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Anaxagoras didn’t know how to put it into words, which felt strange because people around him usually talked about how he didn’t know when to shut his trap.
He didn’t know what to make of the world when she was near, or how to lasso back the colors when everything starts to drift away until she was all that he could see. When the ichor of the sun god bled in the shape of her, or when the wind sang in melodious orchestras just so they could dance across the threads of her hair; he didn’t know who to be, where to be just so he could feel the planar distance between them dissipate for even the transient of moments.
Just so he wouldn’t have to spend what little time he has for himself wondering how he could have been good enough to be at the receiving end of her light.
She was as radiant as the endless sky, colored in all the shades of life—draped in the infinite freedom far beyond the hands of the cosmos.
Anaxagoras was certain, even in that little grove in time so long ago. He thought to himself: there was beautiful… and then there’s you.
Her smile shone like a thousand suns, the zephyrs catching the ends of her clothes as her sandaled feet cut through the meadows of flowers. Her laughter rang across the plains, resonating over the mountain tops like the world itself wanted to keep her soul here forever—burying a fragment of her soul that she may exist beyond ever after.
Even now as she waved at him despite being so very far away, her sleeves dragged by her frantic movements of delight, Anaxagoras couldn’t see any of those hurtful resentments—the ones he had grown so used to—as if with her… they never existed at all.
“Anaxagoras,” she calls him happily, and every jagged edge of his name scattered with the light of her voice—of the way his name sounded so safe when she was the one calling him.
Her steps were muted as she climbed the hilltop Anaxagoras occupied for himself, and now he broke a piece of that space to give to her.
"Look! This new shop opened up in the village and they were selling these sweet things!" She handed him a small bowl with some milk custard pudding inside. "Try it!"
And there it was again, like he was adrift across the nothingness he knew existed beyond this finite space; that she was the only anchor he had across the plane that didn’t wait for anyone.
Anaxagoras nearly abandoned all his logic, all the things he held in such high regard, because there was no shackling explanation for this. No grounding theory that will make his heart stop its relentless drumming against his chest. He thinks that maybe the seasons gathered by the borders to confuse him—have him see for himself how the world looks like, how the world feels if he was treasured by someone like her.
He didn’t know what to make of it all, it was as if summer came during winter and spring took the place of autumn.
The world paled in comparison that’s why the gods were playing tricks on him, changing up the weather just so it could appear in its grandest form to woo him to their side. Because as he saw it… nothing in this bounded existence could ever be as beautiful as her .
Don't smile at me like that , he wanted to tell her. Don’t be kind to me. Don’t—don’t look at me like that. ‘Like what’, he reckons she’d say, tilting her head in that curious manner Anaxagoras was certain even she had no knowledge she was doing. Like you could love me…
“Hey.” At the sound of her voice, his eyes gravitated to her. “What’s wrong?” Her warm palm drapes over the hills of his cheek, thawing the frosted look on his face.
Anaxagoras had an unpaintable look decorating his being, torn between wanting to live the life he wanted to share with her and restraining his selfish wishes because he knew nothing good would come from living a life with him.
He knew that.
Anaxagoras knew… painfully so, how unnecessary all these feelings were yet they remained. Stubbornly digging their roots to the desolate lands of his mind. He knew and yet he could never understand why his heart ached for every moment he spent without her near, why it rejoiced in joyful praise whenever he laid eyes on her.
If his wishes were self-serving, why was his only thought when he was surrounded by everyone he knew… was her? Beauty meant less when she wasn’t there to share it with him. He discovers something amazing and his first thought drifts to her, that she ought to share this joy with him as well.
“Anaxagoras?”
If all his reason was telling him this was selfish… why did the idea of making her happy bring him so much joy?
A deafening silence settled in the space between them, nothing but the rustling of leaves and grass scattering across the sapphire skies.
“If it’s not to your liking, I can get you something else,” she offers, smiling softly at him with all the gentle assurance that made this feeling of falling through the clouds all the more prominent. Her hand stretched to retrieve what she had given him, worried that Anaxagoras might not be so fond of the popular confection.
Anaxagoras refused to give it back.
