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Venti was not one who had much to spare. He would twaddle around, swing by here and there with a breezy chuckle; but there was this speck on his demeanor that could make the keen eye realize how hollow it was.
Such empty gleefulness. The smile on his face was not for others to feel joyous upon, but a facade in the name of freedom; the bravery and endurance he took upon himself the need to have.
Because when he barges into the streets, flute carefully held by his fingers; he knows the pain of their cold indifference is best dealt with by the idea that he is playing by himself.
He was no beggar to the cents the people threw in the cheap cloth he called a hat. He was not giving away time, wasting it to unthankful, underappreciating ears. No. The melody recorded by memory was meant to be danced as a solo. No other needed to pay attention to it.
Yet, reality was cruel in the face of dreams. As he counted the amount of bread he could buy the next day, the physical growl within grew even angrier, pained; eating him away and driving him farther away from that comforting and lonely stage.
Venti looked down at the flowing river from the wooden bridge he has been standing on all day long. Despite the early crowd of people, who meet and go between the joints of the different neighborhoods; the dangers of the night time had frightenened any rational mind away.
But could there be any rationality left in a mind that dares to spare for himself when it is hungry? What a laughable question. Venti himself could feel the absurdity crackling in his ears. Only the drunks and the homeless would try to find warmth in what seem dreams of snow. The drunks, the homeless, and Venti.
So perhaps you too would be surprised; how such a young age could be outside at that frightening time.
Morning was far away from the reflection in the water. Indeed, at the time, only the moon shone bright in the sky of the river. It gave enough light so he could distinguish at a nearby, sturdy rock in the shore highlights of emerald hair.
From a distance, Venti couldn't be sure of the height, or a proper face, but there was some softness to the features, a sense of petite structure. He could tell, it was only a boy.
Only a boy, but the boy laid as if eroding his skin away into the ground; as a man that might as well had lived a 100 years in debt with the devil.
Venti stared as if the image was laid in a surrealist sculpture. However, abandonment comes at every size and at every age. Children dying on the street shouldn't amuse; only sadden him.
Indeed. Sad he was. That sentiment came naturally from somewhere within. He didn't want to call it pity, nor sympathy; but he couldn't call it empathy either. He knew no name that could fit the experience, when he gazed down upon such a desperating reality.
Reality was cruel. Particularly so, when Venti had nothing real to spare. Nothing, but a dream.
He breathed into the decaying season, as he opened and took his instrument out again.
Uncertainty seeped under his skin, but there was no stopping the beating rage inside his chest. Frustration that pushed him to try to give the boy the only fleeting idea he had left. If he didn’t, how dare he sleep until tomorrow comes while still being a human.
Leaving the case empty in front of his feet, he took the routinary stance. On cue, the fingers pressed gently on the notes.
He sang into the wind.
The tune slowly blew the leaves away. With them, Venti hoped the melody carried to that boy, the only one who had a reserved seat in the audience of his dreams.
And, for the first time in a long while, when Venti smiled into the beak of the flute, it wasn't hollow. Instead, it was filled with sorrow. It was a grief so compassionate, he yearned it could soften the soreness of the dying boy away.
The last key echoed within the picture, and he felt ridiculous in retrospect as he wished to the stars blinking above him that it'd drag Venti's life out himself and spare wings alive into the child's heart.
He snapped back to the physical realm, searching for a sign that his thoughts had been heard.
There was no body on top of the rock anymore, no sign of life; the boy was gone.
Doubt and panic settle at the back of his throat, twirling in his stomach.
Was it an illusion? An imagery played by death to scare him awake from hunger and cold?
“Hey,” the voice was weak, and raspy, yet clear and deep. Venti looked downwards to gaze at the source, to find amber gems staring up into his soul.
“You are not a dream.”
The words slipped from his mouth and into the flowing water. He couldn’t take them back out of shame, they were long gone, perhaps already deeply lost in the ocean.
