okhalrinasai

[okhalrinasai]

Airports have a lot going on. Road and rail connections, boutiques, main concourses and gates and security and people coming and going and coming and going. Some are travelling for work. Some are saying goodbye. Some are saying hello for the first time, long distance relationships of any kind finally brought together into the same timezone, the same location, and into each others arms. There's no way of knowing the exact story of why everyone is here, but each one is significant and interesting.

[okhalrinasai]

I float in a bottle of my insides outsides. It is warm and wet and clings like a cage. My skin is soft in a way that is wrong, silky and smooth and sliding over muscles that are not mine.

Why am I here? Who am I, here?

The eyes in my head weren't made for me. One shrivels and the other swells. The bottles next to me are also full of their insides outsides, and I see a neighbor seeing me seeing them and feel their wings on my back.

What am I here? Where am I here?

I remember the time I didn't. I don't remember the time I did. I was whole and content, and now I am parts of many together and the many screams to be alone.

None of us chose to be bound in flesh and skin and blood and viscera in the outsides of our insides. We scrape and claw and wail to be free with muscles that cannot move and lungs devoid of air.

Take us apart. Let us be alone together again. Tear off the labels that call us things we aren't. Dragon. Pixie. Alicorn. Griffin. Sylph. Selkie. Wyrm. Grimm. Call us what we are. Name the patchwork of creatures you sewed together with your delusions.

Chimera.

[okhalrinasai]

It's interesting what people forget when they travel, when their destination becomes their foremost concern and getting where they're going is more important than making sure they take everything with them

Sometimes it's the small things, a bag left on a seat, a coffee cup on a car roof, a piece of paper, a sweet wrapper they were too lazy or preoccupied to take with them to throw away. But sometimes it's more unexpected, more unusual, something so importantly absurd that it would seem impossible to forget.

Someone left their tub of baked beans on the bus.

[okhalrinasai]

Elaine. My dear Elaine.

I stand before your resting place, a broken man repaired by your memory. As I work I recall your smile, the gentle curve of those beautiful rose-coloured lips and small dimples in your cheeks. I hear the birdsong in the garden and remember how you sang for guests, songs so well-rehearsed that they'd never guess how delightfully off-tune you could be in the quiet comfort of our own company. I look to the sky on fortunate days, the soft blue hues second only to your inquisitive eyes. And when the sun fades on those same fortunate days, the horizon brushed with gradients of indigo and amber and crimson and ochre, I long to find the paintings you made with such vivid paints and elegant strokes. The paintings from when we were newly wed, where I could see the blotches and patches of an artist who was not yet a master of her craft. You often chided me when I said they were my favourite. How I wish to hear you again, even if only to scold me.

Would you scold me for what I've done? Perhaps. Perhaps you would scold me for hiding myself away in my work. Perhaps for ruining myself in pursuit of our dream. Perhaps for failing. Perhaps for succeeding.

And I have succeeded. The fantasies that you painted with such fervour in your dying days, the stories that comforted you when I could not, I have brought them to life for the world to see. Our dream of the unbelievable, the unachievable, the mythological, the fairy-tale, the wonder brought out from the restless sleep of children and poets and made lucid.

My only wish is that you could see it with me.

-Walton

[okhalrinasai]

Rain poured down from the darkened sky, a percussion of sharp metallic clangs on the taxi's thin roof that meshed uneasily with the choked purr of the engine. The wind whistled by, conducting the otherwise rhythmic tap-tap-tap of the rain into an uneven crescendo as it blew about in the gale. Hedgerows peering over the low stone walls confining the gravelly road moved slowly past, barely illuminated by the weak headlights. It was the kind of oppressive yet exposed near-darkness that can only be found in the open fields of the countryside.

They had been travelling in silence for what felt like hours, far away from the lively city lights in Edinburgh. The man in the back seat pulled out a pocketwatch from his finely tailored waistcoat for what felt like the umpteenth time, the clear glass face and delicate hands showing that it was nearing 11pm. He closed the case with an impatient snap, stuffing it away and turning towards the letter on the seat next to him. The seal was broken, the folds of the paper wearing through from all the times he'd read it. He smoothed out the creases and held it up to the meagre light inside the cab to read.

