We Without Faces
By Any Unborn Child
Loneliness wears many forms.
The wide-eyed young girl in the midst of discovering her own identity.
The jaded old man in search of something to remember, though often making the conscious choice to forget.
The mother who wonders if she made the right choices in her life, wishing for something of bigger opportunity.
The father who feels the burden of having to support a family with little money to spare.
The stray who had only known the darkness of alleyways and broken promises, tattered clothes on its back.
It is common to dismiss it as a lingering nostalgia, a bad mood, an uneasy combination of beer and a bad memory. It can be dismissed as something forgotten or never experienced in a lifetime.
No matter where anyone is, there is without a doubt someone experiencing this double-edged emotion.
Now we add two more forms to the list:
There is the mature young man named Lawrence. He travels from town to town, seeking his goals in economics in order to achieve the stability of melding into society, but has no one to share his monetary successes with.
There is also the wolf goddess who is able to transform into that of an adolescent girl – she is certain that she can do no wrong – but underneath that certainty is a mortal hurt, the prolonged isolation that she's had to face. She is alone as well.
The two finally meet, and under extraordinary circumstances. After much deliberation, they decide to journey to the North together, united but for different reasons.
As the journey continues, and they slowly get to know each other better, the two of them realize what has been eating each other's cores for the longest time.
Holo brings it up first.
Lawrence silently agrees.
They both know that solitude and its enduring impacts are residual, that it doesn't go away within moments.
The hollowness of one's heart increases over time if this loneliness is not remedied.
In some cases, even if it is remedied, the pangs of days past and the wish for a better future come rushing back, like an illness that does not go away, even with serious intervention.
It is still a mystery though, just how loneliness can affect people. It affects so much that the conditioning of it all, how it comes to be becomes blank. Faceless.
But…
Even if the loneliness does not go away instantly…within time…it will.
Holo and Lawrence will just have to find out for themselves.