a plead
i have been working on this story for the past handful of months and i have finally finished it and i am in dire need of comments!!! please please read my story and tell me what you think
Type your cut contents here.
The Eyes on His Hands
Tonight, the moon is full, casting the shadow of the boy across the grass. He sits here some nights, theorizing, writing his contemplations and his insanities in hurried chicken scratch. He wrote as if his thoughts came too fast for his pen, yet each was an elaboration of his wonders, in depth and detailed with examples and emotion.
Tonight he thought of time. A progression of the earth’s rotation, the change in distance from the sun, could that be time he wondered? He had already ruled out the thought of numbers on a clock. Too simple, he thought, too artificial.
He stood now, his sight a bit blurred in the dark, his body stiff from the hours of sitting and writing. In front of him was the long journey home.
The boy walked home this night, just as he would any other night, one foot in front of the other, taking in the feel of the wind on his skin, the expanse of sky above him and the flaws in the asphalt beneath his feet. He passed the massive Floridian mansions, passed the thin road where mangos grow, ripen, and then fall uselessly to the ground. He picked one up, and sat to enjoy the sweet contents beneath the multicolored mango hide. When he was done, his mouth sticky and wet with mango juice, his hands dirty, he collected five more for his kitchen, and continued on his journey.
The wind blew the sounds of tonight into his ears. He closed his eyes in hearing the rip of a motorcycle. He imagines himself flying down a long deserted road, his heart roaring like an engine, as loud as the motorcycle itself.
Tonight, he decided, was a night for adventure, and feeling very much up to a longer walk, he turned left onto a road he never had time to turn down any other night.
The beginning of the road was very much plain. The trees were like any other trees, the grass just as green. He walked down this road for sometime, mangos in his bag, thoughts in his head and suddenly the boy saw a man in the road. The man was old with grey hair and large blue eyes set animatedly above his nose. He was very thin, his skin a wan paleness that shone effervescently beneath the moon beams. His ragged clothing hung loosely upon his sickly figure, his skin tight against his bones.
The boy quickly took pity on this old man and thought it a nice gesture to give him his five mangos and to tell him where more could be found.
“Excuse me sir,” said the boy, “you look very hungry, and I have five mangos in my bag. Please take them; I eat them only for pleasure.”
The old man stopped in his tracks and smiled wide so that his teeth shone rotting in the cavity of his mouth.
“Down that road,” continued the boy, pointing in the direction whence he came, “there are mangos trees, and more scattered about the ground.”
The old man’s eyes were the only clean thing about him. They looked like the eyes of a small boy with large dreams. “Much obliged,” said the old man, “but I am not in need, take those mangos to your kitchen and eat them for pleasure. I am a rich man, wealthy beyond all reproach.”
The boy did not understand. Why would a rich man adorn himself with such rags? A rich man’s hands are not so callused, his odor not so repulsive. The old man chuckled at the confusion in the boys face as he pulled out what looked like a hand rolled cigarette. Upon lighting it there came a sweet smell that the boy could not quite place.
“I’m on my way to a shindig,” said the old man, “you should join me and meet my friends.”
The boy felt an instant connection with the old man, as a student to his teacher. He would follow this man on this night and meet his friends.
And so, they began to walk.
The old man offered the boy the cigarette, and the boy not wanting to offend took two long drags. He coughed them up immediately, his eyes watering. When the tears cleared and his cough stopped thumping against his ribs, the boy saw the world as he never had before. The trees seemed to him like long slender dancers, the road constantly moving beneath his feet. His thoughts raced. Time was nothing, age was enemy, men are full of folly, and not all questions have answers. These were all epiphanies the boy had reached when a great mansion arose almost temple like at the end of the road. They entered the garden and the boy was washed with an overwhelming sense of majesty. Here grew every flower that one could possibly imagine. It was as if this vast garden ignored the seasons and the temperatures. Rose bushes of every color bloomed about the place, citrus, apple, banana and peach trees abundant with fruits. Rows of strawberries, black berries, blue berries and raspberries stretched across the estate. Chrysanthemums, orchids, marigolds and morning glories, calla lilies the same iridescent white of the moon, all this beauty lay before the boy to take in and he wondered what great deity could have planted such vibrant creatures in such black soil.
