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[satuwrites]

26. Hold on to hope if you got it, don’t let it go for nobody. They say that dreaming is free but I wouldn’t care what it cost me.

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Misery who wanted to be happy. She lived in the capital of the great kingdom of Sorrow where the people wallowed and wailed in grief day and night. Misery dutifully took part in the mourning of morning every Monday of Melancholy, never failed to weep at noon on Wednesdays of Worry, and always went to bed early on Saturdays of Sadness to delve in despair before sleep. She did everything that was expected of her as a citizen of Sorrow, but somewhere deep inside of her, there was a part of her that longed for a different kind of life.

It wasn’t until she was eleven years old that she realised what it was that she yearned for when they were taught what happiness was at school. The teacher, whose name was Treachery, moaned more grievously than she ever had before as she told them about happiness and its wicked ways in trying to lead the people of Sorrow astray. They needed to be aware of the danger so that they would be prepared when happiness sooner or later tried to beguile them as well with promises of laughter, light-heartedness and – the teacher whispered the word as if it was the most evil of all – love. The other pupils howled in horror when Treachery described previous citizens of Sorrow who had committed the sin of smiling and had been exiled for their crime, but Misery couldn’t help but think they had it all wrong. Joy and happiness sounded like the most marvellous things on earth to her. Misery didn’t want to be driven away from the only home she had, though, and so she kept her thoughts to herself and joined the others in prayers for pain to keep them safe from anything resembling positivity.

For two years Misery harboured hopes of happiness in her heart. She continued to partake in the rituals and customs of her nation that emphasised the despondency of life, but her devotion was gone. Her mother had to send her to the playground of punishment more often to inspire feelings of her namesake, but Misery would not succumb to misery now that she knew there was more to life than constant suffering. Perhaps one day she would venture out of the kingdom of Sorrow and find out for herself what exactly that “more” was.

That day arrived much sooner than Misery had anticipated. On one Tuesday of Torment when she was thirteen years old, they were asked in class what they wanted to be when they were older. While one student after another shared their dreams of becoming a priest of punishment or a doctor of discouragement, Misery feverishly tried to come up with something to say that would please the teacher. But when it was her turn, the secret that she had locked away suddenly burned in her throat and she had to let it out.

“Happy. I want to be happy,” she said.

Her response was met with silence, broken only by the sound of the perpetual rain lashing against the windows. It was always raining in the kingdom, only the intensity of it varied. Often it was nothing more than a slight drizzle, other times the heavens cried huge, heavy droplets that hurt when they hit your skin or the rain was a steady stream of raindrops that lingered on leaves like tiny pearls. Today, however, was a day of heavy downpour accompanied by winds that howled with a ferocity that caused the rain to be hurled down almost horizontally. The pounding of the rainstorm against the glass sounded like an accusation, reflecting the looks on the faces turned toward her. Never had Misery wished for a sudden bout of sunshine – like in the rare paintings she had seen of a world drenched in light – more than she did right then. The burning sun would blind the others and she would be saved from their cruel eyes.

The teacher recovered from the shock quickly and started wailing in a way that anyone who heard it would recognise. It was a heart-wrenching sound of deep betrayal, reserved for occasions when a citizen forsook the ways of Sorrow and let their soul be seduced by treacherous happiness. The other pupils took up the wailing as they surrounded and seized Misery, dragging her with them through the streets of the capital in the pouring rain. Anyone who heard them pass joined in the procession until they were a moaning, miserable mass of people with Misery in the centre. Occasionally someone would exclaim about the tragedy of her fate – “Another soul lost to light! And so young! Is none of us safe from the clutches of joy?” – but otherwise the only sound echoing through the city was the crushing chorus of agony sung from hundreds and hundreds of mouths. The throng only quieted as they reached the courtyard of the palace where King Sorrow XIV, dressed in grey robes with a disappointed frown on his wrinkled face, was already waiting.

Misery, who had stumbled through the city in a daze, was pushed forward until she was kneeling in front of the king. The teacher recounted what had happened, calling forward Misery’s fellow pupils who all confirmed Treachery’s story. With so many witnesses, the king didn’t even hear Misery’s side of the events. And so, in front the people of the grand city of Anguish, King Sorrow XIV declared Misery an enemy of her people, having let the greatest threat to the kingdom, happiness, tempt her off the Path of Sorrow. She would be exiled immediately.

The people of Anguish made way as Misery was led toward a wagon that would take her to the kingdom’s border where she would be left to her own devices. No one looked at her as she passed by, not even her mother. It was believed that anyone who beheld a person sentenced to exile would bring the same fate upon themselves.

For the first time in a long while, Misery felt truly miserable.

Misery sat in the rumbling wagon for three days and nights, wallowing in her own wretchedness. The guards assigned to ensuring her exile didn’t speak to or look at her. They sat still like statues, the ever-falling rain making tiny, metallic sounds against their armour, a soundtrack to Misery’s troubled thoughts. She had never felt more like she belonged in Sorrow, and yet here she was, being deported from her home to the unknown at only thirteen. Not even the thought that she could now start her journey toward finding happiness comforted her, for how was she to survive alone? She had never before been abroad, had never even visited another city. The king might as well have given her a death sentence.

When they reached the River of Regret that marked the western border of the kingdom of Sorrow, the guards led Misery to a rowboat on the shore. The waters of the river were deceptively calm, but Misery knew that the dark depths hid dozens of bodies of people who had come to the river to drown in their regrets. She stayed as far as possible from the sides of the boat.

The two men made quick work of rowing them to the other side. The closer they got to the opposite shore, the more powerful Misery’s despair grew. She tried pleading with the guards, insisted she would never again be tempted by happiness if they just let her stay in Sorrow, but the guards ignored her as if she didn’t exist. By the time the boat scraped the rocks on the other side of the river, Misery was bawling, the tears more true than ever before in her life. When the guards grabbed her arms to haul her out of the boat, she struggled, but it was no use. She was heaved onto the shore and she was momentarily stunned from the pain. Before she could recover and try to scramble back in, the boat was moving, gliding across the waters and away from her. She watched as the guards reached the opposite shore and climbed aboard the wagon still waiting. Then they drove off and Misery was utterly alone.

Misery didn’t know what to do. She had nowhere to go for she didn’t even know where she was. Treachery had never taught her what lay beyond the River of Regret or the Fields of Fear to the east because it was deemed unimportant. Misery had planned to read about the outside world in her own time when she was older and preparing for the pursuit of happiness, but now she would never get the chance.

The rocks on the shore were damp, cold and uncomfortable; Misery soon found herself shivering. She couldn’t stay and so she decided to climb up the riverbank to see if she could find signs of habitation. The clouds on the sky were getting darker and the thought of a safe place to sleep in spurred her up the steep slope. The sight that greeted her made the tears well up in her eyes again, and she could almost feel the dreadful weight of discouragement in her stomach.

An endless sea of grass stretched into the horizon in every direction Misery looked, only broken by a few gnarly trees here and there, and a road that ran parallel to the river. Otherwise the landscape was empty, devoid of signs of any kind of life. There weren’t even birds perching on the trees.

It was at that moment that the hopelessness of her situation truly hit Misery. No matter how she squinted, she couldn’t see any travellers on the road in either direction. She was on her own, with nothing but the clothes on her back that she had worn to school three days ago to keep her company. The gravity of the mistake Misery had made grew unbearable and suddenly her legs couldn’t carry her any longer. She curled up on her side and let exhaustion wash over her, hoping she wouldn’t be eaten by wild animals while she slept.

When Misery woke up, sore from sleeping on the hard ground but not gnawed on by any predators, she stumbled back to the river and drank, pushing away thoughts of cold hands of the dead grabbing her and pulling her into the depths. The cool water fully woke her up, and she thought about what she should do. She could try to swim across the river and return home, but that would only result in her being sent away again. The exile was permanent; no matter how much she regretted being charmed by the prospect of happiness, she would never again be accepted in her homeland.

Another option was to stay where she was and hope someone would travel past and take pity on her. The idea didn’t seem appealing, though; it sounded too much like giving up. Misery was refreshed from sleeping and the despair that had consumed her the previous night was less overpowering. The tiny flicker of hope that had been close to suffocating under her dampened spirits was burning again, telling her that she would pull through if she put her mind to it. And so, taking one last gulp of water, Misery climbed back up the riverbank and set off down the road. She reasoned she would eventually have to come across some sort of human settlement.

For five days, Misery walked and walked. She only stopped to sleep and to climb down to the river to drink and bathe. She munched on the grass for food. But no matter how far she walked, the landscape around her didn’t change and there were no signs of anyone inhabiting the land. The only hint at her moving forward at all was the gradual change in weather. The ceaseless rain she had known all her life in Sorrow gave way to a dryer climate. On the third day, she saw the sun for the first time in her life. The sight of the glowing orb in the sky at first frightened her for she thought it signalled the end of the world. When it didn’t come any closer, Misery realised what it was and her heart felt curiously lighter. The paintings she had seen of the sunny landscapes hadn’t been just someone’s wild imagination; the sun was real, which meant that finding happiness must also be possible.

On the fifth day, hunger was growling in Misery’s stomach, the grass not enough to sustain her energy levels. Her feet dragged on the ground and there seemed to be an invisible weight on her shoulders. The sun was shining down on her from a clear sky, which made matters worse, unaccustomed as she was to the warmth it radiated, having grown in a country of endless rain. She needed to rest more frequently, and the cool water of the river only gave her momentary relief. Even her thoughts were sluggish, crawling in circles around the need to move forward but also the demand for food and rest. She kept telling herself the road had to lead her somewhere and it was only a matter of time before she reached the destination. Surely no one would build a road that only brought travellers to a dead end. Although that might explain why she had yet to encounter anyone…

Suddenly, Misery found herself sitting on the ground. She had no recollection of how she ended up in the position, so preoccupied was she with her thoughts. She was aware that she should get back up and keep walking, but it wouldn’t hurt to rest here for a bit, would it? Her limbs were like lead, exhaustion clouded her brain and the sun was playing tricks on her eyes because she thought she could see two distant figures in the direction where she had been abandoned by the two guards from Sorrow. How cruel of the sun to try to keep the flicker of hope alive with false images.

Misery shut her eyes and unconsciousness embraced her.

Her dreams were dark and confusing. She was back in the classroom with everyone looking at her expectantly. “Happy. I want to be happy,” she said. The others started laughing, but it was an unnatural, cruel sound. Was that what laughter sounded like? The mouths of her class mates grew wider and wider and they tore into her, ripping her apart.

The scene changed. She was again among the mass of people pushing her through the streets of Anguish, her ears ringing with their wailing. Her mother was among the crowd, tears of disappointment streaming down her face. “Another soul lost to light,” someone shouted. Misery was jostled forward and she lost the sight of her mother. She stumbled and fell to the ground. The people didn’t notice. They stomped over her, crushing her under their feet.

Misery screamed.

She woke up with a jolt, sitting up on… a bed?

There could be no mistaking it, the soft surface under her was definitely a bed and when she looked around, Misery found herself in a small, cosy room. A fire crackled merrily in the fireplace on the other side of the room, the warmth feeling good on her skin that was damp with cold sweat.

Before she could get overly confused about her surroundings, the door next to the fireplace opened and a tall man that was painfully thin peeked in, his blue eyes looking unnaturally large on his narrow face, strands of blond hair sticking out to every imaginable direction.

“I thought I heard something!” he exclaimed. “I’ll tell Lanky to prepare your food. You must be starving.” He made to leave the room.

“No, wait!” Misery croaked, her throat hurting from lack of use. Her heart was pounding desperately; she didn’t want the man to leave in fear he wouldn’t come back.

His face softened. “I will be right back, I promise.”

Then he was gone, and Misery stared at the door, counting the seconds. If he didn’t return by the time she reached one hundred, she would go after him. Questions that she needed answers to were swirling around in her brain so wildly she thought she might get a headache, but she couldn’t deny that the idea of food sounded appealing. She started counting the seconds slower.

When she reached number fifty-seven, the door opened again, and the same thin man stepped through. His steps were light as he strode across the room, sitting down gracefully on the wooden stool next to the bed Misery was perched upon.

“I have to say, we were getting worried you wouldn’t wake up at all. You’ve been asleep ever since Lanky and I found you a bit over two days ago.”

Misery could scarcely believe her ears. “Two days?” It had felt more like two minutes to her.

“Yes. You were feverish as well, but luckily it’s gone down.” The man moved his hands as he talked, and Misery thought it looked strange, as if he was excited. No one she had known back home had emphasised their words in that way. The movement halted, however, when her stomach grumbled loudly. “Right. Lanky will bring your food shortly, don’t worry. In the meantime, I imagine you may have some questions.”

