Chapter Text
Ahiru had been set up.
Pique and Lillie usually liked to meddle in her love life, and this instance was no exception. She was, at the very moment, taking a classically romantic stroll along the coast at sunset. With a stranger. A situation, by which, was completely orchestrated by her two friends.
She was with a man by the name of Femio, and despite having only spent half an hour with him, had already decided that he wasn’t really her type. They went to go sit down on a bench, with an old woman taking pictures and a man writing in a book being the only other company around.
“Do you like sunsets?” Femio asked.
Ahiru shifted awkwardly in her position, “I prefer sunrise, actually…”
“Oh…but sunsets are more beautiful and bittersweet! The way the sky’s colors burst into vibrancy…”
He went on into a dramatic monologue about his love of romantic sunsets, but Ahiru tuned most of it out. When he finished, she peppily stood from her spot on the bench, and began to bid him goodbye.
“I really must go, but it’s been nice meeting you!”
Eager to leave, she quickened her step, before a stranger’s voice called out to her.
“Excuse me, ma’am,”
Ahiru turned her head towards the voice, which belonged to the writer who sat near them.
“You left your wallet,” the man held it out for her.
“Oh! Thank you so much, it must’ve slipped out of my pocket.”
“No problem. I’m kind of hoping this gives me some good karma, really.”
She tilted her head, “Why, what happened?”
He let out a long sigh, “I lost a few loose pages from my journal. I suppose there really isn’t any hope of finding them though. The wind could’ve taken them anywhere.”
“What!?” Ahiru’s eyes bulged, “You have to look for them!”
He chuckled at her energy, “I’ve sort of given up at this point.”
Slight concern resting on her features, Ahiru glanced to the back of her as she watched Femio disappear into the distance. With a new determination now filling her, she turned back to the writer.
“I’ll help you search!”
His brow furrowed in confusion, “You looked like you were in a hurry to leave before.”
She giggled nervously, “I really just wanted to escape him…”
•••
After much insistence, the writer agreed to accept her help. She learned that his name was Fakir.
The two wandered around the beach, retracing his steps and asking others if they had seen lone journal pages.
One woman pulled a stray piece of parchment from her bag, and Fakir was instantly able to recognize his handwriting.
“Forgive me, but I did read the poem on this paper, and I have to say it was beautiful!” She exclaimed, returning it to the writer.
There were a few encounters like this. Strangers on the beach, each holding a different excerpt of his writing, each equally moved by his scattered words. Ahiru began to become curious about his writing, but refrained from intruding on something so personal.
She couldn’t help but ask a little, however.
“Is there a reason you came to the beach to write?”
He glanced at her, currently inspecting around a few rocks. “I came to see the sunset. Seeing these things in real life help me write more descriptively.”
She considered his reasoning, “ah, I see.”
He paused for a bit, hesitating to ask her something in return. “I overheard that you prefer sunrise earlier. Why is that?”
Ahiru giggled, “were we that loud?” She walked over to him, taking a seat upon the rocks.
“I like sunrises because they feel like a fresh start, or a new beginning. I’m not ready to enjoy endings, really. I like the idea of endless possibilities.”
He nodded, sensing she had more to say. She smiled up at him before continuing.
“My mother used to tell me a story about the first sunrise,” she looked at the sky, “she said that when the world was still new, the sun and moon remained on opposite sides of the world. The ocean, however, would tell the sun stories about the moon’s brilliance. Eventually, the sun fell in love with the moon. Because of her curiosity, the sun journeyed to the other side of the world to visit the moon, causing the first sunrise. At sunset, however, she has to return home, and bid the moon goodbye.”
When she went to go look back at the writer, his expression was unreadable.
“I like that story.”
•••
Eventually, they parted.
Fakir never was able to find one last loose page, but they both decided it was growing too dark to continue searching. As he took the last bus home, he began to pen his own version of the tale he heard that day.
That night as he laid in bed, unable to sleep, he watched the sunrise with a new appreciation.
Ahiru, on the other hand, found a beaten-up page caught under her bicycle wheel, flapping in the wind. Picking it up, she recognized it as Fakir’s writing.
Moved by his words as well, she wondered if she’d ever be able to return them to him.