on Tommy’s shoulders.
“Can you teach me how to fly?” he asked quietly.
“I would love to,” Wilbur said softly, “but you know I… can’t.”
“But Phil did lessons with you,” Tommy tried.
“He did,” Wilbur admitted, “...but you know that didn’t help me.”
“We can learn together…”
Wilbur smiled, but there was nothing happy in his eyes. “I can’t.”
Tommy sobbed. “It’s not fair, it’s not fair…”
“Please… don’t blame me,” Wilbur asked quietly.
“I would never blame you.”
The silence creeped back into the room and Tommy hated every second of it.
“Can we go for a walk?” Tommy asked.
“Sure.”
“To our favorite place,” Tommy added. “The one we always go to.”
“Yes.”
Tommy got off the bed. “Let’s go, Wil.”
Wilbur stood up too. “I’m following you.”
Tommy left the dusty room and closed the door behind himself. Despite the late hour, the house was drowning in sunlight, unlike Wilbur’s sad room.
Without saying a word, Tommy and Wilbur left the house.
The small cottage Tommy called home was standing near a cliffside. Tommy went to the edge and looked down at the waves of deep blue that were crashing and breaking on the rocks. The sun was hanging just above the sea, threatening to fall into it and disappear in its depths at any moment.
But they weren’t here to admire the familiar scenery. Tommy walked along the cliffside, away from the house. He kept looking down, but the height and the rocks made his stomach twist. He stopped walking and turned around to look at Wilbur.
His brother looked like he always did. The wind was playing with the curls of his hair and feathers of his wings. He offered him a smile and Tommy returned it.
After a while they got to the beginning of a path leading down the cliffside to the shore. Tommy went down it without a word. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the last light of the setting sun. The set of footsteps on gravel and moss was getting more and more drowned out by the wild waves of the sea. A seagull shrieked somewhere in the distance.
The path eventually came to an end and Tommy was greeted by a mostly sand covered shore. The ever-hungrier waves were almost able to reach his feet.
Tommy went further alongside the dark stone wall until he was greeted by a hole in it. He went in.
The floor of the cave led strongly uphill, making the rest of it out of reach of the sunlight. Tommy climbed up nevertheless. Higher up, the floor was more horizontal and the cave had more space.
Tommy sat down on the stone floor. He recognized little towers of pebbles that he and Wilbur had built long ago. He saw the waves down below, the deep blue reflecting the sunset. He looked at Wilbur, seated just a bit further away from him, on his favorite spot. His brother was also looking down at the sea and humming some melody. Tommy couldn’t hear it clearly because of the crashing waters.
“You should have brought a book,” Tommy said.
“What for?”
“So you could write your melody down. Like you always do.”
“You know I’m past writing melodies…”
The words stung so Tommy chose to ignore them.
“I’m gonna build a new pebble tower,” Tommy declared. “Stay here. Please.”
“I’m always here.”
Tommy nodded.
He got up and started collecting little rocks and pebbles from around the cave. The place was big enough so that even after the long years of their childhood, there were still enough pebbles to build towers out of.
So, Tommy chose a spot for his new build, not too deep in the caves that he had to be worried that he’d get lost, and started building. A rock on a rock, a pebble on a pebble. It was calming to little Tommy. It felt like everything was alright again. Everything was how it was supposed to be.
And the time was passing and the cave was darker and darker until Tommy couldn’t see anything at all. Worry creeped over him when he realized he had never been here after sunset.
“Wil?” he said into the darkness. “Wil, we might need to go home.”
Tommy stepped out in the direction from which the sounds of water were coming from. He was horrified to find out the exit had been flooded.
He stared at the only way out, completely full of water, and realized: tide.
“Wil?” he said to the darkness, his voice trembling. Every breath was more difficult than the previous one.
The answer he got wasn’t the one he had wished for. From somewhere deep within the caves echoed a zombie groan.
Tommy was shaking. The zombie sounds, together with the smell of rotten flesh and buzzing flies, were nearing closer and Tommy’s only option of escape was diving into the flooded cave entrance. While he could swim on the surface just fine, diving into the dark, wild sea was something entirely different.
With no way to see the zombie, he curled up in a corner and hoped it wouldn’t notice him.
Time was passing and with it, the zombie finally arrived, only for Tommy to realize there were actually two of them. In panic, Tommy grabbed pebbles off of an old pebble tower and started throwing them in the general direction of the zombies. Few of them hit their target, earning annoyed shrieking, but they didn’t seem to be doing enough damage to hold them off.
Tommy was crying without realizing it.
Then, one of the zombies got hit by something way stronger than a simple pebble. Tommy saw the soft blue glow of the weapon stuck in a rotting corpse. A trident. There was splashing of water and a swift blow of a glowing purple axe ended the existence of the second zombie.
“Phil?” Tommy peeped.
“Tommy!” The axe-wielding figure turned to him. “Oh my god.”
Phil knelt down next to Tommy, put his axe aside and hugged him. His clothes were soaking wet but Tommy clung onto him nonetheless.
“You scared the shit out of me, Tommy,” Phil said and his voice was soaring with relief. “I can’t… just not you too…”
“Wil went with me,” Tommy murmured, “I thought we would… I thought…”
His words got lost somewhere in his sobs.
“Tommy…” Phil said softly.
“He said he was always with me,” Tommy said.
Phil sighed. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I heard him sing, Phil…”
Phil was holding him tightly.
“Sometimes I hear him too.”