“I’m real,” the strange shadow below him didn’t flinch an inch, “I’m alive-” thanks to you.
“Of course,” Venti blinked, pinching his own fingers unconsciously, as if that would say otherwise. But, no. It hurt.
The boy was real.
He felt stunned by the realization, mesmerized beyond words. Relieved but saddened all over again. It was incredulous.
This (real) wood-like voice reached him again despite the overwhelming gap. “That tune…”
The following silence got swallowed into his system as poison. His body wouldn’t listen to him; his feet were soaring in the sky, his grip tight to the bridge, all of his nerves on the edge with anticipation.
“Did you listen?”
The one below looked surprised for a second, before nodding and coughing his words. “Yes. I did.”
The ruffles of the winds were refreshing to the warmth filling his chest, it burnt his smile. “Thank you.”
And a sparkle swirled anew in that kid’s sunset eyes, a sparkle that had been long lost to the guilt and misery of his own neverending night.
“Could I hear it again?”
It was a plea spoken by dry lips and searched for by calloused hands.
Yet, as much as Venti wanted to reach back to him, he felt his own body weary, drained from air and energy.
He turned his back to put everything back in order again, his most loved possession in place. “I will play again when the sun rises; but I can’t promise that it’ll be here.”
And as he closed his only treasure, he closed his eyes to the shattered boy’s heart.
“Then,” the boy’s words came in a yell, bringing back the moon’s gaze over him, “can I follow you?”
Venti turned around, bitterness and worry coming in his tongue in the form of countless questions.
He asked first, “don’t you have somewhere else to pass this evening?”
The boy shook his head, and replied. “I’ve always been living on my feet, and tonight I only have that rock to call my bed.”
Venti looked over where he had seen him the first time, and sighed.
He asked again, “don’t you have someone waiting for you?”
And again, the boy shook his head, and mourned. “All the ones who once loved me are long gone; and for all these years, I’ve carried their quiet memory so that they never have to wait to be reunited with me.”
The answer weighed down Venti’s heart, agonizing to the point he wasn’t sure if he could hear another response. But he did it anyway.
He asked for the third time, “don’t you have a dream for yourself, a motive to do something in this world?”
And yet, for the third time, the boy shook his head and said with a bleak simplicity. “I only live because I’m not dead; and my only responsibility to this world is to survive to pay the debt of those who fought alongside me.”
Venti regretted ever asking, and wondered, as someone older, how could he take so much responsability for even meddling so deeply into the boy’s life? However, the boy didn’t wait for his answer, nor did he really care for sympathy.
The boy said, “for long, I bore no crave that tied me down; I had all this meaningless freedom for I held no destination. I roamed the world in between wars without ever going anywhere significant. But your music, your melody has given me a different outlook for tomorrow. A dream to witness yours come true. So, please, let me come with you.”
Venti’s brow furrowed in a way it hadn’t been sincere so long, and he sighed. “Boy, if you come with me, you’ll find I’ve got nothing for you. I’ve got no food on my table, no water in my cups, and the roof that shelters me is everchanging in another city far from where you’ve ever known. Were you to follow me, nothing would change, for there’s nothing I can spare to you.”
Yet, the kid was stubborn, like any other kid has ever been, as he shook his head a last time.
“I don’t care for food, nor water, or a roof. I’ve never known those things, and I don’t desire them. All I care is for a reason, and that is you. I beg, and I promise for this body that only knows how to be, that I will make it serve you to the point it’ll never be a burden for you.”
So, please, let me come with you.
Venti still felt unsure in the beating of his heart, but he knew it was inevitable; he brought it upon himself the moment he played the first note.
Dawn was beggining upon them, and the first escense of morning dew dusted the air.
“Tell me your name over breakfast,” Venti said. “I know a place where to get bread.”
And if his sight blinded by the horizon didn’t fool him, he could have swore he saw a smile like his own.
It was sweet like a dream.