He places the small basket behind him, looking to check for certain that it was far enough that she couldn’t take it away. He breathed in, willing everything in the planes of his soul to cease their tremors—all the undeniable flutters and the barely suppressed fires always threatening to set his veins and his face ablaze.
Anaxagoras dared to steal a glance at her, patiently waiting for him to say what was on his mind. Maybe… maybe she could give him an answer . Perhaps the woman plaguing every corner of his mind was aware of just how haunted he was by the ghost of her, of how increasingly difficult it was becoming to pretend that he didn’t want to share this life with her and all the next ones to dawn.
Maybe she could silence the cacophony of uneasiness, have the waves cease their relentless roaring—silence them so they may never echo in the midst of the midnight mellowness. Perhaps she, alone, could bring him peace .
He searched her image, wanting to find even an inkling trace of contempt, a hint of disdain, or a trail that led to rebuke—all the things he has grown to ignore; all things he has gotten good at pretending that it didn’t bother him—if she looked to him with such resentment maybe everything will cease, but there was this twisting feeling in his stomach, whispering withered words about how his heart couldn’t possibly bear the weight; that the world could forsake him, and he would take it… so long as it was not her who abandoned him.
And he found none.
Anaxagoras faltered, such a strange thing for him to do. His oxygen taken away from the coves of his lungs. The words get stuck, his breath freezing in the tunnels of his throat.
Questions were things he loved, all things he treasured. But this… this one was something he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer to.
It was one simple thing, really . One he couldn’t really find the right words to convey until all he could say was, “Why ? ”
Anaxagoras calls her name, he calls her and he asks her one simple thing.
He refused to meet her stare, far too ashamed that he was even questioning her in the first place. His gaze traced the lines of the horizon where the setting sun was cradled halfway beneath the waves.
Everything in the world was doused in gold, from the leaves perched atop this tree to the snow covered mountain peaks that bordered them from the rest of reality, and finally him —Anaxagoras… Anaxa, whose eyes were like the mirrors of the sky that reflected a garden of neverending flowers. Anaxagoras whose hair was the color of newborn vines crawling on her windowsill… Anaxa who is followed by daylight—Anaxa who shines brighter than a thousand suns.
Anaxagoras… whom she loves more than there were stars in the infinite skies.
“ Why are you so kind to someone like me ?”
Her heart broke at the sound of his voice; of hearing those words be spoken at all.
She knew of his troubles with others, how they labeled him a lot of things because he was being who he was. She saw how his curiosity was painted as treacherous, a dangerous thing to wield—something to be at the end of everyone’s contempt; that they pushed him to the shadows every time he would touch the light.
She heard the screams, the anger, all the world's away echoed simply because he wanted an answer. She watched as he pondered endlessly, silently wondering what he did wrong… if his question was foolish or if they reacted like that because it was him who asked.
She saw how he broke apart the pieces and reformed them to make something new, she knew of his joys—of the nigh immeasurable happiness it brings him; fortunate enough to share some of this glee with him.
She knew how he once saw the world, feeling like he was stuck behind an invisible barrier, watching everything unfold before him— there , painfully present but never truly belonging.
She looks at him—at Anaxagoras as he tries to gravitate his stare to anything that wasn’t her eyes. She notes the way his shoulders tense, his jaw clenching from how often he swallowed, even the way his entire body moved like he was bracing for impact. Fearful she might be annoyed by him; that she, too, will shut him out without ever telling him why.
But the silence passed and the wind continued to rhyme, and as the last of the golden sunbeams were seized by the ocean, Anaxagoras finally gathered the courage to look her in the eye.
She doesn’t condemn him for his curiosity. She doesn’t rebuke him for his question. She doesn’t get angry. And she doesn’t yell.
She just sits there with him in quiet understanding, gathering all the honest answers she could scavenge in this boundless plane of existing right beside him. She takes his hand in hers, anchoring him before he could have the chance to drift anywhere else, almost as if she’s saying: I’ll cut my heart out open for you and have you live there so you may never inhabit another. I’ll lay it bare for you to take—to break if you must, so long as you can see the way I love you. And by all the gods I swear to you, if you knew just how much I adore you… you will love yourself in ways that will make you forget why you didn’t in the first place.
