1.
"What do you see?"
I seat myself next to him and smile. "Again with your questions?"
"Don't blame me," he says. "My eyes won't open because I'm so tired. So tell me, what do you see?"
I look around the room and notice the cracks on the ceiling. The dust in the corners of the window. There are many faults and many details that make my chest a little heavier. But as always my tongue is quicker than my mind, and my eyes look behind the shadows.
"There's golden light falling on the floor," I mumble. "There are small pieces of dust floating in its beam, like snowflakes that ride on the wind and never reach the ground. The sky outside is colouring orange near the horizon, but high above there's a curtain of a deep purple creeping upon it. The sun is hanging so low and is so bright I can't look at it."
He smiles. "That sounds good."
"It's always the same, though."
"I know, I know. But you describe it so well. It's always different than before."
"Want to hear what I saw on the streets today?"
"No."
"...No?"
"I like this room more. What else do you see?"
I remove the shoes from my feet and place them neatly next to each other. Once they were shiny and clean, and I desperately try to keep them that way. But time has no pity, not even on my favourite (and only) pair of shoes.
"You're looking at your shoes again." I know he's grinning.
"How can you tell?"
"There's this sudden silence, you know. I can literally hear you brooding about it."
He shifts and places a hand on my back. A warm, kind touch. It makes my eyes teary, and I clench my teeth.
"They were this black, slick leather. Right? With blue laces."
I answered when I was sure my voice would not tremble.
"Yeah."
"But anyway: the room. How does the kitchen look?"
I pull my legs up and lie down next to him. My head doesn't turn in the right direction: I know our "kitchen's" appearance by heart.
The tiles on the wall are orange and white, with one red tile in the highest corner on the right wall. The sink is made of copper, but now there are green stains on it. Like moss growing at the roots of a tree. There are three chairs in the corner with the red tile. One's made of wood, the other two are made of plastic and iron.
"Green, black and white," he sighs.
I nod. The green one hasn't been used in ages. It would be... wrong. It belonged to someone else, even though we knew that person would never return.
His chair is the white one. Mine is black. We're each other's opposites in many ways.
He falls asleep. I put my arms around him and rest my head on his chest, my eyes drifting to the corner of what our "kitchen" is.
There's no furnace, no electricity. The copper sink is just a small tub I found in the back of an alley. The table was chopped to pieces to use as firewood. Not like we used it anymore. The floor is made of dark wooden boards, and I can see the faint outlines of blood under the chairs. I should try to scrub it once more.
Maybe tomorrow, I think as I close my eyes and begin to feel sleepy. Outside it's cold and the air hurts my skin. Here it's warm. He is warm, and the golden sunlight that slowly drifts to our side tingles my hands. I open my eyes for a moment to see them illuminated. White and radiant, like the saints that once were looking down upon me in the churches I used to visit in a time long gone by. Angelic. That's the word for it. That's the last thing tumbling down my mind before I fall asleep.