He was so taken by this mysterious garden he barely noticed that his legs had kept on in their stride and now the boy and the old man found themselves walking through an immense thresh hold, passed two large mahogany doors, into a circular, sunken living room where the strangest array of people had congregated engulfed in music. The sweet sounds were emanating from the left hand corner of the room where a small dark skinned girl with almond shaped eyes, sat and played her sitar.
The people sat in a circle around a tall hookah the shape of the finest woman, translucent green glass fogged with smoke. Everyone seemed very much entertained with themselves. No one had noticed the old man and the boy’s entrance, no one, with the exception of the sitar-playing girl who had caught the boy’s eye.
The circle of people consisted of a little girl with long golden locks and a playful black kitten, an old man who never ceased to laugh hysterically, a woman in a red dress with a crooked smile, and a young man who neither spoke nor allowed any sort of expression to be visible on his face.
“These are my friends,” said the old man.
The boy followed the old man down the marble steps into the sunken living room. The air was filled with the same sweet smell the boy could not place. The old man sat on an empty pillow that rested between the little girl and the hysterical old man. The boy sat behind them, crossed his legs and began to observe.
Observation was something his father had taught him before he left. He often spent days with his father in nature, beneath their tree, watching the wind blow the leaves, and the mangos ripen and fall to the ground. Each day the boy saw something he had never seen before, though he never changed positions nor sat under any other tree. The boy often mused over the thought that so many different worlds exist simultaneously with his own and that his world neither mattered to other creatures, nor did any other creature’s world infiltrate his own. The boy was fond of learning lessons and putting his knowledge to use.
So he sat quietly and observed.
“Old friend,” the man could hardly speak through chuckles, “the girl here has been telling me fibs!” he exclaimed, falling over in a fit of laughter the boy was sure he would die from.
“He’s been laughing for years,” the old man turned to the boy. “No one’s quite sure why he does, but I met him by the river in a town quite far from here and thought his disposition to be quite pleasant and so he has been my friend since. Isn’t that right friend?”
The man laughed and nodded in reply.
The little girl opened her azure eyes, “Be careful, I might go on telling fibs.” She batted her lashes at the old man, telling him sincerely that the world was flat and how if he didn’t proceed with caution, he might fall right off the edge into nothing. The old man laughed at this.
The woman in red spoke to herself, smoking her designated hookah hose. She seemed to be buried deep in an argument with herself about time. The boy remembered his own ponderings on time, and so, wandered over to her with conversation.
“What do you want boy?” The woman seemed to be vexed with frustration.
“I only wanted to speak with you. About time I mean,” the boy was reluctant in his speech, not wanting to anger the woman further.
“The steady progression of days,” said the woman.
“I think time is nothing but a numerical account of our distance from the sun,” the boy voiced his opinion proudly. He’d never shared his theories with anyone before.
“Rubbish.” She said no more than this and began smoking furiously out of the hookah, as if the memory of their conversation would dissipate with the smoke. The boy was put down by this, though he eventually realized he did not care for her attitude and situated himself back at his original place.
He noticed that the sitar player had never taken her eyes off of him, and what caught him even more than this realization was the sweet music that crept into his ears. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
The old man watched the boy.
The old man passed him his hose and the boy smoked contently, until his eyes were cracked with red veins and his mind filled endlessly with thoughts.
He remembered his mother now, her small nimble fingers, the smell in the kitchen as she pealed the mango the boy had been so eager to consume.
“Be careful, the juice stains,” she would warn. He remembers the small, smooth pebbles they collected together, watching the ripples consume the looking glass stillness of the pond.
