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Nine years of dinners. Thousands of cups of tea. Nine springs.
I met you in the first spring, drinking tea in one of the local bakeries. It was a sunny morning, and it seems like I've been looking at the way the sun's rays shine on the metal spoon sticking out of your white cup for an eternity. The T-shirt you were wearing was black, it seemed to resist the rays, devouring them especially intensely at this frozen moment in time. I couldn't help but smile when I saw you trying to bite off too big a piece of a sandwich. To be honest, everything around you seemed small, and you were a huge black spot in this ginger-and-white day. I looked at my reflection in the glass of the window. The light made my red hair almost beige, that day I wore a white shirt because it was too hot. The sun hung over the planet, threatening to burn it. I wouldn't mind. Let it burn to hell, I would have less work. That day I felt tired that morning and tried to wake up by looking at objects around and people's clothes. I unfocused my gaze and pushed away those thoughts that insisted on ending my life. I had to do something right now, otherwise I would have to listen to them, but I enjoyed the beige morning too much and would like to look at the orange day and the red evening, and then maybe I will make up my mind.
"That was a pretty big sandwich even for me," said the black spot that blocked out all the sun cheerfully.
Reality was fighting with thoughts, so reality wanted me to live? Am I needed here? I looked up to the collar of his black T-shirt. "It's quite a hot day to eat such big sandwiches, isn't it? I myself would prefer a big cold drink," the cup of tea in my hand shone contradictory, "Although I came here to drink orange tea, because it coincides with the color of the morning." I ventured to look up and met a somewhat evil face but promising exceptionally good intentions.
"I was just terribly hungry. The area is unfamiliar, I was driving past from a night party, this bakery is the first thing that caught my eye. How about getting some big cold drinks?" He waved the car keys in front of my nose. The glare blinded me for a moment.
"I can show you place. I've been living here all my life." Oh, I'm living my life. I live life. Life is alive, alive, alive. "Alive Hux," I reached up my hand before I realized that I had dragged the endings of my thought into speech.
The guy laughed, shaking my hand. "And I'm not really alive due to this damned heat. I'm Kylo. And I'll borrow a part of your life if you don't mind. Go!"
And we went.
Nine years. Hundreds of miles, a little more than three thousand encounters with the sun, God knows how many switched thoughts and gears. And I. Still living Hux. My life wasn't borrowed, no. I borrowed someone else's, systematically devouring all the happiness that I can find. Happiness did not end. The heat of the first day crept behind us through time. And behind it crept my despair. It lurked in the sand of the beaches when we drank those cold drinks; in the walls of the house when I was first kissed; behind the glass of the office when I was promoted to the highest position; under the hood of his car, when we were rushing into the distance of deserts at crazy speed. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was looking for something in these empty ones. Something that he never had, but that he would very much like to own. And me? I owned everything because I borrowed part of the happiness of life, but since it was someone else's happiness, I could not overcome my own despair. Time was creeping behind me.
It's a hot evening again. Again, I'm in a white shirt, the top button of which I undid. I wouldn't want to die from suffocation, but how would I want to die? A light breeze brushed my hair. I still had time to inhale its coolness before I realized: cold, cold drink, bubbles, stream.
"Hello, Kylo? I'll be in town for a while. Yes, I'll be back, but it's too late. Don't wait for me, go to bed. But leave me dinner!" Nine springs with an auto nearby, and I never learned to drive. I need to get a taxi.
And I went.
Below, the water foamed, bubbled, the stream roared. I climbed higher up the bank. To where the water mirrored the sky. To where my despair curled like snakes under the mirror. If I were a snake, I would have to swim here, hunt frogs to survive, and avoid the stream and cold currents. I was thirsty. The day turned red, the water turned golden. "And I, too, will become golden when I dissolve into it. And then I won't have to do anything else to stay beautiful. But is it necessary? For some reason, I remembered the white bread that was served in that bakery. White bread and golden tea.
I felt an urgent need to talk. The phone rang. The blue bird sat down on the grass next to me. I picked up the phone and heard some quick speech about dinner, but instead of the usual response signal, I said something completely different. "I have golden hair. It turns out that part of me is already there and it is not scared at all?"
"Hux?" The speech stopped. The bird sitting next to me tilted her head to one side, as if also surprised by my conclusion.
I wanted to continue the thought. "The bird has come. She's blue. That's why she seems cold to me. She is one of the many drops of the stream. But maybe she's a blue bubble? In the end, she's round and probably jumped right out of the stream to invite me to get my cool drink, because I overheated. Life is too hot; the sun is too big again."
"Hux, are you near the waterfall? What are you doing there, should I pick you up? Kylo hung up the phone. He sounded worried.
"And he went," I said, putting the phone back in its place.
Everything should be in its place. Why? Because someone has to put the universe in order. After all, the universe itself only knows how to make a mess. Although this grass grows in bunches. The trees stay out of each other, although sometimes their branches are intertwined. Airplanes learned to fly from birds. This bird is functioning correctly. The bird jumped on a rock and squeaked threateningly at me. I rolled up the legs of my pants, got to my feet and stepped into the cold drink.
Step. The phone rings.
Step-step. This is the phone signal. Ring-ring.
"I will become... have I already become everything I wanted to become? That's just going to survive another spring, right?" I inexplicably wanted to keep talking. I sat down and, holding on to a small stone, began to tell him about the colors of the days. It was almost black with water, and a little slippery. Here, in the middle of the waterfall, my hair and clothes also darkened. I heard the strained and frustrated roar of an engine climbing uphill. I lay down, leaving my face above the water to breathe. I didn't want to drown. A terrible death, isn't it? No, it's not for me. I need to inhale.
A correctly functioning person was making his way through healthy plants to the bank of a river that was turning into a waterfall.
Warm arms wrapped around my, as it turned out, frozen body. I found myself shaking. All the heat has disappeared somewhere. There was no red sun either. Its last yellow ray loomed over the horizon.
"Hux, Hux, my dear Hux! Let's get out of here, let's go home. What were you doing here!" Kylo's chest vibrated, as if he was shivering from the cold.
I didn't want to talk anymore. I didn't want to go back to the heat, I didn't want to see beige days anymore. Here, in the blue, I felt quite good. I mumbled, as if trying to draw attention to the fact that I was not comfortable, but deftly wriggled out of his embrace. For some reason there was no support under my feet, there was only water and something hard, but slippery. I waved my arms in the fall, seeing in the distance a blue piece of almost night sky. Then this piece caught up with the flying me like a hawk and finally the cold night came.
Nine years of dinners. Thousands of cups of tea. Nine springs.
I left you last spring to meet something greater.