That she did. She decided to start with the easiest and most urgent one. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Skinny. The man I’ve already mentioned, Lanky, is my husband. You’ll meet him in a minute.” The man, Skinny – what a strange name, Misery thought – eyed her curiously, tilting his head to the side. “What about you? What’s your name?”

“Misery.”

“What an awful name to give to a child,” he commented, nose crinkling.

Misery shrugged, taking no offense from his words, but she wondered if she should have lied. She didn’t know the custom and the laws of the… whichever country she was in, and she worried she might say something that would cause Skinny to drive her away. He seemed friendly, though, and he had even taken her with him to… wherever she was. Which brought her to the next question.

“And where am I?”

“In the great city-state of Twig where the grass is thin and the people thinner,” Skinny replied and opened his arms wide as if to present the city from the confines of the room. Misery had the feeling she was expected to have heard of Twig from the way Skinny puffed out his chest, but of course she hadn’t. The blank stare she gave him told him as much. “What, you’ve never heard of us?” When Misery shook her head, he sighed, a long rush of air through his mouth as he brought his hands back to his lap where they rested only briefly. They sprang back to life as he explained, “Twig’s situated just south of where the River of Regret turns west. We’re best known for our bread that’s packed with everything your body needs for nutrition. A single slice will keep you going for a whole day. You’ll get to taste it yourself soon enough. I’m certain you’ll love it. It’s all we Twiggians eat, anyway, and we’ve been trying to get other nations to see the greatness of it as well, as that’d be a grand boost to our economy, but for some reason it hasn’t broken through yet. In fact, Lanky and I were coming back from a business trip to the kingdom of Silence when…” Skinny’s rambling was cut off when there was a knock on the door before it opened, revealing a brunette man who was even taller than Skinny but equally thin. Misery thought he looked like he had been forcefully stretched out by being pulled in opposite directions from his arms and legs.

“It’s good to see you awake,” the man – Lanky, Misery assumed – said as he made his way into the room, carrying a plate and a glass filled with yellowish liquid in his hands. He set them down on the bedside table before sitting down at the food of the bed. “I hope Skinny here hasn’t talked your ears off. His mouth runs a mile a minute and usually nothing of importance comes out so you kind of have to learn to tune him out.” Lanky ignored the sounds of protest coming from Skinny, gesturing at the food he had brought. “Please, eat.”

Misery turned toward the food, and she tried not to let her disappointment show when she saw there was, indeed, only one slice of bread with no toppings on the plate. She knew she should be grateful the men were offering her anything at all, but the painful pit of hunger in her stomach made it difficult to appreciate the scarcity of the food.

Despite her efforts, Skinny noticed the way she scrunched her eyebrows. He smiled, and Misery’s cheeks hurt just from watching the strange expression on his face. “It may not seem like much, but I swear just that one slice will take your hunger away and nourish you. The drink’s Lanky’s own brew of herbs and spices to give you an extra boost of all the essential vitamins. You’ll need them for a quick recovery.”

Misery nodded and bit into the bread. The way it dissolved into tiny crumbs in her mouth made her want to gag, but she fought down the reflex because she didn’t want to offend the two men. It was like eating sand, both texture and taste-wise. No wonder the bread hadn’t become popular anywhere else, and Misery found it impossible to think that even the people of Twig enjoyed it. The bread was so dry it soaked up all the moisture in her mouth and Misery had to take a gulp of the yellow drink that smelled bad and tasted worse. It took all her willpower to be able to finish the meal while Skinny and Lanky discussed new strategies to market the bread, but she had to admit her stomach was full by the time she swallowed the last bite.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Skinny asked her once she was finished, leaning forward and leaning a slender chin on his hands. Misery only nodded for she feared her words would reveal the truth.

Lanky stood up and took away the dishes, leaving Skinny to recount the history of Twiggian bread to Misery who didn’t dare say she wasn’t interested. When Lanky returned, he once again took a seat on the bed and asked her, “So, now that you’ve had something to eat, would you tell us your story? How did a young girl like you end up at the side of the road in such bad shape?”

Misery looked down at her hands, afraid to meet their eyes. What if the men would be appalled of what she had done? Maybe happiness was outlawed in Twig as well and she would be cast away once more. Then again, Skinny had smiled which was considered a sin back in Sorrow so maybe she would be safe.

“I was… exiled,” she struggled to get the word out, “from my homeland. The kingdom of Sorrow.”

There was a brief silence during which Misery thought she had ruined everything before Skinny said in a soft voice, “Ah, you wanted to find happiness, did you?”

Misery lifted her head to see Skinny regarding her with a melancholy expression on his face. “How did you know?”

Lanky placed a careful hand on her knee, giving her a chance to pull away if she found the touch unwelcome, but she didn’t. It made the pressure behind her eyes lessen. “We have encountered other exiles from Sorrow before. None so young, though. They all told a similar story before they continued on their quest for happiness.”

Misery’s head was swimming. Of course she knew people had been exiled for being lost to light even before her, remembered the way teachers and priests of punishment used them as cautionary examples. They had never told what had happened to the exiles once they were cast away, though, whether they survived or died, and Misery had often wondered about that. Finally she had an answer. They had made it. It was like a decade’s worth of worry was lifted from her shoulders. She felt lighter and the fire inside of her burned brighter. If others had managed to continue pursuing happiness after being exiled, surely she could as well. She just needed a push in the right direction.

“Do you know where to find it? Happiness, I mean.”

Lanky and Skinny exchanged glances before Skinny replied, “Well, we‘re happy here in Twig so I guess this is as good a place to start as any.”

Misery almost felt something akin to giddiness. Her heart was fluttering and even her hands trembled slightly. “You think so?”

Skinny smiled again, and this time Misery made her lips mirror the movement, the feeling foreign on her face. “Why don’t you stay with us and find out?”

And so she did.

Misery stayed in Twig for two years, learning about their traditions and ways of living. She discovered Twiggians pursued happiness in being thin for if your body was light, your heart could soar more easily as well. Skinny and Lanky gave her tips on how to lose weight and Misery followed them. The Twiggian bread became her only source of nourishment and periodically she went on a diet where she only ate half a slice a day because that would speed her toward the weight that would let her find the light-heartedness she craved for. She spent the days exercising and standing in front of a mirror to gauge her progress and at first it had brought her a sense of accomplishment that almost felt like joy. The longer she stayed, though, the more Misery questioned if thinness was really the way to happiness. Eating the bread never became enjoyable because it always tasted like ash and sand to her. Her stomach felt full after every meal but her taste buds were hungry for flavour. Her body ached almost daily because of the constant exercising but Skinny assured her it was to be expected.

“Happy hurts,” he would say and ruffle her hair.

Misery didn’t agree with him. The less she weighed, the heavier her thoughts became, revolving around the constant urge to eat less, exercise more, and she didn’t understand how that could be joy. Wasn’t happiness all about being content with the way things were, not this never-ending dissatisfaction with your body? Maybe it was bliss for the people of Twig, but it wasn’t bliss for Misery.

And so she left.

She sneaked out from the house she had called home for two years, leaving a note behind to thank Skinny and Lanky for their generosity and explaining why she couldn’t stay. Her heart felt heavy for leaving without a goodbye, but she knew if she had told them about her plan they would have managed to convince her to stick around for a little while longer. And if she did, she would eventually accept the way of things and fool herself into thinking the ache in her bones was joy. So she packed a small bag with extra clothes and a full loaf of the Twiggian bread and set off in the middle of the night. She was on her own once more, just like she had been two years ago when she had been exiled from her homeland, but this time she was prepared and determined to find the joy her heart desired.

The pursuit of happiness took Misery far and wide. She visited places she had never heard of before, each and every one of them unique in their customs and traditions, and talked to people who she could never have imagined existed. When they heard her story, they were sympathetic and eager to share their means for reaching happiness. Misery would stay with them – sometimes a year, sometimes a month – and live how they lived in order to find out if it would finally let her accomplish her goal.

In the Land of Love, the people believed that a relationship was the way to a happy heart and so Misery got together with a girl called Lovely who had a melodic laughter and soft hands that warmed Misery’s cold fingers. When they didn’t work out because Misery felt like Lovely couldn’t accept the sad parts of her, Misery decided to give relationships another chance and found a guy whose name was Charming. Misery enjoyed their time together as much as she had done with Lovely, but in the end, she understood she couldn’t find happiness with someone else if she first couldn’t find it on her own. She parted ways with Charming and left the Land of Love after having spent three years there.

And so it went. For thirteen long years, Misery tried everything she could to fulfil the one wish in her heart. She jumped from high cliffs into the sea below with people who chased happiness in the thrill only found on the border between life and death. The way her body buzzed after each successful attempt made her feel alive, but the feeling was temporary and not what she was looking for. In the kingdom of Wealth, she found herself surrounded by shiny, new things she could call hers but the pleasure found in them faded quickly. She planted flowers in the Grandiose Gardens, but not even their beauty elated her. She tried to find joy in the bottom of a bottle, in books and stories, in pills that conjured up images more exotic than she had ever seen, in art, in furry animals whose trust was unwavering, but nothing truly worked.

Misery’s pursuit of happiness sometimes left her starving, sometimes bruised and broken, sometimes sobbing in sorrow, but she never gave up. The flame that had once almost died out after the days following her exile now burned brightly, refusing to be snuffed out again. If she had been able to survive the abandonment she had faced at thirteen, she could survive anything. Misery had hope that she would find happiness one day and she held onto that hope with the ferocity of a mother bear protecting her cubs, not letting it go for anybody – not for Lovely who had begged her to stay, not for Skinny and Lanky to whom she had been like a daughter, not for that one intoxicated man who had beaten her black and blue in order to show her there was pleasure in pain, not for the people who had laughed and dismissed her with a flippant comment of “at least dreaming is free” when she told them about her journey toward joy, not for anybody. She didn’t care what it would cost her.  

At the age of 26, thirteen years after she had been left on the shore of the River of Regret, Misery found herself back there as she was returning from the valley of Old Age. She had spent a few weeks there with an old lady whose face was carved with deep wrinkles that would’ve been revered in the kingdom of Sorrow where the depth of one’s wrinkles marked the extent of the worry they had experienced during their life. The lady, called Wisdom, had fed Misery with homemade food that tasted of comfort and safety, only asking her to tell about her journey in return. Misery had done so, recounting all the things she had tried in the name of happiness during the past thirteen years. The old woman had listened attentively, letting Misery speak without interruptions. When Misery had reached the end of her story, Wisdom had reached over and taken Misery’s hands into hers and looked at her with old eyes.

“Dear child,” Wisdom had said, “you have travelled to every corner of the world in pursuit of happiness when all this time, it has been right here.” She then placed their joined hands on Misery’s chest, just over where her heart was beating.

“I don’t understand,” Misery had admitted.

“You will, one day,” the lady had promised with a soft smile.

When Misery had left the cosy cottage where the old lady lived, a backpack full of food to keep hunger away, Wisdom had embraced her one more time and whispered in her ear, “You have already taken the first steps on the path to happiness. Don’t be afraid of where it will take you.”

Misery had accepted that Wisdom liked to speak in riddles and therefore she hadn’t asked her to elaborate. She had simply smiled and waved before turning away, walking down the road that would take her toward the next adventure.

The road had eventually led Misery to a river and a landscape of nothing but grassy fields. It took her two days to realise why the roaring of the river sounded familiar and why the sight of the gnarled trees scattered here and there made something in her chest ache. It was only when she spotted a solitary rowboat on the opposite shore that she recognised the river as the River of Regret. This is where the two guards had tossed her ashore thirteen years ago. She had come a full circle.

Misery climbed down the riverbank, deciding she might as well rest for a moment in the place where her journey had started. She thought back to the young girl who had been terrified of the vast loneliness of the grassy landscape in front of her, almost giving up before she had truly even started. Something inside her had kept her going, though, had made her put one foot in front of the other until she had been too weak to continue. But she had survived and now here she was, thirteen years later and still not having found what she had set out to find back then.

The waters were calm, almost still, as Misery knelt on the rocky shore to drink. She caught her own reflection on the surface and stopped, taking a moment to study the face that carried the signs of her long and arduous journey. Not that she had never looked in the mirror during the thirteen years, but she hadn’t had the time to stop and really look, too busy with whatever she had hoped would bring her happiness at the time.

Her face was leaner than it had been when she was thirteen, the times of hunger having made their mark on her cheeks. There was a scar running diagonally down the left side of her face, from just below the eye toward her jaw, a reminder of her time among the people of Skirmish where happiness was found in the heat of battle. Her nose was crooked from that one time a drunkard had broken it. Faint worry lines were already creasing her forehead that was framed by a mop of messy brown hair that she preferred to keep short so that it didn’t get in the way.