“The Japanese believe that coy fish bring good luck,” she would explain whilst scattering the small brown pellets into the water. Beneath the water lilies coy fish would congregate, their colors visible as they swam to the surface to collect their meal. The boy’s mother was the most beautiful creature in existence; of this he was sure. At night she would sit silently, engulfed in words and fiction. She taught him that though words might be insufficient at times, they were a beautiful human invention. On the coffee table rested a dictionary, and when the boy came across a word he could not quite understand, he knew better than to ask his mother, she would only direct him to the coffee table.
“If not you won’t remember,” she would say.
The young man at the other side of the room shouted, “This is unacceptable!” The woman in red shot up from her cushion, standing very erect with an indescribable hatred in her eyes.
“How now! This is very much acceptable indeed!” she was furious, she walked over to him and slapped him hard across the face. He sat still, emotionless as the first instance the boy saw him. The sitar player ceased, “you two always quarrel about such inane things.” Her voice was laced with a motherly appeal and the boy took in the look of her as if it were a long awaited breath, a relief of sorts.
She was small, but very much a mature woman. Her curves were enticing, her skin impeccably smooth, the long black curls of her hair caught the light so that it seemed as if diamonds were traipsing about the obsidian strands. The boy thought of getting lost in her hair, of covering himself in it with her, the boy thought of making love to her endlessly, for days. She was more beautiful to him then, than his mother ever could have been, though this newfound beauty was inexplicably alluring, not the type of beauty a son seeks in his mother.
The old man watched the boy watch the sitar player and he smiled knowingly, nudging his old friend who in turn smiled at the little girl. The little girl stood, her blue dress flowing about her knees, and tapped the boy’s shoulder.
“Isn’t she pretty,” the girl whispered into his ear. The boy had become so completely entranced by the sitar player that he hardly acknowledged the girl. He nodded his head, his mouth slightly ajar, his eyes wide open and admitted to her beauty with a “yes” that came out as a sigh. The little girl giggled, picked up her cat and skipped over to the argument and the sitar player.
“How can I find contentment with a man like this!” the woman screamed, “he never speaks and when he does he says such infuriating things. Unacceptable,” here she gave an angry, nervous chuckle, “you are unacceptable!” The young man was still sitting on his cushion; he leaned forward to grab his hose and began to smoke. Now he smiled, but the little girl and the sitar player distracted the boy. The little girl spun on her heel and pulled at the sitar player’s arm. She bent down and the little girl whispered something seemingly sweet into her ear. The sitar player smiled fervently, locking eyes with the boy.
The boy leaned back to lie down upon the cold marble floor. When he rested his head he realized that the marble had softened into blades of grass that towered over his figure and swayed in the warm breeze the boy welcomed upon his skin. A great silence grew, and upon looking up, the boy was stricken by the colors in the sky. Never had he seen such tranquil shades of blue present in there before. The sky appeared to be a vast dome, complete with fading rings of azure and clouds that took forms the boy could not even begin to explain. He wandered through the tall grass for sometime until he came upon a thin dirt road, where both old men, the little girl and the sitar player waited patiently for him. His mind began to formulate hundreds of questions as to what could possibly be happening.
“It doesn’t matter,” the old man said to the boy, as if he knew his thoughts exactly. “Just let it lead you where it pleases.”
“Let what lead me?” the boy inquired.
“Questions are useless here. This is a place where only answers can be found.”
They began to walk, aimlessly it seemed to the boy. The clouds seemed pleasing as belly dancers in the sky, the boy indulged in the world around him. He glanced at the sitar player and decided to wander over to her as the others began to walk. He reached into his bag and without a word handed her a mango and ran off to catch up with the others. The sitar player seemed very much pleased. She sat down and began to eat the mango as if it were a godly thing, a great offering of sorts. Eventually, she faded out of view, and they exited the great forest of tall grass into a desert like setting that was tinged beige and soft shades of pink and orange.
The boy noticed that when he kept his eyes straight ahead, their seemed to be a civilization upon the sand. People bustling around a market place, small homes where children might sleep. When the boy turned his head to observe this scene, it all disappeared and there seemed to be nothing more but barren sand and horizon.
“Not everything is as it seems.”
