It was a cold winter night, as Robin quickly realized. She was walking around the small village that made up her own town, passing by the little houses where her neighbors lived. It was a calm night, with nothing but the sounds of bugs or the rivers interrupting the silence. She stuffed her hands into the pocket of her jacket, wandering amongst the trees.
This is what it was liked to live in the country after so long being in the city—it was full of quiet corners and introspection, with little contact with the epitome of civilization or with the constant fast pace of an organized busy schedule. Instead her days went on with quite a different pace, and although she had come to realize more of the differences between this lifestyle and the one she had formerly held, she had come to peace in this backdrop. The starry night skies that held her attention each day as she headed back gave her a semblance of tranquility she believed she would have lacked in that busy city street, and the sidewalks she knew so well were hit only by the footsteps of herself and those others she knew so well. This was a good way to live, she had thought time after time. She enjoyed the feeling it gave her to wander around this town she herself had designed, she herself had planned out, designated, thought about. She had placed that fountain over there, that well over there. Those bushes that bordered the picnic table, towards the west, had been planned out by herself. The sidewalk that her own neighbors shared along with her, where they walked in a tidy frame of life that was made by herself, gladdened her when she looked upon it. This was her own creation, from the flower box that was settled preciously in its place to the flag that waved with such fierce pride in the wind.
Yet there was some loneliness about this venture. There was nobody else to help her in this task or fill in those spaces in her life. Long ago, she had decided to live for the bright blue skies and rolling hills of apple trees and had left her people for that place, but now she was increasingly aware of her loneliness. She may enjoy that starry black sky when she came home, but as she set her sights down to the land in front of her, there was nothing but a tight feeling of despair. But what was there else to do? She had already done so much with her town, developed it so throughly, there was nothing else for her to do.
So she idled on, endlessly walking around the bounds of the little town. Her imagination spurred, and she allowed it take hold of her like a strange sort of madness.
There were three bedrooms in her house, for those fellow residents that would never be. She created a small space in the back with a Rocco bed, a dresser, and other items that befitted the room's feminine and noble look. Nobody has ever slept a night there. But Robin had made this space on her own account, silently dreaming of a precise and logical girl living there, a girl who wore a white dress and had a pretty face that vaguely reminded one of Victorian nobility. She had blond or brown hair in Robin's vision, and she would pick up the brush hidden in one of the drawers and use it to comb her long silky hair. She was highly intelligent and didn't speak much, so she seemed cold. But internally, this same girl would be full of warmth. She knew how to play the viola, and practiced on it for multiple hours a day. If an age must be given, she is somewhere in her twenties.
Once she had a family. She grew up in such nobility of a family as her disposition and room suggested, and they had gotten along in the ordinary way. As a girl growing up within her family, she had taken them for granted. She was her normal self—irritable, a bit apathetic. When she was young enough to be profoundly affected and old enough to not be required to be taken care of, she lost her family. She lost her only sense of a support system. She had "friends", but what were acquaintances in a struggle such as this? She had been a quiet, introverted young woman, but there was something about being alone not by choice, but by circumstance. Later, she rented her bedroom, and she amused the other residents with her viola and her dry sense of wit, but forever she was isolated from them. There was always a small bubble, and that bubble was about to pop before she had to leave the house with everyone else. When this happened, she was on her own again, and she descended upon the streets quietly, not raising her voice to bring her distress to the others.
Her suitcase was in her hand. She had left that suitcase in her room, knowing she would eventually need it. With her high heels creating a clicking sound across the streets, she vanished from the small village. Now in Robin's mind the room was empty, with the scent of the old owner's perfume still lurking inside the folds of the sheets. The most major furniture changed that happened between when the young woman entered and left was that while she was there, her suitcase stood near the foot of the bed. Now that object was gone forever.
Upstairs is the second bedroom (the third belonging to Robin). In the second bedroom a thirteen year old boy lived in Robin's mind. He was a polite, good-natured child, but when he was born he had serious heart defects that required him to have a heart transplant when he was in primary school. He was confined to his room for a while afterward, as he had throughout his short life at times, having always been a sickly child. There is an IV drip next to his bed that was left there for the long period he needed it. He loved music, and there were musical instruments against the walls of his bedroom. In an effort at personalizing, he has hung his shirts around the walls. He loved music, and there were musical instruments against the walls of his bedroom. A heavily spoiled child, his mother bought him everything he ever wanted, so there was a computer near his window as well as a hi-fi stereo. There was a pair of dark red boots near his door with his scooter, which he used on-and-off. When he was well enough to use it, he would take it outside with him and play with the other children outside.
Next to his bed, was a small television set on a shelf. The shelf also contained pill bottles of varying sizes, as well as different types of medicines. There was an odd clinical smell in the air, so that's perhaps why there were plants around the room—roses near his bed, greenery near the window. Those plants were well taken care of, and were quite intact. His bed was comfortable, its blanket made out of a soft fabric his mother stitched together for him. The walls of his bedroom was a friendly blue color, and the carpet was pleasant to step on. An easel was also in his room, showing his artistic pursuits.
The boy only had his mother for nearly his entire life, never having remembered his father. He had a good relationship with his mother, and overall, his childhood was happy. He made friends, he had his hobbies. His sickness was a shadow over his life with its constant reminders of early mortality, but he was blessed. When he was thirteen years old, he moved away from this house and this town, leaving all his possessions away. The spirit of the boy remained, however, in the fresh scent of his blanket and the unfaltering plants near the window. It was as though he was gone from his room for the day and not for good.
These people that did not exist. Robin used to dream and think about them out of boredom. She made up other characters as well, but these two were the best because they so well analyzed the feeling of the house as a whole. It was the comfortable place called home that shielded the boy, and it was the quaint, socially respectable institution that gave a room for the young woman.
"You have such a spacious house!" her fellow villagers would say, and Robin had smiled at them back with a tinge of nervousness.
But they had put down the oddly placed cup of Ramen back on her shelf and they would gaze at the boy's bedroom in a friendly way, suspecting nothing. They would never realize she had more than one bed not out of fancy richness, but out of a strange, puzzling loneliness. Villagers would come and go, and they often moved away. Robin was stuck with the things she could build herself, like the sidewalks and the layout of her furniture. Everything else was able to be destroyed and faltered as soon as the others felt like it. They might move away, and she'll lose a friend forever, because there was no way she could write them where they'll be going. And when Robin's mother wrote her, as she often did, Robin had to suppress herself from writing back, "I miss you, I do, I really do" and instead wrote those careless remarks back, "I'm fine, don't worry about me!"
But she wanted to go home to the city and stay at the same time. It was a paradox all by itself, and when she came home with that black sky lingering over her head she felt the mixed feelings of it, all right, and she would let out a deep breath. The quietness of the atmosphere would take her at once and submerge her in hopelessness, passing by lonely trees she herself planted. There was a cherry tree at the edge of the town that she planted when her best friend moved away. He'd given her the cherry itself with the promise that she could use it for whatever purpose she wanted—and she had chosen this purpose, to commemorate his life with that solitary tree, parked at the edge.
Because the people who leave us...they really do leave us, don't they? And we will never see them again, except in insincere exchanged glances when they return back to the shopping center they once frequented, claiming they miss their old home but never moving back. But we keep these smidges of them in our consciousness, and perhaps the people they were back then will stay in transparent little corners, waiting to be discovered again.
(Are people dead until you find out? Or do they stay alive, perhaps inactive yet alive, in your memory until you've learned they've passed away...?)
The winter night was cold, and Robin coughed. Breath in, breath out. Her breath materialized in the air as a small puff before fading away. The night wouldn't be over for a few hours yet.