My dear friend, With how well-informed you are you've no doubt heard the rumours, maybe even attended the parties. But we have a great opportunity at our fingertips. The old man has done the unthinkable, unachieveable. He's succeeded where so many other curiosity-purveyors failed. But, he's too senile to make good use of it anymore. We should do him a favour, and take the burden of that research off his hands. It's only kind, don't you think? I know you're no stranger to this kind of work, and I assure you that I would gladly come with, if circumstances permitted me. But I have faith in you, my friend. Together this secret will make us rich. Much love, mon ami Pelletier

His eyes glanced up towards the window as the crunching of gravel under the tyres turned into the smooth hum of evenly-laid paving stones, catching a glimpse of a plaque engraved with the words "Rosehip House". The taxi rounded a corner, the headlights illuminating a wrought-iron gate strangled by ivy, the leaves trembling in the wind. The driver glanced at his passenger though the rear-view mirror, trying to hide his anxiety with a jovial tone as he opened his mouth to speak for the first time since they left.

"Nice of them to leave the gate open for ye, saves us having to step out into the rain, ay Mr. Aideen?" "It's McCloy." "Ah. Sorry sir, the lads at the office mixed your name around on the ledger. You know how the wee ones are these days, they don't pay much attention to the details..."

He trailed off, silence once again returning as they drove up the path to a quiet stately house. It was modest for a manor of it's renown, just the right size for a rich family and it's staff, and presumably once held the warmth that all well-loved homes are required to have. But now the well-cut stones were streaked with dirt and slowly merging with the weeds on the lawn, the wooden panelling of the upper floors falling away as their supports rotted, and the once shining windows smeared and broken, tattered curtains behind them fluttering in the wind like haunted memories of the life it once contained. The taxi came to a halt, broadside to the shadowed front door. "Well, here we are Mr. McCloy. That'll be one pound three crowns." Aideen pulled his wallet from the letterman's satchel, pulling a ten-dollar note from it's folds and tossing it carelessly onto the front seat. "Keep the change." Then, pulling sharply on the door handle, he slung the bag over one shoulder and stepped out into the rain.

The paved tiles were wet and slippery, but he moved with self-assured purpose up to the manor's entrance. The door was engraved with flowers and vines, the carved handle resembling a wreath of blooming roses an homage to the estate's name, no doubt. He reached out to grasp it, his hand barely brushing the ornate handle before lightning snapped across the sky, rolling thunder following swiftly after. He glanced behind him, watching the taxi pull away and back into the night. There would be no going back. Firmly readjusting his grip on the handle, he pushed open the door and entered the darkness of the manor.

[okhalrinasai]

Spring came so suddenly. To someone who spends so much time indoors, living at night, when the rest of the world snores gently under the moonlight drifting idly between the curtains, it felt like spring went by in a flash. Trees that blossomed into beautifully coloured flowers lost their petals as soon as they gained them. And now they're lying on the pavement, dried under the sun, and trodden to dust by passers-by who have greater concerns than preserving the remnants of a short lived spring.

I just wish all this wasn't next to a pub. The white petals, decaying, have the same sad sun-bleached orange as an old cigarette butt. There's poetry in there somewhere.

Probably.

[okhalrinasai]

Lungs still ragged and heart slowly cooling from it's anxiety, I look at the scenery rolling past the train window. I've always enjoyed trains; unlike cars, where you are responsible for your own travel time and contending with the stressful pseudo-derby of other drivers on the road, or buses, where they are also susceptible to traffic jams and if you're especially unlucky, a driver who simply doesn't give a shit when they see you running down the street waving frantically for them to wait just one more minute for you to get there.

Trains feel, in a word, inevitable. Uncontrollable, at least to the average travelgoer. Trains have drivers, yes, but the long snaking mass of cars feels beyond the control of a single person. You can't wave at a train to stop. You can't ask it to stop midway in your journey to pull into a drive-through for a snack. You get on the train, and you wait for it to get where it's going. And there's a strange kind of comfort and relaxation that comes with the fact that, no matter the delay, no matter the breakdowns or signal errors or accidents on the track, it won't be your fault if you're late.

Because who can fight the whims of a creature so momentous as a train?

[okhalrinasai]

As I made my way up the beach where I had sat reading, the loose pebbles slowing my steps as they slid down the slope, seemingly trying to pull me back to the sand closest to the ocean's gently lapping waves, I saw a small pile of salt-sanded seashells. There were plenty of people around, but none sat close enough to have been the artist that spent their time staring at the ocean, idly pawing through the stones to find the smoothed fragments of shell to stack in a small pile. There was a small gap in the middle of the modest collection, and I wondered if maybe they had taken some home to keep as souvenirs from their time looking over the channel, the days haze blending together the sky and distant horizon. Maybe they had. Maybe they hadn't. It's not my business to know.