Work Text:
“You like drawing?” He asks, his voice frank and relatively raspy. I peered behind my sketchbook to take a look at the man. He was pale as his surroundings, knelt at a kind height and beyond a doubt older than I.
Yet he was no man but a boy. I could tell from the way his eyes shone with a spark of life. A star one’s soul is born with at birth and befriended in childhood. Even so, it was rather dim. As if it gradually faded from age.
”I like drawing dresses!” I faced my pencil sketch to meet his face. “I want to be a fashion designer when I grow up!”, his line of sight followed my motions, then carefully observed my drawing. It was a tiny fairy in a plush and puffy-sleeved dress. All grey and monochrome from the graphite lead. Regardless, he didn’t seem to mind it.
Instead, his eyebrows furrowed together and I watched as the ends of his mouth lifted to his blush cheeks. He seemed delighted and better yet, proud. That was the only shade of hue I had seen up to this point. Otherwise, I would’ve assumed he was a character from an old black-and-white film.
I smiled in return, ”I want to be an adult already so I can finally be one”.
I promptly look at the book, admiring the details —albeit messy in all consideration. He sighs, the boy doesn’t immediately answer.
”I see.”, he pauses. There’s a clear indication of hesitance in his tone. Did that strike a chord in him, somehow?
”Being an adult seems fun, don’t you think?” I continue, “They can drive cars, go anywhere in the world without any limits and meet up with their friends whenever they want!”
”I wish I could do that.”
I glance again at his eyes, now squinted into slits. The wrinkled skin below it stung with scarlet. When his eyes fluttered open, his once dim spark ceased to be visible. Leaving him with pure vulnerable black eyes and colourless blood endlessly trailing to his chin. Despite its voidness, his eyes displayed an array of emotions that no other person could enact. It was unsettlingly divine in a way.
I placed my things on the ground and approached him. The frown he restrained to exhibit, returned on its own as it clashed with his feelings. He hid himself behind his knees, further dampening his clothes. —I embrace his larger figure, my arms resting at the side of his ears. My fingers interlocked with each other behind his neck. All in attempts to ease him from whatever caused this emotional breaking.
“Mister?” I whisper, bewildered by his state.
He does not respond. His shoulders quivered in dejection as his body followed. I press my cheek against the top of his black hair. I slowly caressed my hands over his back, hoping to smear away his misery as he wept.
Over his head, a blurry figure appears in my peripheral view. They were tall, perhaps taller than the boy and I. They took a step forward and swiftly, something cold came into contact with my face. I take a hand up to my cheek, where I felt it land. It wasn’t my tear nor was it from him.
The figure was in front of us now, they were dressed in black clothes from head to toe. With the same coloured hair and eyes that we had. Their quirk, their *difference*, was a bright and shining star behind their shaded glasses. It beamed with radiance, like moonlight reflected on the sea. I found myself captivated by such eyes that I had forgotten my manners. But who wouldn’t when faced with art?
By the time I knew it, drops of water fell from above.
The individual propped open an umbrella in their hand. Holding it over our heads as the heavy rain poured within our surroundings. Unlike normal umbrellas, its interior was completely illuminated with light. As if this person captured a cloud directly from the sky, stealing a spot in the heavens.
A shadow was cast on their face by the light, making it a struggle to discern their identity. They stayed in their silence and no word ever slipped out of their lips. I would’ve warranted an explanation but a confrontation would have been highly unbecoming at an ill-time like now.
The water had reached my shoulders and the boy was submerged yet he made no effort to move. The figure only observed us whilst holding the handle of the umbrella in a tight grip.
The three of us were left in the cold rain. Lacking the presence of other people, manmade objects or Mother Nature herself. I firmly believe that deep in our consciousness, we had accepted our situation. It was only fact that we’d inevitably be engulfed in the rising flood. Yet never once did we think of dying.
Never once did we think of the harmless water entering our bodies and bringing us to their abode. For our souls to flow from our bodies as the waves take us into their own arms. We thought of floating on our backs while gazing at the white-blue moon, the constellations in the sky and the warmth of the water around us.
We were like children who never feared the disappearance of life because it simply didn’t matter. Rather, the *present* did. The beauty of being in that moment in time is unquestionably different from dreaming of it. And like the sea, the manner of living or life effortlessly refuses to stay the same. Its ceaselessness is what leads others into different paths albeit familiar or something entirely foreign to them. We may have been born from God or man but it is in our choice to decide our own fate within the circumstance the sea may put us in. Thus it is our judgment alone that determines the results.
Then it would only be time for another figure to be seen in the distance. Older than the past years and wiser with experience -to console the past or watch silently from afar. To carry our corpses or to drown.
[ 1,028k words ]
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Created on: August 16, 2023
Modified on: August 27, 2023 [9:21 PM]
Modified on: August 28, 2023 [1:43 PM]