This seemed to quench the boy’s need for explanation. He knew now that nothing was to be trusted; that where ever he has found himself seems to be nothing more than a great manifestation of some kind, the grandest of all lies. His feet kept in their stride upon the thin dirt road; the old men were conversing of better days, long ago when they were boys.
“Ah…” the boy’s teacher sighed, “remember the river where we met. The nights we sat by it and smoked to our hearts content. Oh! And the days when we rowed out of town and let the current carry us back.” The old man seemed jovial in his nostalgia.
“Yes,” laughed the second old man, “I remember it quite well. The night liked to play tricks on us then, and tell us fibs like the little girl does now.” He opened his large grey eyes at the little girl and pulled one of her curls so that it sprang back up to her head. The boy thought this action should have been followed by comical sound effects. He laughed silently to himself.
The boy hardly realized that the sun had fallen and that they were no longer in the desert, but that they were walking along a riverbank, beneath a crescent moon that hung as sheepishly as any grin. Down the road there was a bon fire and what looked like a grand celebration of some kind. The spot by the river seemed to be teaming with young women dancing drunkenly around the fire, beautifully nude women, who seemed to trap the moonbeams beneath their skin and in the strands of their hair.
One of the women saw them coming down the road. Her hair was long cascading strands of green earth tones, her skin was brown as tree bark and she seemed as languid as an El Greco painting. She began to shriek something horrible, and ran around in circles until her legs rendered her immobile, her toes extending like roots into the lush green grass. Just as suddenly all of her nudity vanished and in her place stood a solemnly tall tree, branches extending out far from the base, sheltering the road from the intrusion of moonlight. All of the other women began a shrill chorus of exasperated shrieks and all about the riverbank, naked women burst into flowers that had not seemed to be blooming there before. Some jumped into the river and the boy noticed the instant they turned into droplets of water that rippled the surface upon landing there.
“Who were they?” Inquired the boy.
“You must learn not to ask questions,” said the old man instructively.
The boy looked back to where the women had been dancing around their fire. Down the river the boy could see a boat, floating suspiciously empty and he watched as it docked itself. He wondered if it were called upon by one of his companions.
The little girl tugged on the boy’s sleeve. He bent down to hear her whisper.
“There she awaits!” the little girl grabbed the hands of the old men and began to run with them.
“Goodbye!” they all screamed in unison.
“Wait!” the boy shouted back, and they stopped in their tracks as the boy sprinted towards them.
“Take these,” he handed them a mango each and they smiled in gratitude, the laughing old man handing him a cigarette much like the one his teacher had lit earlier. They vanished as if they had never stood upon the spot they had.
The boy was confused as to where he should go and what he should do. This world was a new one and he couldn’t think of exploring it without some sort of guide. He turned back to the river and saw the boat still docked by the riverbank, as if waiting to be boarded for departure. He thought of the old man’s advice. Never question, only welcome all answers. This was a new lesson the boy had learned, and as he did with all new lessons, he implemented this one by walking over to the boat, placing the cigarette behind his ear, and stepping inside.
The boat immediately began to speed down the river, as a motorcycle speeds freely down a long stretch of deserted road. He passed what seemed to be villages and a grand lush jungle where all animals congregated and seemed to dance. He passed pyramids with large doors embedded in their sides. He passed the spot where his special tree stood, his father sitting cross-legged beneath it waved lovingly at his son. Beside him stood his mother collecting fallen mangos in her woven satchel. The boy could not think of the last time he saw his mother and father together simultaneously. He passed through his childhood, passed that awkward place where the essence of maturity begins to bloom within a child.
The boat came to a halting stop in front of a quaint brick bungalow covered with vines and a small garden filled with begonias of all colors. In front of the house stood the sitar player, akimbo with soft red begonias in her hair.
The boy stepped off the boat and walked up to his sitar player. He had become hers, and in turn she had become his. This was evident by the gleam in her eyes beneath the night sky, where stars crackled like silent fire works.