Perhaps it wasn’t a pretty face like the worshippers of Beauty had told her, but it was a face that had seen plenty of hardships and endured. The story of Misery’s pursuit of happiness was carved in the harsh lines of her face, and her body that was also a patchwork of scars and scratches. The parts of her journey that hadn’t made their mark on her skin she found in her eyes, dark like they had been all those years ago, but deeper with emotion. For the first time in her life, she let herself shift through all of them, embracing even the sad, broken parts of her that the childhood in Sorrow had left inside because no one comes out whole from years of despairing. She had never been able to mend those parts of herself and so she had pushed them aside, hoping they would simply disappear once she found happiness somewhere in the world. But nothing had worked. Perhaps she had approached the matter all wrong from the get-go.

Misery was reminded of Wisdom’s words. “You have travelled to every corner of the world in pursuit of happiness when all this time, it has been right here.” She hadn’t understood the words back then or why Wisdom had placed their hands over her heart, but maybe she did now.

Letting her eyes fall shut, Misery started the painful journey deep inside of her. She relived memories she had thought she had forgotten ages ago and she acknowledged them as they were, accepting the part they had played in shaping her into the strong, imperfect person she was now.

For hours Misery sat there by the River of Regret where the old people of Sorrow sometimes came to die and drown in their regrets. Once she had been terrified of the river and what it hid in its depths, but when Misery opened her eyes damp with tears after the painful process of accepting her broken parts, she realised the river wasn’t evil. One had a choice with what kind of power they let the water have over them; sure, it could drown you if you let it, but it was also capable of washing you clean of your regrets. When Misery lowered herself into the cool water to bathe, she allowed it to do just that.

The sun was already setting behind the perpetual blanket of clouds when Misery finally rose from the river, feeling lighter than she had ever done. As she dried herself off, her lips turned upwards of their own accord. She gazed into the horizon, and, for the first time, wept out of joy.

There, on the shore of the River of Regret, Misery finally found happiness in self-acceptance, and she lived happily ever after.

Song lyrics from 26.

[satuwrites]

25. Maybe I know somewhere deep in my soul that love never lasts. I’ve always lived like this, keeping a comfortable distance. And up until now I had sworn to myself that I’m content with loneliness.

It was only as the bliss of the earlier passion started to fade and a deep, dull ache settled in his bones that he realised the severity of his mistake. With a sigh, he tried to pinpoint how exactly he had got himself into this mess and decided it had all started when he had slept through his alarm. It had set off a domino effect of catastrophes that had only picked up speed as the day progressed. The trail of destruction had followed him all the way to the bar in the city centre where he had intended to drink himself blind and forget the ferocity of his failures. His plan had been intercepted when she had taken the seat next to him at the bar and they had fallen into easy conversation. She was charming with her wide smile and infectious laugh, such a deep contrast to his morose mood. The sound of her voice had intoxicated him, and when she had suggested they continue things at her place, his addled brain hadn’t managed to stop him from nodding because it’s not like his day could possibly get any worse, right?

How foolish he had been, how naïve. There was a reason why he didn’t do one-night stands, why he had always lived alone, had kept a comfortable distance to the people around him. It was to protect his heart from getting funny ideas about affection and companionship, to prevent fondness blooming in his chest because the flowers would only wither and die. He knew, had always known somewhere deep in his soul, that love never lasted. It was best to avoid it altogether because no one could crush your heart if you didn’t give it away in the first place. He had lived by this rule all his life, had sworn to himself that he was content with loneliness, and it had never bothered him.

Up until now.

He had never considered how much comfort a warm body next to his in bed could bring. It had never crossed his mind that listening to someone else’s breathing could be more calming than any lullaby his mother had ever sung to him. The way her hair tickled against his neck made something inside his chest throb painfully and it was only after a tear escaped his eye that he realised it was his heart. There was a lifetime’s worth of longing in his lungs, and every breath he took only made the pain more acute.

He had to get out of there.

He scrambled out of bed, hastily pulling on clothes while ignoring the way his hands trembled. The longer he stayed in the room, the stronger her magnetic field would grow and the more difficult it would be for him to leave. And he couldn’t stay because that would be breaking one of the unspoken rules of one-night stands, and the morning light would only reveal the cracks in the armour he had assembled around his heart years ago. He wouldn’t be able to bear it.

Just as he reached the door, a rustle of sheets disturbed the silence, followed by a soft voice:

“Please stay. I– I don’t want you to go.”

His resolve almost crumbled then and there. He recognised the desperation behind the words, the same longing that was pulling every atom of his being back toward the bed. For a fleeting moment, he entertained the idea of staying the night, of crawling under the blankets and holding her in his arms, perhaps forever. She would tear down the walls he had built and let love wash away the bitterness in his soul and he would do the same to her. They would kiss away the doubts and fears, fill the voids between their fingers with warmth, and there would be no more days of coming home to an empty house because it would be filled with the laughter of their children. They would grow old and grey together, enjoying years of trust and devotion, and on their deathbeds they would smile, content with the lives they had lived.

The metal of the door handle was cool under his fingertips, and he didn’t look back as he slipped out of the room and the house, ignoring the painful pressure of tears threatening to spill over. He would lock away the memory of the night to the deepest corner of his mind, and go about his life as he had always done, never letting anyone get too close. His home would stay empty, the voids between his fingers would grow colder and he would arm the walls around his soul with barbed wire. And he would be content, although he would never quite manage to fill the emptiness in his chest.

Years and years later, when he was bitter, lonely, and dying, he would think back on the night for the first and final time, and he would wonder if he had imagined the forlorn sob that he had heard from the other side of the door he had closed behind him.

Song lyrics from The Only Exception.

[satuwrites]

24. And now when the sun is out, I let it burn, not afraid to feel it shine on me.

She is tired of the shadows.

All her life, she has been hiding in them, has obscured herself with dense tendrils of darkness, hoping no one will see the truth just waiting to burst through the seams of her skin. It is safer that way. The shade offers protection from the glaring searchlights that are the eyes of the people around her, always looking for reasons to impose their judgment and prejudice on those who don’t fit the rigid mould of a proper human. She is painfully aware of her own crookedness, though on first glance no one would be able to tell, but she knows her perfect mould was filled with imperfect substance. And so she tucks herself away because if someone notices the cracks in her hard surface, they will see the colours swirling beneath, a dizzying dance of daring pigmentation so unlike the shades of black and white she has witnessed in others. If her secret is discovered, she will be ripped apart, her colours drained out until she is a chunk of grey clay, pliant and obedient.

The shadows are her armour, almost a second skin she’s grown used to, but they are a heavy burden to bear, only growing heavier each passing day. She wonders how long it will take for the shadows to drag her six feet under while she trudges through life in a grey haze. The days blend together until she doesn’t know where one starts and another begins because everything is gloomy and grim. She walks under a perpetually overcast sky with no end in sight. The comforting blanket of the shadows becomes a suffocating cocoon, and too late she realises that the risk of hiding in the darkness is fading away completely. She starts pounding against the shell of her self-made prison, a desperate attempt to break free into the light she should have embraced while she had the chance.

She fights for air, claws at the walls, kicks and screams, but the shadows show no signs of dissolving. She is running out of time. The edges of her vision are turning black and the liquid fire in her lungs is burning her up from the inside. With one final effort, she musters all her remaining strength and hurls herself against the confinement she let herself be lured into. All her despair and anguish behind the attempt, she crashes through the walls of her imprisonment, stumbling into stunning sunlight. She falls down onto her hands and knees, gasps for precious air before looking around with eyes unaccustomed to the light. A sob escapes her throat at the sight.

After cowering in the darkness for too long, seeing the world in bright, vibrant colours is almost overwhelming. When she looks down, she notices she’s glowing as well, the last of her protective casing having been chipped away by the rays of sunshine. Her colours are even more brilliant now that they are free, blazing with unrestrained energy, and she knows she will never be able to hide them again. She will have to face the cruelty of those whose hatred, she understands now, is fuelled by envy and bitterness, for they are ordinary, and they will only ever be ordinary.

For the first time in her life, she is ready to embrace her uniqueness. She smiles. The sun is finally out, and she lets it burn, not afraid to feel it shine on her.

Song lyrics from Tell Me It’s Okay

[satuwrites]

23. Where’s your gavel, your jury? What’s my offense this time? -- Well, sentence me to another life.

Gather around, dear sirs, the trial is about to begin.

Where’s your gavel? Where is your jury?

For here I am, standing accused of…wait,

What’s my offense this time?

  Did I wear something too revealing,

Did I not smile enough,

Was I too bossy, too ambitious, too loud,

Was I a threat to your fragile masculinity?

  If that is the case, I will plead guilty,

Like generations of women before me.

With their shadows looming over me, I stand tall,

So go ahead and judge me.

  But if you sentence me to another life,

Let it be the life of a man of privilege

Because I am sick and tired of being convicted

For the simple crime of being a woman.

Song lyrics from Ignorance.

[satuwrites]

22. My mouth is dry with words I cannot verbalize.

Hello, how are you?

There’s a small smile, a choked-up chuckle

And a reply that is a knee-jerk reaction,

I’m fine.

It’s not a lie but not the whole truth,

It’s a state of in-between,

A balancing act that I cannot explain

For my mouth is dry with words I cannot verbalize.

Because I am fine,

But how do you say your fine means that

There’s a desert swallowing you up from the inside

With waves of sand dunes as high as mountains

Crashing down on you

Until sand runs through your veins,

Scraping and scratching,

And there’s decay deep in the marrow of your bones.

Nothing blossoms in the barren landscape of my mind

And the oases of better times are hallucinations,

Dreams conjured up by a parched, paralyzed mind.

But it’s alright

For this is my normal, so yes,

I am fine.

Song lyrics from We Are Broken.

[satuwrites]

21. Breathe for love tomorrow ‘cause there’s no hope for today.

Breathing.

Funny how such a simple act of our lungs expanding and constricting can be so vital. Inhale, exhale, live. Inhale. Exhale. Live. Most of the time it is a cycle we’re not even conscious of and yet we all do it – albeit sometimes some of us need a little help. Even so, breathing doesn’t discriminate. It only abandons us when it is brutally stolen from us and the cycle breaks.

No inhale, no exhale, no life.

Until then, we go on about our lives, breathing in and breathing out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Our lungs fill with air that is sometimes blisteringly cold and sometimes drenched in fumes but always neutral. The air doesn’t take sides. It encompasses us all, caresses cheeks and tousles hair. In its embrace we are all equal.

And so it goes. We go to school, go to work, go to festivals, go to clubs. We inhale and we exhale. We live. Our lungs inflate and deflate. Then, without warning, they are drowning in blood because someone whose breath runs cold with hatred decides to open fire. Dozens of lives are snuffed out before they can breathe a prayer and the rest of the world gasps. We breathe deeper and heavier, our bodies desperate to accommodate the lungfuls of air that would’ve belonged to those lost too soon.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

We grieve and then our throats burn with exclaims of outrage because people whose breaths smell of blood money and of lust for power say there is nothing to be done. Lies exhaled from their lungs contaminate the air and we try to fight them with gas masks on, but our lungs are tired. Then there is a breath of fresh air as students with fire in their eyes take up arms, demanding for justice, and we cheer them on because we know there is no hope for today.

But maybe we’ll breathe for love tomorrow.

Song lyrics from Breathe (Until Tomorrow).

[satuwrites]

20. Nothing compares to a quiet evening alone.

“Good morning, Barbara,” I say every morning to the woman with wispy white hair and wrinkles carved onto her face as I enter her room, carrying two cups of green tea that is warm, but not hot so that she doesn’t burn her tongue because she would forget to wait for the beverage to cool down. Every morning, her pale blue eyes stare at me in scared confusion, and every morning I clarify, “My name is Alfred. I am here to take care of you.”

Most days she spends a moment longer looking at me, eyes clouding over and becoming distant, and I know she is lost in her mind of jungled memories, trying to find a clue why my face and voice are familiar. Then she blinks – once, twice – and reaches for a cup of tea, the memories inaccessible, but something in my presence assuring her she is safe. Some days she simply nods, any trace of even vague recognition gone, and she accepts the drink and my company like a child who has yet to learn to fear strangers. And, of course, there are the days that I dread the most when the fear in her eyes intensifies, takes hold of her and she screams, hands gripping the blanket like it could protect her. On those days, I retreat from the room, close the door and wait with an aching heart for the wordless shrieks to subside. When everything is quiet, I open the door once more and greet her with, “Good morning, Barbara. My name is Alfred. I am here to take care of you,” like it was the first time. And for her, it is.

