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“Hello,” says the being in the field. He is blue and golden-eyed and he glows.
“Hi,” you say. You don’t know him, but you will.
Somehow, you know this: there will come a day when you cannot bear to be apart.
“I was once told,” says the being, “that clouds can be things other than clouds. Was it you who told me that?”
“I haven’t met you yet, so… I don’t think so. Maybe someday though,” you say. You sit down next to him and realize he is floating just slightly above the golden grass. “Time is weird here.”
“Isn’t it everywhere?” He is resting his head on his knees and looking at the sky. “I can’t see the clouds as things other than clouds. Can you?”
You lean back on your elbows to see. Today there are two more suns than you’re used to—one red and one blue alongside familiar yellow—but that’s alright because the sky itself is a very deep and bright blue, and the clouds are white and puffy. You tilt your head to the side.
“Kind of. You see that one?” You point at a cloud and hope he can see which one you’re referring to. “It’s a camel.”
The being tilts his head, trying for the same angle as you. Seeing how his brow furrows, you scoot closer to him until your shoulder rubs against his. For a second you think this should be monumental, but you’re not sure why. “Look, see, those are the humps, and there’s its head,” you say, tracing the figure with your finger. “Do you see it?”
The being purses his lips. “No.”
You sigh.
“I also don’t know what a camel is. Will you tell me?”
“Later, later, I think.” You stare at the clouds until the camel stops looking like one. “Hey, how come you know me, but I don’t know you?”
“I don’t know you.” Then, quieter, “not yet.” So he gets that feeling too, huh?
“Well, you talk like you do.”
You feel more than see him turn to you, studying your profile. It’s familiar, the feeling of his gaze on you.
“I don’t know you,” he stresses. “That, I am sure of.” He brings a hand to his chin. “Still, I know there is something important about you. About us… Or is it that there will be?” It’s his turn to sigh. “I forget.”
“Scatterbrain.” The word rolls off your tongue without your even having to think it, like it’s habit.
The being perks up. “I know that word,” he says. “I’ve heard you call me it before. Though, I must admit, it always feels hypocritical.” The smallest hint of a smile plays on his lips.
“That’s mean!” The problem is that the being’s smile is contagious, so you’re smiling even confused as you are, and that only makes the being’s smile a little brighter. It makes all of him brighter, actually. “Come on, how’s that possible? You just said we don’t know each other!”
“I know. But it’s… almost like an echo. Your voice, your face, your smile. They’re all so familiar to me. I don’t know you, but it feels as if I remember you. Something of you is here—” his finger goes to tap at his temple, but it stops for a second, uncertainly, before heading down to his chest and tapping there instead— “Here.” He lays his palm flat over where his heart would be.
And it’s the funniest thing, but you were thinking the same about him. A warm feeling rushes through you until you fear you might combust if you don’t look away from him. Man, does he know he glows like that?
Back to the sky you turn your gaze, and you feel him do the same.
“Time is weird here,” says the being plainly, after a while.
“Time is weird here,” you say too.
It isn’t strange when your hand finds his, or maybe it’s his hand that finds yours, or both your hands find each other at once, and they lay one atop the other in the space between you. It occurs to you at some point (and you have no way of knowing how long it’s been that you’ve been sitting like this in comfortable silence, because now there are stars peeking out from behind the clouds of that still brilliant, still three-sunned sky) to ask for his name, but you set the thought aside. It doesn’t seem as important as the fact of his hand in yours.
When you wake you don’t remember any of this. (Far, far away, entombed in crystal and slumbering endlessly, neither does the being.) In your chest, for a reason unknown to you, there is the oddest sense of something missing, the feeling of something gained and then lost, like water slipping through your fingers—
You almost fall off the hammock when your sister yells to hurry downstairs. You are already late for school.