“Hello,” she waved as if inspired by him, she began to dance where she stood and waltzed her way down the dirty cobble stone path. Her smile distracted him from the flowers that began to effloresce all about the path behind her. She welcomed him through the small brick threshold into a sitting room lit up with the soft light from the hearth.
“I’m afraid to ask…” began the boy but he quickly caught himself. His mind flew from his thoughts. Suddenly everything was unmistakably clear; everything was understood and sufficient in its simplicity. The boy now understood the old man’s advice. Questions are useless he realized, knowledge drifted about the air, filling it with softness like sweet pollen. He looked at the sitar player who smiled faintly at him. She grabbed his hand as if it were a wounded bird and began to twirl with him about the room.
They sat by the fire and the boy took out his last mango. She peeled it and together they made a mess of themselves in front of the fire. They giggled uncontrollably like rowdy children, they laughed at each other’s sticky hands and lips. They laughed, the boy knew, because there was really no reason not to. The boy confided his insanities in her and she listened with the same patience he often found in his mother’s eyes when he would come home with leaves in his hair and dirt on his cheeks.
“This world seems so strange to me,” he smiled, “I could accustom myself to it I imagine.”
He remembered the cigarette the old man had given him and he quickly asked the sitar player for a match. She took the cigarette from him and placed it sensually between her full lips. The boy wished he could be the plume of smoke that jetted from between her lips and from her nostrils.
The sitar player moved closer to the boy and kissed him softly on the cheek as she passed him the cigarette. Her sheer beige sundress revealed the perfect slope of her breasts and the difference between the dark skin and the light supple brown that hardened with the cold night wind that crept through the windows. When she laughed too hard, throwing her head back wildly, her mouth was wide as if welcoming the rain. It was then the boy became very much aware of the straining muscles in her neck and of the way the skirt of her dress was wrinkled and pressed between her thighs. It was then that the man dared to touch her. With one hand he cradled her cheek and with the other he cupped the curve of her hip. He handled her as if she would somehow turn to ash in his palms before he could enjoy the indescribable softness of her skin. They made love for what seemed like an innumerable amount of days, and all the while the cigarette stayed lit for them to enjoy. On occasion they would stop and lie naked in a silence that filled the man more than any word or conversation ever could. She would twirl his hair around her littlest finger, and he would write poetry with the tip of his finger on her chest, over her stomach and between her shoulder blades on her back.
The man never thought of things he once would have spent a great deal of time pondering. He hardly wondered at how the fire never needed to be fed, or how no matter how many drags of the cigarette they took, it never shrank in size nor decreased in potency.
This was how they spent many days, which turned into many months, until the man lost track of time. Time had fled his mind altogether, he no longer searched for definition; the grimacing face of clocks became a memory of a long forgotten fiend. He began to melt into an existence that was both sunset and sunrise, which contained him and his thoughts as smugly as the sitar player’s smile was both humble and seducing.
Then on a day that seemed just as all the others that had passed before it, a question formulated in his mind. He had forgotten questions and the insecurity that followed immediately when answers did not.
“What is your name?” the man asked the sitar player. Her face filled with perplexity, she had no answer for the man. For the first time in her existence she also formulated a question in her mind.
“What is a name?” she whispered almost to herself, her eyes fixated upon her round toes squirming by the man’s feet. There was shame in her question, as if her newfound discovery of questions revealed her true ignorance.
“Something by which one calls oneself.” His voice was reassuring, trying to reach the sitar player and comfort her shame. She seemed inconsolable.
“I have no such possession.” She paused for what seemed like a long stretch of time. “What is your… name?”
The man could not think of it.
“I believe I have forgotten.” He continued, “but names are useless, I’m sorry I brought it up.” He smiled at her apologetically, lifting her face with his fingers.
That night they did not make love in front of the fire, that night the sitar player clung to the man; both of them were fully dressed. The man knew that something had changed, that maybe it was time to continue on his journey home.
The sitar player also understood that it was time for the man to leave. She had fulfilled her purpose, she thought, he now knew of love. But she now knew of questions. It was time for her to leave this world into another where one was free to inquire, where one could indulge in one’s own ignorance without shame and seek the answers instead of being handed them.