We start the day with drinking tea, the familiar taste bringing some light back into her eyes while I talk to her about the things on the day’s agenda. She will forget them ten minutes later, but she doesn’t like the quiet in the morning, needs the steady stream of my voice to keep her hands from pulling on her hair. And so I tell her about doctor’s appointments and the day’s meals and people coming over for a visit in short, efficient sentences that are easy to understand. All the while, she sits in silence, sipping her tea, words too difficult for her to form most of the time. When I reach the end of the day’s to-do list, I comment on the weather, the tea, a piece of news I heard on the radio, anything that comes to mind until our cups are empty and it is time to help her out of bed to face the day. It is a slow process because most days she pushes away my helping hands and insists on getting ready on her own. I let her because being overbearing makes her angry and she will try to hit me, upsetting us both. So I watch her lay out a shirt on the bed, turn back to the drawer to retrieve trousers, then watch her reach into the drawer again to pick another shirt, only to frown in confusion when she sees the one already on the bed. She puts the shirt back into its place, but it takes her a few more tries to set out a whole outfit without extra garments. She looks pleased with herself at the end of the task, and I smile despite the tightness in my lungs.

After I help her get dressed and use the toilet, she shuffles into the kitchen with me where I usually put on music from her childhood to play softly in the background. Since her hands are too clumsy for holding onto cutlery, I feed her, always marvelling at how she is able to mouth words to decades-old songs when she cannot remember what she ate fifteen minutes earlier. It makes me think about the way people with memory diseases are sometimes described as empty shells because the memories of their past that made them who they were have vanished. I cannot help but disagree as I watch her smile fondly at one of her favourite songs from when she was young because how can she be just a shell when there is still so much life in her? Maybe the majority of the stories about her life are written in a code language she cannot decipher, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. Some days her brain is even able to crack some of the code and she inspects a picture she has previously ignored and the light of recognition shines in her eyes, even if for the briefest of moments.

When breakfast has been eaten, we usually follow a routine. Predictable structure for the day is good for her brain although most of the time she doesn’t seem to remember that we do things in the same order and at the same time almost every day. It is only on days when I need to drive her to the doctor that the effect of the routine can be seen because she gets anxious, wrings her hands in her lap as we sit in the car, glances out the window every few seconds. We both dislike going to the doctor because afterwards she is more irritable than usual, and I thread on a ground scattered with land mines just waiting to explode if I take one wrong step around her.

Luckily the visits to the hospital are not frequent and the only breaches in our daily routine are the visitors who come by a few times a week and even then, they always try to arrive at a specific time. I look forward to the visits although they are bittersweet moments when friends and family greet her with enthusiastic smiles that without fail fade away when all they are met with are blank stares and bewildered frowns. They used to try to stimulate her memory by describing in detail how she knows them, telling her “I’m your sister” or “We have been friends since we were children”, but those only served to make her more guarded and prone to anger. Nowadays they simply introduce themselves by name and try to cope with the fact she will forget the name in a few minutes and their existence as soon as they’re gone. It is a harsh truth to swallow that someone dear to you can forget about you so utterly and completely. It can make you wonder about your own worth and destroy the way you view yourself, but it’s not them. Of course it’s not them; it’s the disease.

The guests are generally willing to look after her for an hour or two so that I can get out of the house on my own every once in a while. And yet they often have to practically push me out of the door because I don’t want to burden them. They insist it’s not a bother, and of course they are right because she is not a burden, she is a living, breathing person with a beautiful but sad story. Still, I have to actively push down the feeling of guilt that tries to consume my mind when I sit with old friends in a café or go to the library to read the day’s newspaper. My phone always stays within easy reach, and most of the time I return to the house earlier than agreed on because I worry something has gone amiss even if no one has called me. But I appreciate the sacrifices other people are prepared to make in order to give me some space to breathe outside of the house that sometimes feels suffocating.

I usually watch the guests leave with a slight amount of regret because their presence brings a sense of liveliness that is so often missing from the house. Even so, I decline their offers to stay overnight because if truth be told, nothing compares to a quiet evening alone with her. Her mind is usually calmer in the evenings and we sit on the couch together, watching episodes of silly television shows for the hundredth time, but it doesn’t matter because they are all new to her. She laughs gently at jokes her brain doesn’t remember hearing before and warmth fills my chest from seeing her happy. Sometimes her mind is too exhausted and frustrated from the confusion caused by strangers who talk like they’ve known her for years and on those nights we simply sit in silence or listen to music that comforts her.

On very rare but all the more precious occasions, we open a photo album full of memories of her and her husband. This only happens on days when her brain functions well enough to remember how to form words – even if they are slurred and often get cut off – and she asks me if I knew she has a husband and I ask her to tell me about him. And so she does to the best of her verbal ability, recounts the time they met when they were both taking cover from a sudden downpour in a tiny bookstore, describes the love and companionship that had blossomed with careful cultivation, reminisces about their spring wedding and how the birds sang with a song more beautiful than any she had ever heard before. She stutters her way through the memories with a soft smile on her lips until it turns into a worried pout because she doesn’t know where her husband is now. To distract her from the anxiety, I suggest we look at photos of him and she can tell more stories. We sit down with the album that has signs of wear from all the times it has been lovingly caressed while we gaze at pictures of a young, beautiful woman and a tall man with a proud face. Barbara recounts events her brains has stored so deep that not even the disease has reached them yet, but falls increasingly silent as the photos appear in a chronological order and the couple in them gets older, their backs bending and wrinkles drawing their life stories on their faces.

When we reach the end, she sits quietly until she grabs my left hand, the skin creased from age but still strong, and finds the ring there. She touches the cold surface gingerly, watches the identical simple band on her own finger. Then she looks at me, and even through the fog still obstructing the memories of the last few decades of her life, her soul recognises mine and she says, “You love me?”

“In sickness and in health,” I confirm.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, “I’m sorry I don’t remember.”

I pull her against my side as I hush her, revelling in the feeling of having her close, physically and emotionally, for this moment. “It’s okay. I remember enough for the both of us.”

Later, when I put her to bed, she smiles at me as I brush her thin hair as pure as snow from her face. The wrinkles around her eyes deepen and there’s warmth in the icy blueness that I haven’t seen in a long time.

“I know I love you. I always will. Remember that even when I don’t,” she urges with effort, raises a frail hand to trace the lines on my forehead.

I take the hand and press a kiss to the palm. “I will.” Then I lean down to peck her cheek and whisper, “I love you, too,” before I get up and leave the room, closing the door behind me with shoulders slightly more drooped than before.

The next morning, I walk into her room with two cups of green tea, and see the scared confusion in her pale blue eyes.

“Good morning, Barbara. My name is Alfred. I am here to take care of you.”

Song lyrics from crushcrushcrush

[satuwrites]

19. Just let me cry a little bit longer, I ain’t gon’ smile if I don’t want to.

It had been a busy evening in the coffee shop and so it was with a sigh of relief that Luke locked the door when the clock struck nine and even the young woman who had arrived half an hour earlier and had been incessantly winking at him for the duration – even after he had dashed into the backroom to fetch his rainbow flag pin and very pointedly fastened it to the front of his apron – was forced to leave. She had done so with one final spasm of the eye and he had been tempted to ask if she was quite alright, but that might have encouraged her to start an actual conversation, so he had merely granted her a slight nod of the head before practically sprinting to the door to make sure no new customers would try to barge in with complete disregard to the fact that Luke did have a life outside his work.

After the satisfying click that marked the end of the day, Luke leaned against the door for a few deep breaths, pushing strands of brown hair off his face, more than eager to leave the hectic evening shift behind. Usually the last couple of hours before closing time were blessedly quiet and he had plenty of time to chat with his partner in crime, Melissa, before he was left by himself to man the fort for the last 60 minutes which he normally spent studying for upcoming exams or scrolling through social media while serving maybe two customers at most. Not tonight, though. Tonight had been an endless stream of customers in increasingly more eccentric outfits as the evening progressed. Curious, Luke had asked a middle-aged man in a glittering leotard and killer heels – Luke hoped to be even half as badass as the man one day – if there was a reason so many people seemingly out of a surrealistic fairy tale had taken over the coffee shop where the usual, unexciting cast of customers consisted of university students in jumpers and joggers as well as business professionals in pinstripe suits and pencil skirts. Apparently there was some kind of an artsy event taking place down the road – Luke wasn’t sure on the details; he had lost interest as soon as the words ‘art’ and ‘exhibition’ had been uttered – and Biscuits and Coffee Beans was the only place nearby that sold coffee and was still open. It was good for the business, but bad for Luke’s nerves as he fought to keep the fake smile on while explaining as patiently as he could that no, the coffee wasn’t on the house no matter how shiny the outfit and yes, he was quite positive the green tea was vegan and gluten-free.

With one final huff of air, Luke pushed himself off the door and went to collect the dishes from the table where the woman with an apparent facial tic had sat. She had scribbled her phone number on the back of the receipt with, yet another, winky face and a name Rachel. Luke only shook his head as he threw the piece of paper in the rubbish bin and set the dishes in the sink. He would need to wash them by hand because the dishwasher was already running with the last load, but he didn’t mind. There was something incredibly peaceful in the silence that embraced the coffee shop after the door was locked and Luke started the closing ritual of lifting chairs on tables so that he could mop the floors. He hummed whatever poppy tune that came to his mind while he worked his way methodically towards the adjoining smaller dining area.

When Luke entered the other room, he heard a quiet sob and nearly jumped out of his skin to take up residence in the yucca plant next to him. Heart thundering, Luke steadied the plant he had almost knocked over and then turned to look at the source of the sobbing. In the back corner of the room, there was one final customer sitting at a round table with their head resting on their arms on the table top. Luke couldn’t tell much about the customer other than that they had blond, short hair and were wearing jeans and a hoodie with a back bag thrown on the chair next to them. Based on their attire, Luke thought they might be a university student.

A student who was very obviously crying.

As a student himself, Luke was intimately acquainted with the all-consuming despair caused by looming deadlines and gruelling exams. However, if this person actually was a student, they were taking study stress much harder than the average human. Luke was certain the lingering customer hadn’t been among the colourful hurricane that had started two hours before closing time because he would’ve remember them since they would’ve stuck out like a ray of sunshine in the middle of a storm, which meant that they had sat there and cried for much longer than should be humanly possible. It also meant that Melissa hadn’t informed him at the end of her shift that there was a customer in the smaller room which had been under her responsibility that day. All the customers in the last hour had stayed in the main dining area and so Luke had simply assumed that the coffee shop was empty once the hopelessly winking woman had left. He would berate Melissa when he saw her tomorrow, but right now, he needed to take care of the sad sight in front of him.

Luke tried clearing his throat from the other side of the room, but when the customer’s shoulders kept quivering and muffled sniffles kept coming at steady intervals, he stomped to the occupied table, making sure to cause enough noise for the other person to hear him. As dismayed as he was about having to deal with a customer after the coffee shop had already closed, the thought of giving the slumped form a cardiac arrest and then having to deal with a dead customer thrilled him even less.

“Hey, are you alright?” Luke asked, deciding to go with a polite approach. After all, his number one job was to make sure customers felt welcome and had a pleasant stay so that they would visit the coffee shop again or recommend it to their friends. Telling the poor soul to fuck off would probably ensure they would write a scathing review online, and those were really bad for business.

The customer’s shoulders stopped shaking, but there was no reply other than a derisive snort that clearly said what does it look like?

Luke sighed. This was going about just as well as he had expected. “Look, I’m terribly sorry for whatever that’s got you so upset, but we closed ten minutes ago.” Then, knowing fully well his boss would have a raging fit if she heard him breach one of the most important rules of customer service, he said, “I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave.”

A surprisingly deep male voice answered him and the dark timbre resonated pleasantly through Luke’s spine, though he tried to ignore it. “Just let me cry a little bit longer.”

“Wouldn’t you rather do that at home? That chair can’t be too comfortable,” Luke coaxed. He knew that his boss had deliberately foregone upholstered chairs in order to avoid customers overstaying their welcome in plush seats that would keep their bottoms nice and cosy. Most of the time it worked, but of course there were exceptions like this guy who ended up being a pain in the ass rather than having a pain in the ass from sitting on the harsh surface.

“No. If you knew my roommate, you wouldn’t either.”

The guy really did have a nice, rich voice, and Luke wouldn’t have minded listening to it more if he hadn’t been tired from the whirlwind of a shift and if he hadn’t had a job to do that included lifting the chair the customer was currently sitting on. The kind mask of a customer servant melted away and revealed the true face of a cranky, over-worked university student. “To be quite honest, I don’t actually care where you’d rather do your pathetic sobbing at, I just know I’d rather see you do it somewhere else. I would like to go home at some point, and for that to happen, you need to move your sorry ass.”

The slumped form in front of him went rigid for a long moment during which Luke managed to go through around a hundred painful scenarios of his boss firing him for his deplorable choice of words. Then the guy raised his head to glare at him, and all thoughts of his boss evaporated and were replaced by well hello, Mr Bluest-eyes-I’ve-ever-seen.

