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She was a fleeting spirit on better days. She was a vague memory in dim hours, a ghost barely meeting his eyes in dreams he cannot forget. She was different from Maria in that way. The way Maria clouded his senses with rose-scented oils and rouge-tinted cheeks, with words so gentle, he says them like prayer. More graceful, more intimate. There was a reason why Maria had been his first and only love before. She is beauty immeasurable and angelic in nature and grace embodied, but there's a unmatched strength that peeks out within veils of feminine meekness that she would always present.
My Corazon . His fiancee would write.
Words graced paper and rough fingers grazed over her romantic prose. Maria was Ibarra's very center of his universe for years- the blinding sun of his own heart. But Klay knocks him off orbit, into the beauty that is the stars, laughter, and cold rain. It throws him for a loop, the first time he meets her. With her outspoken intellect and odd way of words, Ibarra had thought she was a kindred spirit with their like-minded ideologies. But, they're drawn to each other. Like magnets, she pulls him out of himself, out of his world, and into hers- the world of warm lights, quiet evenings, and Klay's unique meddling type of kindness.
Klay was different and he had felt for her.
And like a flame alit on a dark windy night, Klay had vanished suddenly, smoke trailing in her wake. There was no note or warning. She simply left one morning and Ibarra was left looking for traces of her in everything. No matter how many people had searched for her- even if he and Fidel had looked after night fell, she was nowhere to be found. He remembers seeing his friend off before he had escaped back to Maynila, to go visit his mother he says. Fidel's red eyes tell a story Ibarra knows he wouldn't say aloud. Simoun wonders if Fidel found Klay. A part of him twists at the thought, but the possibility of her at least being safe triumphed over that sick envious feeling.
Unlike Maria's warm sunlight, she had burned away all else, until there was nothing left but ash, blackened bones, and his beating heart. Klay had taken him. He was consumed by her, and the fire of it.
The rest of the world had faded away, as did his love for Maria for a moment. He was a selfish man. He knows it. He acknowledges it. His emotions are not his own. They belong to her. And when she leaves, those feelings leave too. But he still thinks of her. Sometimes, he wishes she would come back.
However, he is Simoun now.
Simoun is not Ibarra, whose skin still had Klay's touch lingering. He was not Ibarra, who spent mornings with laughter, and the endearing way Klay made him all the more confused. He is not Ibarra, the man who felt the burn of the candle flame more than the heat of the sun. Now, he is Simoun. A man who lives for justice and mourns the feeling of heat on his skin. Now, he does not have his sun nor his candle. There are no longer stares of comfort and the weight of a lover's hand on his arm. There is just longing and regret. It is cold.
He feels himself again, and he walks through the streets of Maynila, thinking of the end of his days when he's done what he can for his people. What would he look like? Would he die peacefully or were there guns to hear his last breath? Would he also see Klay among the clouds or feel Maria's kiss again?
Whenever it was, he hoped there would be warmth, light, and the scent of roses. For now, Simoun waits for fleeting memories and clouded visions.