And so, they closed the wooden door of their bungalow, and glanced not at the begonias that had begun to wilt with each step further.
Before them, by the riverbank, stood two great white steeds and behind them a small dapple-grey pony that hung its head as sheepishly as a bashful child. He wondered if it had only been hours that had passed since he stepped foot off the speeding rowboat. He had lived a lifetime with the sitar player since then.
The man and the girl mounted the horses. The man turned to the girl, whose eyes hung solemnly in the sky, scrutinizing every cloud as if words were written upon them that the man could not see.
They kissed each other softly as toddler’s intently fixated on a game of pretend with no time for romance.
“Goodbye” she whispered, and before he could respond, she galloped away across the river and into the horizon where she dispersed into nothing, as if the possibility of her existence was nothing more than another of the grand lies that laced this strange place.
He began the horse at a steady trot, using the footprint shaped clouds as his compass pointing north.
The man never pondered at what could lie ahead of him nor thought of searching for a path, which could wind its way to his doorstep, where his mother may be sleeping in her little bed. He knew only that the horse would lead him where he needed to be, and that all around him and embedded in the atmosphere of this world were wonders of extraordinary measure that called to him, “Here is knowledge! Here is wisdom.”
Eventually he reached the estuary where a forest of mangroves encroached every inch of the earth encircling the dim gray waters. He followed the path where the mangroves cease to flourish on the dry land, to a vast emerald ocean complete with foam tipped waves and shimmers of platinum from the sun’s great, golden reflection. He glanced back to the horses hoof prints on the sand. The great steed began to gallop at full speed and the man was filled with an overwhelming sense of infinity and freedom.
He looked up to the sky and saw a large red balloon slowly descending from its perch in the grand display of colors and clouds that was the sunset.
The man never took his eye off of the red balloon as he continued down the beach at a slow trot. The only thought that could distract him was that of the horse and how it must be filled with hunger and fatigue. The man had not even a mango for feed.
As the sky began to fade into shades of dark blue and deep royal shades of purple grey and ebony, the man watched the red balloon’s basket descend into a mass of baobab trees and the balloon’s ropes entangling themselves in the branches. He turned his horse towards the forest to feed his curiosity.
The forest of massive baobab trees stood farther out in the distance than the man had imagined when he began his ride towards the landing place of the curious red balloon. He trotted slowly through the winding paths created by the trees until he spotted the mass of red that was once the balloon. On the ground by the basket sat a beautiful Venus adorned with long blond hair that curled in locks about her dainty frame. She wore a simple blue dress and bore no shoes on her small porcelain feet. She had a very frustrated wrinkle at the corner of each large, round, blue eye and a childish pout on her lips above her chin that rested pensively on her fist. Behind him stood the dapple-grey pony, it followed relentlessly.
The darkness of night was seeping over the vibrant colors that once held the rays of the sun.
She upturned the large blue orbs of her eyes to the man; “You would guard me from the dark, build a fire against the cold. I have a great plenty food and grain for the beasts.” Her voice boom out of the forest and over the ocean, it was commanding but also soft and effeminate. He knew no words that would please her and so he spoke to her only with his eyes and his actions. He dismounted his steed and walked over to the basket where he found sacks of fruit, bread and grain. He brought them over to the little woman, and began to build a fire.
She spoke all through the night. She spoke as the man fed the white horse and the dapple-grey pony, she spoke as he ate his meal of bread, berries, apples, oranges, figs, dates and heavy melons that exploded with the sweetest juice. She spoke of her father and his large carpenter’s hands. She spoke of romance and poetry, politics, history and moral. When the moon crept past the middle of the sky, she began to tell stories and the man never noticed the weight upon his eyelids as he began to dream of the far off places and of the fantastic magic the woman wove intricately into her tales.
The next morning they ate in silence, she made no notice of the man’s presence. When they were done she stood quickly and fixed her bluest-sky-eyes sternly upon the man. “We must leave here.”