Suddenly Luke was more than happy to let the guy stay.

“Who are you calling pathetic?” the young man grumbled low in his throat, and the sound almost had Luke blushing but he fought it down. It took him an embarrassingly long time to reply because he was busy staring at the guy whose macho voice did not match his delicate features that were tinted red and bloated from all the crying he had been doing. Luke couldn’t decide whether it was a combination forged in heaven or hell. All he knew was that he had a weakness for pretty faces with blond hair and blue eyes and voices better suited for mountains, and here was a guy who somehow managed to embody all of that at once.

Luke tried to keep his words from trembling as he finally collected himself. “Not who, but what – your sobbing.” The guy’s features turned into a furious frown that looked out of place with the red-rimmed eyes and wet cheeks. Before he could grunt a response, however, Luke continued with a sigh, rubbing his neck, “I’m sorry, I turn into an even more insensitive jerk than usual when I’m tired. How about I make it up to you with my special hot chocolate? It’s on the house. You could probably use the hydration after the hours-long cryfest.”

The guy’s expression didn’t soften, but his shoulders relaxed a little bit. Then he nodded and muttered, “Sure.” Luke counted that as a victory.

“Fantastic! Help me lift the rest of the chairs on the tables and then get ready for me to rock your world,” Luke said with a wink and tried not to think about how he was turning into the young woman who had tried to flirt with him relentlessly. For all he knew, the guy was straight, but at least he didn’t show signs of discomfort at the gesture. Another small victory.

They made short work of clearing the floor. Luke chatted all the while about the hectic day, the bizarre crowd of customers and their foolish questions, never letting an awkward silence settle down in the space between himself and the other guy. For once in his life, Luke was actually grateful for his inability to shut up. Otherwise he would’ve just gawked at the guy who on top of everything else was also taller than Luke – and he was used to towering over his friends. It was as if someone had looked inside his brain to see all the things he found attractive in a guy and then created this tall human with the face of an elf but the voice of a dwarf.

Once all the chairs were lying upside down on the tables, Luke led the blonde to the main dining area and started preparing the promised hot chocolate. He continued babbling about trivial things while he worked his magic behind the counter. The special blend of hot milk, cocoa and different spices and flavours was something Luke had been perfecting ever since he had started working at Biscuits and Coffee Beans three and a half years ago. He would go as far as to say that the hot chocolate made by his masterful hands was the best in the city, and Melissa readily agreed whenever they dared to splurge on the rich-flavoured drink. One of these days he might pitch it to his boss in hopes of getting it put on the menu.

Luke added one more spoonful of caramel on top of the whipped cream before turning with a flourish, hoping his face wasn’t red after feeling a pair of brilliant blue eyes drilling into his back for the past few minutes. “Ta-da! Here you go, kind sir, a Luke-surious Lukehot Chocolate – emphasis on the hot – made with loving hands by yours truly.”

Blue eyes met brown ones with an incredulous stare before long fingers – of course, of course they were long – wrapped carefully around the mug. Their fingers brushed and if he had been in an overly romantic novel, Luke would’ve said he felt an electric spark lighting up his soul but, alas, he was just a tired university kid serving hot chocolate presumably to another tired student and the brush of their fingers was just that, an accidental contact of skin.  

“Thank you,” came the rumbling response and the hand withdrew as the tall guy gazed into the swirl of whipped cream.

Luke took in a theatrical, shocked gasp. “What? I don’t get even a hint of a smile as payment for my grievous effort?”

“I’m not going to smile if I don’t want to. Besides, you said it was on the house. I owe you nothing.”

Luke decided then and there it was his life mission to make the guy crack a smile. To hell with getting a degree and finding a better-paying job and buying a house; making those thin, pink lips curve upwards was far more important and definitely more satisfying.

“How cruel! How cold! Why must you hurt me so?” Luke pretended to faint onto the counter and he lay there for a few seconds before straightening up as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “Well, I hope you enjoy your drink worthy of gods. I’ll start mopping the floors like the lowly mortal I am.” He turned to fetch the cleaning equipment from the backroom, but nearly tripped over when he heard a spoon clinking against ceramic followed by a delightful moan of appreciation. Oh my god. The sound shot straight to Luke’s lower abdomen and he rushed to the staff toilet to splash his face with cold water in order to calm down.

When he deemed himself ready to face the guy with the sinfully deep voice, Luke returned to the front of the coffee shop, carrying the necessary equipment. The blonde was leaning on the counter with the grace of a prince while slurping on the hot chocolate, and to Luke’s chagrin – or pleasure, he wasn’t sure – he was making small sounds of approval from time to time. Luke had to put a stop to that if he wanted to get anything done.

“So, what do you think? Is the drink good enough for your refined taste buds?” Luke asked as he cast the mop into the bucket of water and started cleaning the floor after wringing the excess water out of it.

The guy nodded, but didn’t offer a smile. “It’s delicious.”

“Told you I’d rock your world, didn’t I?”

They existed in a comfortable silence for a moment while Luke scrubbed on a particularly nasty stain. When it didn’t come off, he moved a table slightly to cover it up. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.

“So, did you flunk an exam or what happened to get you so miserable?” Luke inquired when the other guy didn’t seem inclined to start a conversation. He tried not to let himself think it was because the tall blonde found him tragically uninteresting.

“You think I would cry over a stupid exam?” The guy sounded offended and when Luke turned to look at him, his torso had gone stiff and he was glaring at the counter. In hindsight, the current topic of conversation was probably not the best one for his plan to rouse a smile on the beautiful face.

“Hey, wouldn’t be the first time I witnessed such behaviour. I would probably shed a few tears as well. If I ever managed to fail an exam, that is.”

Luke had hoped the sapphire-blue eyes would turn to look at him, even if in disgust at his boasting, but they stayed cast down while the man shook his head. Finally, with a defeated sigh, he muttered so quietly that Luke almost didn’t hear him, “No, it’s… My… I found my girlfriend cheating on me with my ex.”

A girlfriend. Well, of course, Luke thought. Who had he been kidding, really? It was ridiculous to think that a gorgeous man who ticked all the boxes of Luke’s mental list of qualities to look for in a boyfriend would be anything but straight. He had to remind himself once again that he did not, in fact, live in a film where a chance encounter leads to the protagonist finding the love of their life when they least expect it. Luke had better get more acquainted with reality. It might be a harsh, unforgiving friend but at least it wouldn’t let Luke’s imagination run off to create fanciful scenarios where he finds someone who is willing to put up with his wacky antics.

There was an unpleasant pause as Luke tried to bite down the horrible feeling of disappointment before daring to open his mouth. Even then, he wanted to whack himself unconscious with the handle of the mop as soon as the words made themselves known. “Oh… That’s… unfortunate.”

“You could say that.”

Not knowing what to say next, Luke spewed out whatever words came to his mind, which was never a good choice in situations where he was supposed to be tactful. He didn’t know how to be sensitive most of the time, and his big mouth had got him into trouble more than once at work. “So, what? Are you so bad in bed that she lost all interest in men? Or was she just ‘experimenting’? She must know that’s an atrocious excuse if you’re in a relationship with someone.”

For some reason the other guy didn’t punch him. Instead, the blue eyes trained on him and the defined brows scrunched into a confused frown. Then, for a split second, the guy’s facial muscles were tugging his lips into a smile, but the moment was gone so fast Luke wasn’t sure if he hadn’t imagined it. Still, there was suddenly mirth in the depths of those blue pools.

“No, I think she just liked my ex’s dick better than mine.”

Luke almost choked on his own spit and he had to lean on his trusty mop to keep himself upright as he coughed. He could imagine how painfully unflattering he looked like in that moment, and the relief he felt at the blonde’s words did little to abate the morbid embarrassment.

Once the coughing fit passed, Luke croaked out, “So… You’re –.”

He was cut off. “Bisexual? Yeah. Is that a problem?”

If only the guy knew how much it was not a problem. “Obviously not,” Luke said weakly, pointing at the rainbow flag pin that was still adorning his apron. “I’m gay myself.”

A slender chin dipped down for a brief nod of acknowledgment, and then their eyes locked for a relaxed staring contest, as if they were seeing each other in a whole new light. There was fluttering hope in Luke’s stomach once again, but he didn’t let the feeling get overpowering. Just because the guy could like men as well as women didn’t mean he would ever find Luke attractive. Luke wasn’t quite ready to let go of his newly-formed friendship with reality.

Eventually Luke felt heat creeping up his neck to set his cheeks aflame and so he turned back to his work to hide the blush. After a couple of minutes of weird silence, he cleared his throat and said, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what happened.”

“Thank you.”

They fell into easy conversation after that, and Luke was delighted to notice it was now more of a dialogue rather than his monologue. They stayed on safe topics such as school – Luke had been correct; the tall blonde was, in fact, a university student – and favourite films, but it was nevertheless a nice way to pass the time as the guy finished his hot chocolate and Luke mopped the floor. Luke found himself enjoying the other man’s more serious demeanour, although it meant that making him smile was proving to be a much more difficult task than Luke had anticipated.

Some time later, the blonde gulped down the last of the hot chocolate and set the mug down with a resigned sigh. “Well, I’d better get going before my roommate calls the police. He worries if I stay out late without informing him, and my phone’s battery’s dead.” He shouldered his back bag and made his way towards the door.

“It’s alright, you can admit that you still live with your mum,” Luke teased, which only earned him an eye roll and no trace of a smile. He had to admit defeat. Thinking no more words would be exchanged, Luke lifted the bucket full of now dirty water to empty it in the sink in the backroom.

The low rumble of his late-night customer halted his steps.

“Hey, Luke.”

Turning to face the guy who was already halfway through the door, Luke was momentarily stunned by the fact that the attractive young man knew his name before he mentally slapped himself. Of course the guy knew his name, it was written in bold black letters on his nametag.

“Yes, sir?”

“Thanks for the hot chocolate,” the blonde said. Then the miracle that Luke had been waiting for the past 40 minutes happened. Like the sun peeping through a heavy curtain of clouds, a gentle smile graced the delicate lips, and the movement brought a sparkle into the stunning eyes that threatened to pull Luke in. He was certain his heart skipped a few beats and for a moment he felt like maybe he did live in one of those incredibly cliché books or films. Then it passed as the guy disappeared into the late evening, leaving Luke behind with a massive grin which didn’t fade away as he finished up the rest of his closing shift duties.

It wasn’t until later that night when Luke was sitting in bed with his laptop, determined to befriend the man of his dreams on Facebook, that he realised he hadn’t asked the guy’s name or his phone number. Somehow he had been so swept away in the excitement of meeting the perfect guy that the fact he was missing such a minor and useless detail as a name had went completely unnoticed.

Crushed, Luke put the laptop away and curled under the covers before turning off the bedside lamp. Unless the mysterious guy showed up at the coffee shop again and gave Luke the chance to fix his mistake, he had no way of finding him. Maybe the guy had wanted it to be that way; maybe he had thought Luke was creepy and wanted nothing more to do with him.

With that happy thought, Luke shut his eyes and fell into a restless sleep.

  It had been exactly two weeks since his encounter with the gorgeous blonde, and Luke was taking care of his usual Wednesday closing shift. The evening had been scarce of customers, which suited him just fine. He had had plenty of time to do research for a paper due next week, and didn’t feel too guilty for starting to stack the chairs on the tables ten minutes before closing time. That way he would be out of the coffee shop more quickly after closing. The quiet of the empty space late in the evening had become suffocating to Luke after sharing it with the nameless stranger a fortnight earlier. It only reminded him of the missed chance of asking for the guy’s phone number or any other information that would’ve allowed him to stay in touch with the guy. He hated being reminded of his own mistakes.

The tiny bell above the door chimed when there were only five minutes to go until nine o’clock. Luke was wiping the counter with his back to whoever had dared to disturb him so close to his freedom and he used the opportunity to glare at the wall and then let out a huge sigh.

“We’re closing in five minutes. If you’re here for take-away, that’s fine, otherwise I’d suggest you come back tomorrow unless you want to gulp down your beverage in record time.” Luke tried to keep his voice friendly to disguise the bluntness of his words, but it sounded strained even to his own ears. No points for splendid customer service for him tonight.

“Actually, I was really looking forward to having one of your Luke-surious Lukehot Chocolates and enjoying it at a leisurely pace. Is there no way that could be arranged?”

Luke swivelled around so quickly he almost cracked his neck.

There, leaning casually on the closed door in a leather jacket that looked sinfully good on his lean frame and the same jeans from two weeks before, was the nameless guy whose deep, resonating voice had been haunting Luke’s dreams on more than one occasion in the course of two weeks. As much as the blonde had been in Luke’s mind, he had forgotten the sharpness and the delicateness of his features and just how mesmerizingly blue his eyes were. Luke was tempted to pinch himself to check he wasn’t dreaming. No one could possibly look that good.