“Do you remember when you carved a droma for me when we had to sell Milo?” She catches his stare from the corner of her eye and catches that brief glint of recognition.
She smiles remembering the exact moment in time when her family had to sell their droma named Milo. She remembers crying, for days on end she cried, begging her mother to get him back—even promising to forsake all her snack times to buy Milo’s food. She didn’t understand then… why Milo had to leave. She didn’t understand that Milo was going to be leaving either way and that selling Milo was easier than having to see him die before her eyes.
She reckons Anaxagoras knew that, being the smart boy he is. He knew that Milo was dying and that’s why he had to leave, but Anaxa also understood that the droma’s departure also hurt her deeply.
So, a week after Milo went off on his adventure, Anaxagoras showed up in front of her windowsill. The same aperture covered in vines dyed the same shade as his hair. He met her tear-stained gaze and hesitated, fearing that he’d make her cry even more if he were to proceed with this plan.
But Anaxagoras remembers how she stood by the village gate every afternoon waiting for Milo to come back. He remembers how she still keeps his trough filled with water and how she always sets out redsoil in case he comes back when she wasn’t there and he was hungry. He remembers all the times she has welcomed him to look at Milo, how she smiles so kindly at him every time he asked if he could see the droma.
Anaxagoras threw his gift through her window and ran, not wanting to see how she’d react.
“I still have him,” she tells him, fishing out a worn wooden figure out of her pocket.
Now that he saw it, his younger self’s crafting skills were awful compared to his sister’s. His sister offered to help him back then, but stubbornly he insisted that he could do it himself. He did accomplish his quest albeit the rewards looked a little… funky.
She laughs at his horrified expression before settling the little figure between them.
“You might not notice it, Anaxa… but I should be the one asking you that. Why were you kind to me ?”
She watches as his brows furrowed, mouth opening and closing as he skims through the archives of his mind for a viable answer.
Twilight veiled the canvas overhead, remnants of the sun’s colors lingering in the space nearest to the waters of the sea.
She didn't wait for his answer, she knew he would not find one just as she could not discover one for herself.
“If you think about it now, we didn’t know each other well enough back then. I was just the girl who had a droma living at the back of her house. I was happy to share him with you, and I knew you loved Milo just as much as I loved him.”
She looked at him, the way the shadows lingered behind him, never quite touching; never truly leaving. Perhaps that was why they were kind to each other.
“ We didn’t ask for happiness, just for a little less pain ,” she traced the lines of his face, remembering the creases and the hints of aureate kindness hidden underneath the blades of his sharp words. She memorizes the colors of his eyes, the way his hair draped across his shoulder in a loose tie, she takes them all in—kept them buried in the depths of her soul so she may never forget. “And you gave that to me… you taught me to be kind . To give it freely because the world would be a much better place if others feel safe in it.”
They say one cannot be kind and clever at the same time—
But she was .
She was every bit as kind as she was clever. And all the golden sunlight and the melted stars that flow across the obsidian sky bears witness to that truth.
It made him love her more, far more that the gods feared they would have to reform the heavens so his adoration could be caged by the finiteness of this world.
“ Kindness… I got it the moment you loved me.”
Anaxagoras mapped the face of the woman he loved, remembering everything he loved—every fragment of her being, all the pieces of her soul. He remembers them all, swore that even if the heavens and the stars collide he would never forget.
He was kind because of her, because she never gave him a reason to think that kindness wasn’t warm smiles and welcoming embraces. She never made him feel like it was a curse to ask questions; gave him no reason to believe that anger was something that came at the price of curiosity—answers at the cost of rebuke.
Anaxagoras turned his head to gaze at her as they crossed the meadows on their way home. A thousand shimmering lights unveiled in the form of fireflies, mirroring the canvas of the obsidian sky.
He watches as she laughs, the sound clear as the waters of the heavens, warm like the breeze that came with the afternoon haze, the fires of her verity threading through the spaces she couldn’t occupy as if someone had bottled all the stars in the universe and cast them free underneath the dome of this planet through the shape of her laughter.
I once believed it couldn't be true .
Love.
But I know now that it's real because you exist.
And you are filled with love.
Kindness is real because I know you exist.
And it gives me more reason to believe that sunshine arrives with you.