And with those words they packed what could fit in his satchel and what the woman could carry on the pony, they trotted out of the woods as silent as passing strangers, traveling to the same destination.
The morning hummed with life and the boy journeyed in wonder at how crisp and impossibly vibrant the world seemed. A world crafted by children’s toys; imagine Raggedy-Andy carpenters, Barbie seamstresses and the Tickle-Me-Elmo comedy hour. Every aspect of this wakefulness amused the man; he smiled to himself and caught a glimpse of a salamander perched upon the concave lens of the sky.
His laugh emerged from the pit of his heart, full and loud and filled with exuberance. He laughed because he was alive, he laughed at the excruciating presence of all the beauty that surrounded him. Nothing more mattered than what lay before his eyes, the mountain range that lay misty purple and solemn far ahead, the clouds and their nonsensical lunacy, the woman in blue traveling on a dapple-grey pony staring off into other worlds the man could never even begin to fathom.
Suddenly, the man realized that the woman in blue contained a potent familiarity he could no longer shun.
“I know you from some other place.” He said, his eyes thoroughly scrutinizing her diminutive form.
The woman in blue reached into one of the saddlebags and from it pulled a mango she presented to the man with a shy girlish smile.
“Now I know you, you are the little girl that warned about the edge of the world!”
This realization so excited the man that he jumped off his horse and lifted the little woman into his arms and spun around exuberantly.
He put her down gently, her bare little feet collecting balance, “I knew it was you! All this time I did, I did!” He ranted in this way before he asked the woman what had become of the two old men. She told him of how they decided to go back to their small town and build a hut on the riverbank where they could smoke and fish and let the current carry them away.
This news made the man very content. He felt then all the heaviness of the time that had passed since he had begun his journey home but he was filled with indifference towards it.
The little girl with the golden locks and the large azure eyes that told nothing but creative white lies was now a woman of unbounded beauty who spun intricate webs of fantasy that filled him and pleased him immensely. He was now a man, almost wise, he knew of time and friendship. He knew of love. He also now knew the purpose of his journey, of his leaving his home with the sitar player and of the curiosity that pulled him to the fallen red balloon. He knew that he could learn nothing further if he did not impart what knowledge he had already learned.
“I will take you home with me to meet my mother. I will teach you all I know and in turn you will teach me. From what we learn from one another we could teach our child.”
The woman in blue was taken aback by the man’s frankness. Who was he to demand of her something as precious as the rest of her life? Yet within his words she found humble sincerity, she knew well that if she were to go with him he would spend the rest of his days attempting to please her. She also thought of his mother.
The woman in blue never had a mother nor could imagine any woman renouncing her freedom for a man nor for a child. She thought of the man’s words as they trotted on towards the mountains. She knew she must present her answer to the man before the mountains were reached.
They rode silently the rest of the way, comfortably glancing at one another and then fixating their eyes back to the mountains that were emanating a golden glow as the sun began to set.
The woman in blue noticed that the man never tried to coax her into leaving with him. He only presented the idea and waiting patiently and respectfully for a response. He didn’t bother her with meaningless conversation; he only seemed to enjoy the soft silence between them.
When he finally spoke he told her about his parents, the coy fish and the mango trees. She listened with fervent adoration, and spoke in turn. Then the silence wrapped around them once again, a worn grey coat that contained them both snuggly.
The sun receded behind the mountains and beneath the sea. They dismounted and the man built a fire where they sat and ate as the horses fed.
“I will go with you. But I will do as I please when I please, and so shall you.”
They were in agreement and that night they slept entangled in each other beneath the moody blue-sky speckled with stars, where the moon hung grinning like a sly cat.
And so that morning, they ate their bread and fruit, and the little woman in blue hopped upon the great white steed holding onto the man as if he were her sanity. They galloped away over the purple mountains back into reality where the man’s mother stood worn and glowing silver with age, scattering the brown pellets into the pond where a myriad of coy fish swam to the surface to collect their meal.
-Paola C. Tavarez-