Luke had to swallow his nervousness down a few times before he stated as nonchalantly as possible, “Perhaps. Depends on who’s asking.”

A knowing smirk spread across the gorgeous face, and Luke had to tell his heart to calm down from its sudden burst of energy. Now was the most inconvenient time possible for having a cardiac arrest. If he didn’t die from his heart malfunctioning, the ensuing humiliation would surely do him in.

“Marcus.”

And just like that, Luke had a name to connect to the face. The exhilaration pulled his lips into a wide smile, but he didn’t care. Marcus had better get used to it.

“Well, you’re in luck, Marcus. I have an order coming up with your name on it on one condition.” The blonde – Marcus – cocked an eyebrow and Luke decided to just go for it, “You have to kiss the cook.”

If possible, Marcus’ smirk only grew wider, his blue eyes twinkling. “Of course, if the hot chocolate meets my high standards.”

With a pleased blush on his cheeks, Luke skipped behind the counter to prepare the beverage. He hummed excitedly as he worked, thinking that maybe it was possible for real life to imitate art. He certainly felt like he was living a scene out of a romantic film as he glanced over his shoulder to lock eyes with Marcus and share soft smiles. Where the plot would take them next, he didn’t know, but he was eager to find out.

Song lyrics from Rose-Colored Boy.

[satuwrites]

18. This heart will start a riot in me.

This heart will start a riot in me

So wild it cannot be killed by police brutality

And my blood will simmer, boil, and steam

‘Til we live in a world of absolute equality

And yet they’ll scream: “It’s only a dream!

If you belong to a group that’s in the minority

Tough luck, kid, you will never be free.”

  But I will never give up this fight

So if you challenge what I know in my heart to be right

You will see that I am dynamite

And I’ll burn the world down if it means the future is bright

This is my truth, so watch me ignite.

  And while the old order is aflame

We will dance in the burning cinders and proudly exclaim:

“Our souls will never again be tame.”

Song lyrics from That’s What You Get.

[satuwrites]

17. She lives in a fairy tale, somewhere too far for us to find. Forgotten the taste and smell of the world that she’s left behind.

Do you see that girl over there, curled up in the depths of a plush armchair in a quirky café, a book held securely in her lap? Isn’t it a picturesquely peaceful scene, the low-hanging lamps setting the warm, earthy colours of the floral wallpaper aglow, a large cup of coffee steaming on the oak table next to the girl whose one hand is twirling a lock of blond hair around a finger while the other turns a page every so often? It is a scene you feel you could walk right into and fit in, as if you were born to sit with the girl in this café where the people talk with soft voices and where the pieces of furniture do not match and still somehow manage to do so perfectly. And yet, if you were to approach the girl, you would not be able to reach her, for she is far, far away. Her mind has run away, has escaped this mundane life of ours and now lives in a fairy tale. What her eyes see are not the other customers passing by her corner in the café nor the words on the page of the book in her lap, but a world that exists somewhere too far for us to find, a world of magic and myth. It is a realm so wonderful that she has even forgotten the taste and smell of this bland, boring world that she’s left behind.

No, you wouldn’t be able to bring the girl back from the dimension where her mind resides, and even if you by some stroke of luck managed to rouse her, it wouldn’t be her. You may see an ordinary girl with curly hair the colour of glistening gold and a slumped posture, but in truth she is a warrior with insurmountable willpower and a wicked wit as quick as a whip, and she rides into battle on the wings of a gigantic dragon. She is the queen of a great, prospering empire who rules with kindness rather than terror; she is a victim of abuse who crashes, crumbles and crawls her way back into the light; she is a witch with the power of fire and fear of flames; she is a teacher, a mother, a daughter, a president, a villain. She is all of these things and so much more, for she has lived a thousand lives, died a hundred deaths and walked a million miles in other people’s shoes. In her head, there are galaxies of read stories, and when she finally finds her way back to our world and looks at you, the light of a billion suns will blaze through her eyes. What you have to do is decide whether you will burn from the heat of the gaze or shine with a light of your own.

The choice is yours.

Song lyrics from Brick by Boring Brick.

[satuwrites]

16. Maybe if my heart stops beating, it won’t hurt this much.

Maybe if my heart stopped beating, it wouldn’t hurt this much. It would be a short, sudden pain, the last cry for help by the failing organ, but then it would be over and I would be embraced by blissful nothingness. It would beat being devoured by debilitating loneliness while I watch as my demise creeps closer every time I eat alone in the school cafeteria or sit alone during recess or walk home alone at the end of the day. The acute ache of solitude pervades my every waking second, my lungs constricting when I see a group of friends laughing together, and haven’t the scientists proven that feeling lonely hurts, that it can cause physical pain? But how do you begin to heal if loneliness is your only friend? Yes, it is an abusive relationship that only takes, takes, takes and never gives, but by now it is the only kind of friendship I know. It is my personal Stockholm syndrome, and I can see no way out. But maybe if my heart stopped beating, I would know what freedom feels like.

Song lyrics from Never Let This Go.

[satuwrites]

15. I don’t even know myself at all, I thought I would be happy by now.

When I was young, watching the world with eyes wide with wonder, the thought that the future could be anything but bright, brilliant and beautiful never crossed my curious mind. How could it be grim and grey when the grass gleamed green after a thunderstorm that thrilled and terrified me to the core? Surely I wouldn’t be lost and lonely and looking for love when the world was full of potential friendships – finding them was only a matter of making the effort of reaching out. I had hope that happiness would happen to me, and as long as I had that, I would lack nothing.

For years I yearned for that state of serenity, but the years have been cold and cruel. How do you hold on to hope when bullies bombard you with brutal, bruising words until you’re broken beyond repair? For the bones of my fingers are fragile, and the feverish fight for joy has left them fractured. How long until the force of the grip fails and I fall down the hole of hopelessness? The days devoid of the dark depths of depression are already scarce, short spells of stunning sunlight overshadowed by the days when worthless worry worms its way through the holes of my wounded heart. Worthless because why waste time wondering about a truth threaded into the fabric of my being? I am the perfect prototype of a pointless person; a person with no purpose, no personality. I am a voiceless whisper in the void; a speck of dull, dying dust floating down, settling somewhere until swept aside because my existence is an insult to the startling splendour of the stars around me.

When I was young, I envisioned that one day I would wield wisdom like a weapon, incinerating injustices conceived by ignorance. But the tragic truth is that I know nothing; I don’t even know myself, at all. After all, during the time of infinite innocence, I thought I would be happy by now. Instead, when I look into the mirror, I see a stranger staring back at me; a shell for a soul shrouded in shadows, standing on the edge of a chasm. There is light on the other side, beckoning, begging me to take the long leap of faith. But I stay frozen, for I fear the fall.

Song lyrics from Last Hope.

[satuwrites]

14. Just don’t let me fall asleep, feeling empty again. ‘Cause I fear I might break.

Don’t let me fall asleep, don’t let me fall asleep, don’t let me fall asleep.

Why?

Because the nights are dark, but the nightmares are darker. Because my thoughts may be dark and desolate and depressing when I’m awake, but they are a heaven compared to the hell my brain conjures up when I’m asleep. Because the demons of my daydreams are ants under the heels of the giants that are the demons of my nightmares. Because being awake means being alive and falling asleep means falling apart.

Don’t let me fall asleep, don’t let me fall asleep.

Why?

Because the morning light is gentle when you watch it gradually drift through the window, but harsh and judgmental when you wake up with tangled sheets and strangled breath. Because feeling empty is better than being filled with terror. Because my eyelids are a silver screen when I sleep and they premiere a new blood-curdling horror movie my brain has directed every night. Because anyone would choose exhaustion over execution.

Just don’t let me fall asleep.

Why?

Because I fear I might

b

                  r

    e

                a

k

Song lyrics from Pressure.

[satuwrites]

13. Like the moon we borrow our light, I am nothing but a shadow in the night.

A quick author’s note: It’s only fitting that this story is a follow-up to this one, just like Part II is a follow-up to Let the Flames Begin. It’s recommended to read the first story before this one.

Maybe it would have been a good idea to open the bottle of champagne before they came outside to wait for the fireworks and she was supposed to go through with her plan. But she had convinced Sydney the bubbly drink could wait until after the turn of the year, had managed to talk her into coming to stand in the biting cold twenty minutes before midnight because it was all part of her plan. According to her plan, they would have a more significant reason to celebrate after they returned inside so why waste an expensive bottle for something as trivial as the passing of another year. What she hadn’t planned for was how she would’ve needed a glass of that champagne to stop her hands from trembling where they were resting on her girlfriend’s waist or to calm her rampant thoughts because what if she says no?

It was ridiculous. Rationally, she knew it was absurd to doubt because they had discussed this. They had lied in bed late at night on numerous occasions and discussed their hopes and dreams with hushed whispers and secret smiles, their intertwined fingers a comfort and a promise of a shared future. She shouldn’t worry because on those nights when they had felt like the only two people left in the world, they had agreed that maybe marriage didn’t sound like such a terrible idea after all. It would simply make a truth they held close to their hearts official in the eyes of others as well, and wouldn’t it be a waste not to take the chance that had been denied from people like them for generations?

Their discussions of the future always ended with slow kisses and assurances of someday and that was more than enough because they knew they were not empty promises. It was just a matter of taking the final plunge. A plunge that she had been preparing for the past few months, and now here she was, waiting for the year to turn with the woman she wanted to spend the rest of her days with. Somehow she felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down at the calm waters a hundred feet below. She had practiced for this jump and knew with almost absolute certainty she would land safely into the warm embrace of the sea. And yet there was a small but terrifying chance of a rogue blast of wind that would push her off course and make her crash into the sharp and unforgiving rocks instead. It was this possibility that had her heart beating wildly against her ribcage and made her afraid of uttering the words she had written weeks ago and memorised during the long shifts her girlfriend worked at the hospital.

She took a deep breath to calm her erratic pulse, hoping Sydney couldn’t feel the rapid beat where her face was nestled against her neck. The seconds were ticking by and she really needed to start with her speech if she wanted them to start the New Year as something more than girlfriends. She wanted to be able to kiss her fiancé silly when the clock struck twelve, and in a year or two, her wife. The thought made her giddy, and suddenly her heart was thumping rapidly for a completely different, and much better, reason: excitement.

Sydney shivered slightly from the cold and pressed more tightly against her, mumbling something about a stupid idea, sprinkled with a few choice curse words. The movement of lips against her neck sent a shiver of her own running up and down her spine, and she marvelled at the reaction the other woman could spark in her even after six years of dating. There was never a day when the simple act of saying I love you didn’t thrill her to the core or seeing her partner smile fondly at her didn’t lead to a team of butterflies practicing aerobics in her stomach. She didn’t understand how people could claim that the act of loving eventually becomes mundane because whenever she thought she had finally fallen as deeply in love as possible, the ground crumbled beneath her feet and she found herself falling once more. The love she felt for the woman in her arms was as endless and eternal as the bottomless night sky above them, and she never wanted to take it for granted.

After pressing a soft kiss that Sydney probably couldn’t feel on top of the mustard yellow beanie, she turned to look up at the dark sky. She was glad to notice the weather forecast had been correct in predicting a clear night. After all, the moon casting its silver light on the world around them was an integral part of her speech, which would have lost some of its impact under an overcast sky. Everything was as it should, and now she only needed to force the words out.

Here goes nothing.

“You know,” she started, voice trembling a bit too much for her liking. She cleared her throat and continued, squeezing Sydney closer in order to mask some of her nervousness, “I’ve been doing some thinking – a shocker, I know – and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two types of people in this world. The first type includes people like me, and I’ve come to call us ‘the moons’ because we circle around this thing called life, not really doing much. We’re just there. And maybe sometimes we engage in the happenings of the world and actually manage to achieve things, but mostly we’re as useless as a huge ball of rock in the sky that not a lot of people pay attention to.”

Sydney leaned back to look at her with a confused frown on her face while pulling away a few strands of blue hair stuck to her mouth. She had gone through all the colours of the rainbow during their time together but always seemed to gravitate back towards the electric blue that she had sported on the night they first met. Sydney claimed it was because the bright blue complimented her copper skin the best after her natural brown, but sometimes she wondered if maybe the other woman thought back to that night as often as she did, and the way it had changed everything.

“Where are you going with this?” It’s not like her girlfriend wasn’t used to her random bouts of philosophical talk that often were interrupted by a forceful kiss, but she had caught on the way her words were too careful and soft for this to be another speech that went nowhere.

“You’ll see soon enough,” she reassured and nudged Sydney’s nose gently with her own before resuming. “As I was saying, the moons aren’t usually that remarkable. But there are times when even we can shine, but we can’t do it without help. Like the moon, we borrow our light. And here’s where we come to the second type of people: the suns.” Because it was so cold they could see their breaths, she saw more than heard the way Sydney’s breath hitched at the words. She decided to take it as a good sign. “They are the people who make everything happen; they are the leaders, the inventors, the doctors. Without them, there would be no life. And just like the sun, they exude so much warmth and light that they can spare some even to the moons around them, allowing them to reach their full potential. The suns burn brightly, and you, my love, are the brightest sun of them all.”

She had expected the tears that started forming in the brown eyes that shone a light as warm as the setting sun (and wasn’t that fitting?). After all, Sydney had never been good at hiding her emotions. They always surfaced through the cracks in her poker face she sometimes attempted to keep when she was upset or the situation called for seriousness that was unnatural to her. It was the exuberance that had initially drawn her to the other girl in that club years ago when she had craved for even a speck of light in her dark life. Never in a million years would she have thought she would find the sun.

She took Sydney’s hands into hers, tracing mindless patterns on her knuckles as she tried to keep her voice calm for the rest of the speech. “Before I met you, I was a moon without a sun; nothing but a shadow in the night. To me, the world was a hopeless place full of never-ending darkness and loneliness. And every time I tried to reach out to people, I was only met with black holes who wanted to suck out the last of the light left in me. So I accepted that all I would ever get was eternal night.” The tears were now running down Sydney’s cheeks, but the grip on her hands was strong and sure. She fell in love all over again. “When you asked me to dance in that nightclub over six years ago, it was like I saw the sun for the first time after a polar night. The force of your spirit melted away the ice and brought the world around me back to life. You brought me back to life, as cliché as it sounds.”

The night of their meeting was still clearly etched in her memory as if it had happened the day before, not years ago. She remembered the way she had been skidding towards a panic attack as she took in the mass of people dancing wildly in front of her and blocking the exit, the flashing lights and loud music forcing her heart into overdrive. She had felt the overpowering need to run away and hide before everything became too much, but then Sydney had appeared and her panicked thoughts had quieted down and everything was calm. Sydney’s warm presence, she had quickly learnt, was something that could always soothe her, and with her help the panic attacks became much more infrequent visitors. Not that they ever disappeared completely, not after years of incessant bullying, but she had gained back the control over her life, and for that she was eternally grateful.

She let go of Sydney’s right hand to stuff hers into the pocket of her coat and wrapped her gloved fingers around a small, velvet box that she had stashed there early in the morning. Watery eyes followed the movement, and they were both aware of what was coming, but she had one more thing to say.

“I know you’d like to argue that I’m not dark and lifeless like the moon without the sun, but that’s only because you can never see me without the sun. You are my sun, and whenever I’m with you, I glow like the moon on a night like this. See?” With a nod of her head, she urged Sydney to turn her gaze to the sky where the full moon was shining down on them. “That could be me, burning with the strength of your light. You are my sun, and if you’re willing, I’d love to bask in the light of your love for the rest of my years. And that leaves us with one question,” she knelt down onto one knee, pulling the ring box out of her pocket and opened it with shaking hands. Sydney turned back to her with wide, gleaming eyes, and the soft light around them made her almost ethereal.

“Will you marry me?”

The ease with which the question rolled off her tongue assured her that this was the right decision. It felt like coming home and she couldn’t believe she ever felt nervous about proposing because this was Sydney. The one person who never made her uncomfortable, who was always ready to stand by her side through thick and thin, and who she would do anything for.  She knew with aching certainty that this was it, this was the course her life had taken the moment she had looked into Sydney’s eyes for the first time. Maybe it was sappy to think that way but she didn’t care because she was so unfathomably, indescribably happy.

It took almost a minute (54 seconds to be exact, not that she was counting) for Sydney to form an answer, but she wasn’t too worried. She knew what the answer would be, had gathered it from the way her partner’s breath had hitched earlier during the speech. The response started with a slight nod of the head and then her soon-to-be fiancé was radiating, her full lips stretched into a wide, stunning smile that almost knocked her to the ground.

“Yes,” Sydney exclaimed, her voice breathless with delight. “Yes, of course I will.”

They struggled getting the rings onto their fingers because their visions were blurry with tears of joy and their hands were shaking. Once they were both happily burdened by the new weight and Sydney had had a chance to marvel at the simple beauty of the silver band, they crashed their bodies and mouths together. The kiss was familiar but there was also something new and exciting in it, a deeper level of significance that they were more than happy to explore together.

When the first firework flew through the sky and burst into a brilliant shower of green and gold, they pulled apart for just a moment to catch their breath.

“Happy New Year, fiancé,” she whispered, giddy with the way the word tasted in her mouth. She could only imagine how wonderful it would be to replace the word with wife.

One day.

“Happy New Year, moon of my life.” And just like that, she found herself once again falling in love a bit more deeply with this woman who would quote Game of Thrones at her a few minutes after getting engaged.

She couldn’t wait to marry her.

Song lyrics from Part II.

[satuwrites]

12. Honestly, can you believe we crossed the world while it’s asleep?

The air was bitterly cold on the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The stars and the moon on the ink-black sky cast their delicate light over the rooftops of the sleeping town, illuminating the clock tower which was becoming slightly more dishevelled with each passing year but which still served its purpose well enough for the townspeople. At this time of the night, however, there was no one around to watch as the small hand crept its way toward number three, and the lonely tower only kept track on time because it was what it was designed for. If someone had been around to pay attention, they might have worried that the old building was finally reaching the end of its days as the large hand seemed to be perpetually glued over number eight. Then they would check the time on their phone only to notice that the clock tower was, indeed, showing the correct time. They would shrug and keep walking, shivering under the cold light of the stars, and when their phone still showed 2:40 what felt like a half an hour later, they would think nothing of it. But of course there was no one around to mark the curiously slow passing of time. Most of the inhabitants were curled in bed, fast asleep, waiting for morning when shrieks of joy would echo through many households as children discovered the neatly wrapped presents under Christmas trees or in stockings. And those rare night owls who deemed the night was still young were too absorbed in whatever they were doing ­– watching Netflix, reading, dancing along to music alone in their underwear – to observe how unusually long the night seemed to last. Eventually sleep would catch up to them, and they would crawl into bed, happy with the unexpected amount of time they had for recharging their bodies.

In the living room of one house near the clock tower, however, there was a pair of hazel eyes that glared at the old building through the window, waiting for the hands to turn. The eyes belonged to a small girl no older than seven, wearing red flannel pyjamas with a fluffy blanket draped around her narrow shoulders. She was sitting in the otherwise dark room if not for the lights on the Christmas tree behind the couch illuminating her dark, curly hair with a soft halo. She had sneaked downstairs after her parents had gone to bed and the faint snores of them both had carried into her room through the open doorways. Her footsteps on the stairs and down the hallway had been soft and gentle, just like she had practised many times over, and she had remembered to carefully hop over the fourth step because it always complained with a horrible creak, no matter how lightly she stepped on it. Once she had reached the living room without alarming her parents, she had plopped down on the couch and started waiting. She had been at it for what she could’ve sworn was several hours but what according to the clock had only been one, and her eyelids were now periodically drooping shut without her consent, but she always managed to tear them open again. But sleep was a ruthless enemy if you tried fighting against it. It would bait its time, circling around you and creeping closer when your attention was elsewhere, wearing you out with surprise attacks that you desperately tried to deflect but never tiring itself, until you finally surrendered into its greedy hands. That is how even the small girl with burning determination to stay awake in the end lay down and let her eyes fall shut, promising herself she would only rest them for a moment. She would not miss him this year.

It was hard to gauge how much time passed because the hands on the clock tower stubbornly refused to move, but after a while the girl was startled awake by a squeak of the floorboards. She lied still, convinced that her parents had noticed her missing from her bed and were coming to usher her back upstairs despite her yearly pleading for them to let her stay just a little bit longer because she wanted to see him. Her parents would only smile fondly and assure her the presents would be there in the morning even without her keeping watch. They simply didn’t understand. She didn’t care about the presents, not really. Her wish was to see the old man who brought them, but her parents insisted it wasn’t possible. He worked in secret, they told her, and no one ever saw him. But surely if she stayed awake by the Christmas tree the whole night, she couldn’t miss him? The presents couldn’t just appear out of nowhere.

The girl cracked one eye open a fraction of an inch and peeked through the narrow slit when she heard a shuffle of heavy feet coming from the direction of the hallway. She frowned slightly, forgetting her pretence of sleep because the sound didn’t seem right. Both of her parents were always light on their feet as only dancers were, and the quiet but solid thumps of shoes on the floor couldn’t belong to either of them. Her heart started to beat faster as she stared at the doorway with one narrow eye, almost squeaking in fear as a short but stocky figure of a man appeared in her line of sight. The figure was shrouded in shadows, only becoming distinguishable as he slowly strolled into the room and the tiny lights of the Christmas tree cast their warm light on him. She could now make out the white, wild beard that flowed from his chin down to his chest, the round cheeks still burning red from the cold bite of the winter air, the simple but huge brown sack thrown over his shoulder. The man was dressed in a red suit with white fur decorating the collar and sleeves of his coat, black leather boots rising halfway up his shins. Most importantly, for the little girl at least, the man was wearing a red stocking cap with a white pom-pom at the end over his curly hair.

The girl took in the sight for a moment longer and watched in awe as the old man made his way toward the Christmas tree. He was humming a merry tone under his breath, appearing not to have noticed her on the couch. That wouldn’t do, the girl decided, and so she spoke up when the man was inching past.

“Are you Santa?”

The man nearly jumped out of his boots at the sound of her soft whisper, only barely managing to keep his hold on the heavy-looking sack threatening to slip from his shoulder. She was gazing up at him with wide, glowing eyes when he turned to look at her, a hesitant smile stretching her lips.

“Ho, ho, ho, my dear girl, you scared me so!” The man chuckled, his voice deep and booming even as he tried to keep it down. “But indeed, you are right; I am Santa Claus, all day and night!”

The girl squealed, rushing up from the couch and throwing her arms around Santa’s round belly. “I knew it! I knew I would see you!” Despite her overflowing excitement, she was careful not to let her words get too loud. Her parents were still upstairs, after all, and she didn’t want them to wake up and rush downstairs to see what all the noise was about. She had waited for this moment for years and she was unwilling to share it with anyone else.

Santa patted her head gently and smiled down at her, his warm eyes twinkling in the low light. “It is nice to meet you, Isobel, and with all my heart, I hope you’re well.”

Isobel beamed up at the old man, the gap between her front teeth showing, pleased that he remembered her name. She was still holding onto him tightly, face pressed against the soft fabric of his coat, his solid presence assuring her that she wasn’t dreaming. This wouldn’t be the first time she had a dream about meeting Santa Claus, and there was still a distant voice of doubt inside her telling her that she would soon wake up back on the couch. But it felt so real.

“As much as I like hugging, I fear you have to let go; there are still many things to do, as I’m sure you know.” Santa’s voice was gentle as he carefully pried her arms loose. He then started pulling out an assortment of presents out of his gift sack, placing them under the Christmas tree in neat rows and small piles. Isobel hardly paid attention to the colourful packages, though, her rapt attention trained on, and never leaving, the man clad in red.

“It is a very beautiful Christmas tree; on your work, I congratulate thee,” Santa mused as he concentrated on his own work. No matter how many gifts he set down under the tree, his bag didn’t seem to deflate at all. If Isobel was to lift it, she would also notice it didn’t weigh nearly as much as it looked it did.

“You speak funny,” was Isobel’s response to the compliment. Santa graciously ignored the minor hint of rudeness in her words. Instead, he turned back to the young girl once he had fished out the last present for her family, and smiled.

“It’s called rhyming, my dear, and it’s the only way I speak, I fear. I’ve done so since I was a kid. Annoyed my parents with it, I did.”

“Wait,” Isobel said, her eyes wide and mouth hanging slightly open, “you were once young, too?”

Santa’s chest rumbled with silent laughter, but he didn’t answer, only ruffled her curly hair fondly. He picked up his bag from the floor and swung it over his shoulder like it weighed nothing, and Isobel realised he was going to be leaving soon. The giddiness that had bloomed inside her since Santa’s appearance started to wither. She didn’t want their time together to end when it had only just begun.

“Santa, there is one wish I didn’t write about in my letter,” Isobel confessed, biting at her lip in a nervous habit. She had waited for this moment all year, but now that it was time to voice her question, she suddenly grew shy. Santa watched her with kind eyes, his gentle face welcoming in the soft shadows, and yet she feared he would be angry at her request. She almost chickened out, folding into herself, but she remembered her mother telling her that if she wanted something, it never hurt to ask. If you didn’t ask, the answer would always be no. With that thought, Isobel took a deep breath, and blurted out, “Can I come with you?”

The question was followed by silence, and Isobel didn’t dare look up, concentrating on her hands instead. Shame started closing its cold fingers around her heart as she stood there, thinking she had asked for too much. Wasn’t it enough she had met Santa? Did she have to be even more selfish and ruin the miracle of the moment?

“You expect me to refuse, do you not?” Santa finally asked, and Isobel could only nod her head in agreement. She should’ve kept quiet. “True, it’s an honour granted to a selected lot.” Isobel’s shoulders dropped in defeat, last of her hope escaping with a heavy sigh. She kept her head down in an attempt to hide the surfacing tears. “And I think you will do just fine, riding in the sleigh of mine.”

The words hung in the air for a few seconds before Isobel’s head shot up, watery hazel eyes staring in disbelief at the smiling face behind the huge beard. “I can –,” She couldn’t even finish the sentence, so in shock at the turn of the events.

“Now hurry up, put on your coat, dear child, it’s going to be a chilly ride.”

It was like a switch had been flicked, and Isobel was suddenly full of energy. She stormed into the hallway, frantically pulling on shoes and her warmest coat, not forgetting her beanie and mittens. In record time, she was ready, beaming with her sunniest smile as she grabbed her scarf as an afterthought before they made their way outside, the front door closing behind them with a quiet click. The whole neighbourhood was asleep so there was no one around to see as Santa grabbed Isobel’s hand and they floated up to the roof, landing softly. That made her ask why he hadn’t come through the chimney as it would’ve been much faster. Santa chuckled and replied, “Dear child, I can’t do that; my belly holds way too much fat.” There was also luckily no one around to notice the huge, red sleigh on the roof and the nine reindeer standing calmly in front of it.

The sleigh was glorious. It reminded Isobel of the many drawings she had seen of it, and it made her wonder if the people who drew them had seen it with their own eyes. But the drawings hadn’t quite managed to catch the shine of the red-painted wood, nor the sheer size of it – four adults could’ve easily sat there with space to spare. As it were, there were only two of them, and Isobel worried she would slide around on the seat when they lifted off, but the issue was resolved when seatbelts for both of them appeared with a puff of air. Santa rhymed something about traffic safety, but Isobel didn’t pay attention, too preoccupied with staring in wonder at the tiny colourful orbs of light that floated around the sleigh. Her hand reached out to touch one of them, and it landed there, Isobel’s skin tingling with the contact. She marvelled at the green orb, noticing a bell of similar colour at the centre of the glow that tinkled faintly as the orb moved, until Santa declared, with his weird rhymes, that they were ready for take-off. Isobel let go of the orb, and nodded to the old man. She was ready.

Years later, when Isobel was herself an old lady with wrinkles around her eyes and greying hair, she would sometimes wonder if the night she got to spend flying around the world in Santa’s sleigh had in fact been just a trick of her over-active imagination. It seemed impossible that she had seen hundreds of twinkling cities, all asleep, rush by below them, and that everywhere they went, it was always night time. She wondered if she had made up the wind blowing on her face with surprising warmth, caressing her cheeks and leaving her hair in a tangled mess. The ride itself hadn’t been cold like Santa had claimed; she only shivered when they stopped and Santa went inside the houses to leave lovely gifts for the families to wake up to. But, of course, it wasn’t winter everywhere in the world. In Australia, Isobel had to take off her thick coat as Santa parked the sleigh under palm trees swaying gently in the warm breeze.

Isobel would also ponder whether she truly had chatted the night away with Santa Claus, listening to his stories as they flew over the Sahara, the Great Wall of China and the Amazon. She learnt about his home and secret workshop in Korvatunturi, a fell in northern Finland. They laughed together at the many incidents that had occurred during his long life, and how Mrs. Claus always cooked too much food, but Santa couldn’t bring himself to say no to the numerous extra servings. In turn, he listened attentively when Isobel talked about her, admittedly, much shorter life. She gushed about the trips she had taken with her parents, and listed off her favourite toys. At times, they also sat in comfortable silence as Isobel stared at the surrounding world, heart soaring in her chest.

It was the most wonderful night of her life.

When all the presents had been delivered, it was time for Isobel to return home. She tried to hide the sadness in her eyes as they landed, this time on their driveway so she could get back inside easily. It was still dark outside, and when she glanced at the town’s clock tower, she was surprised to find the hands hadn’t moved an inch. It was still twenty to three.

“You can stop time?” she exclaimed, the thought having not crossed her mind before.

Santa nodded, a mischievous glint in his blue eyes. “That is something I can do indeed, in this line of job it’s something you need.”

Isobel accepted the answer, not thinking too much about the finer details of Christmas magic. She unbuckled herself, and the seatbelt vanished like it had never existed. Her bones became heavy with despair. She feared that when she went inside, the night would disappear from her memory without trace, just like the seatbelt. Or worse yet, she would wake up in the morning and think it was simply a very elaborate dream her mind had conjured up.

Santa noticed the shift in her mood. He placed a large, comforting hand on Isobel’s shoulder, urging her to look at him. “Don’t worry, you won’t forget, you will always remember we truly met.”

Isobel nodded, relief flooding her, spilling out through her tear ducts. She wiped at her cheeks hastily. Santa gave her a sad smile.

“It was a joy to meet you, Isobel, and know I only wish you well. But there’s a promise I must ask you to keep: Don’t talk about this night, not even in your sleep. If everyone finds out, the magic of Christmas will disappear, and that, my dear child, is my deepest fear. So the silence you must alone endure, but you will prevail, of this I am sure.”

Isobel could sense the truth behind his words. There was a certain amount of mystery to the holiday, caused by clashing beliefs. If everyone knew about Santa Claus’s existence and believed in him, Christmas would become mundane, losing its magic in the process. Isobel never wanted for that to happen and so she nodded, promising Santa she would never tell anyone, not even her parents.

The answer pleased the old man. “That is good, in your word I trust.” He checked the time on a watch that Isobel hadn’t noticed before, sighing deeply. “And now it’s time, go you must.”

That was the last thing Isobel wanted to do, but she knew she couldn’t stay in the sleigh forever. She gave Santa one last hug before climbing out, dragging her feet toward the house. When she reached the front door, she turned to wave. Santa was already gently pulling on the reins, and the reindeer took off, trotting through the sky at increasing speed. Isobel kept her eyes on the sleigh, and smiled when Santa lifted a hand in farewell. Then she blinked, and he was gone.

In the morning, Isobel was woken up by a gentle squeeze on her shoulder. She blinked blearily at her mother as she rose, a bit disoriented when she noticed she was in her own room when she was sure she had fallen asleep on the couch.

Noticing her confusion, Isobel’s mother explained, “Your father carried you back here when we found you sleeping on the couch. What have we told you about sneaking into the living room in the middle of the night?” There was a hint of a scolding tone in her tone, and Isobel blushed.

“That I shouldn’t do it. I’m sorry. I just wanted to meet Santa.”

“And? Did you?”

The smile on her mother’s face was teasing, but Isobel only shrugged. She was scared to think about the previous night, afraid she would find it to be nothing but a dream. She would dwell on it later, her heart not yet ready to face the possible unpleasant truth.

Isobel’s mother stroked her hair back from her forehead and pressed a gentle kiss there before urging her to change her clothes and come downstairs. “There’s a big pile of presents under the tree,” she said with a wink before leaving.

Isobel stood still for a bit longer, and then she did just that. But when she threw her pyjama bottoms onto her bed, she stilled again, frowning at the odd noise the movement caused. She grabbed the pants again, shaking them gently, and there it was again, a soft tinkling sound. She checked the pockets of the pyjama bottoms and when she put them away again, there, in the palm of her hand, was a tiny, green bell.

Isobel smiled.

Years later, when Isobel was an old lady with wrinkles around her eyes and greying hair, she could sometimes barely believe that she had once crossed the world while it was asleep. After all, she never saw Santa Claus again. The following years when she sneaked downstairs to sit on the couch, she always fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the presents were already neatly arranged under the Christmas tree. But whenever the doubt settled over her, she only needed to look at the bell that she always kept close to know that her unbelievable adventure around the world in Santa’s sleigh hadn’t been a dream.

Song lyrics from Looking Up.

[satuwrites]

11. I’ll write you to let you know that I’m alright.

On the porch of a small, cosy house in a quiet neighbourhood, there were two figures standing in a tight embrace. The sun had barely woken from its slumber, and so the woman in the man’s arms was still wearing her flannel pyjamas. The man, however, was already in a uniform, the camouflage painting the scene with sinister undertones.

“I don’t want you to go,” the woman whispered into the man’s shoulder. Her voice quivered violently, all of her energy focused on not breaking into sobs once again. There was no time for tears now. She refused to spend their last moments together weeping for the inevitable. It would have to wait until she was surrounded by the quiet of their shared home.

“I know. But you know I have to. I can’t abandon my duty when my country needs me.” Her fiancé’s hands were a soothing presence on her back, sliding up and down reassuringly, grounding her. She would miss the weight of them when he was gone.

She sighed. “I know that. I just wish all the man children stopped playing war with real people as toy soldiers. It’s not fair.”

“You and me both, love.” He turned his head to press a kiss into her hair, burying his face in the black mane. “You and me both.”

There was a stretch of silence as they took in the warmth of the other, letting it seep into the marrow of their bones for safekeeping.

“How long will you be gone?” She finally asked just to break the silence. She already knew the answer because they had went through it multiple times, but she needed to hear the melody of his voice.

He didn’t comment on the redundancy of the question, understanding the true need behind it. “I wish I knew. But I’ll be back before you know it, okay?”

He pulled back just enough to gaze down at her with warm eyes and a small smile. She tried to hide the desperation in her own expression as she traced the lines of his face, committing them to memory. A chill ran down her spine as she thought of the possibility that this could be the last time she ever saw the upturned nose and the light stubble on his cheeks. And as much as she didn’t want to, she knew she had to broach the subject which had been the third participant in their conversations for a long while but which they had resolutely ignored.

“And what if you don’t come back?”

His smile faded, but before he could reply, a car pulled up in front of their home. Their time had run out.

Not caring about the possible onlookers, he brought his lips down into a fervent kiss. Dozens of emotions that they couldn’t voice out loud were exchanged through the touch of their lips. When they pulled apart, they were both breathless and broken by the things left unsaid.

“I will come back,” he assured as she clung to him for the last time in what might turn out to be an eternity. “And when I do, we’ll finally get married, okay?”

She smiled, tears threatening to spill over, and nodded. Then he turned to leave, picking up his bag on the way. The sound of his footsteps on the wooden porch echoed in her ears as she watched him start making his way to the car. He had hardly made it ten metres before she sprinted after him, ignoring the cold seeping into her bare feet.

“Wait!”

When he turned around, she leaped into his arms once more and kissed him desperately.

“I love you. Be safe.”

“I always am.” The intimacy of the moment was broken by the honk of the car, and he shot a glare at the driver before turning back to her and cupping the curve of her jaw. “And I love you, too. I’ll write you to let you know that I’m alright, okay?”

After one final, lingering kiss, he let go of her, stepping into the car without looking back. She didn’t blame him for it because she knew he had to keep himself together far more than she did. He would need to be made of steel to make it through the ordeals of the months to come, and if keeping his head turned while they drove off was what was required to achieve that, she would happily grant him that. Anything for him to make it back alive.

She stayed there in their driveway until she couldn’t feel her feet any longer, staring at the spot where the car had disappeared from her view. She wasn’t sure whether the cold that had settled in the corner of her heart was caused by the chill that had spread from the ground or by the bitter doubt that told her she would never see her fiancé again.

She tried shaking the thought away as she walked back to their house. He would be alright. All she had to do was wait.

  Two months later, she finally received a letter.

But it wasn’t from him.

He wasn’t alright.

Song lyrics from Here We Go Again.

[satuwrites]

10. All that I want is to wake up fine.

All that I want is to wake up fine,

Alone in my bed, yet not feeling

Lonely,

My own body heat enough to keep the sheets warm,

And getting up will be as easy as

Breathing.

  All that I want is to find beauty,

In the reflection in the mirror,

In me,

The landscape of my body worthy of worship,

And the corners of my mouth turn upwards,

Smiling.

  All that I want is to shed my fears,

My anxieties, my sorrows, and

My doubts,

Pride in my accomplishments prickling on my skin,

And shame is shackled, my true self rises,

Glowing.

  All that I want is to feel happy,

The world a blur of brilliant colours,

Not grey,

The bliss of being alive thrumming through my thoughts,

And there is joy to be found in simply

Living.

Song lyrics from Hard Times.