c.a.n.d.i.d
An image, in a sepia wash, faded and almost forgotten - a boy on a street. His hair is blinding in the gold tones, face obscured by sunlight (or perhaps he's turned away, but the photograph is so old by now that the details have vanished). He stands with arms outstretched toward the heavens or maybe towards someone he wants to see or maybe they're not arms, but wings. Pictures, after all, only tell what's there, not what is.
The boy is small, or the city is large, or both, or neither. He stands in the street, wings reaching out to something or someone, maybe facing the photographer, maybe facing the world beyond. He is nothing but a child, or everything but, or nothing at all.
Years later, he crumples up the photograph and leaves the boy behind forever.
--
An image, in black-and-white, fading and grainy - a girl underneath a tree. She stands, obscured by shadow, reaching into the boughs for an apple or an orange or a branch to climb on. Her hair, colorless, pale and limp, ragged around her shoulders as she leans higher for something just out of reach. She is not facing the photographer, but the tree, the goal that she can't quite grasp.
The girl is young and the tree is large, and she never can recall whether or not she ever got what she was reaching for, nor if she ever really tried.
The picture drops, forgotten and lost forever, somewhere in the ocean because the girl was too busy reaching.
--
An image, in shades of gray, faded and nearly gone - a soldier at attention. He stands, confident and proud, strong and courageous, bold and daring. It is a mandatory photograph, one all of the soldiers must take, to send home to family or friends or lovers or enemies, taken at the end of training, before the real part of dying begins. When the man looks his most dashing. As it is mandatory, he looks almost at the photographer, but just barely off, like he's seeing something beyond the frame which pleases him.
For his life, he cannot remember who is in the picture - the shadows and age render it ambiguous - but he'd like to think it's his brother.
Years later, he burns the photograph and takes up his brother's cross (he never did find out which twin was in the picture).
--
An image, in bright colors, fresh and clear as day - a dancer on the street. A clumsy child learning new steps, arms reaching above and face turned down, biting her lip in concentration, she does not see the photographer. Behind her, the bustle of a city ignores her, above her, the brightest blue of the sky. Her hair is almost white in the sun, face almost hidden, skin almost gold, but none of the colors are quite right.
She never saw the picture, never held it or touched it or even knew it existed. The picture hid in someone else's wallet, someone else's back pocket, until he took it off to war and told all his friends about his pretty little surrogate sister.
It was buried with him.
--
An image, taken from far away, yellowed with time - a baby under a chair. He is reaching toward his father, but goes unnoticed, shock of dark hair not quite falling into his brown eyes. There is no mother in the picture - perhaps she is behind the camera, or running errands, or dead. Behind the image can be seen a reflection in a mirror or a picture frame, a bright flash of light, a fuzzy square of blue in the earthy tones of the room.
The picture sits on a nightstand beside his bed until he is twenty-two. When he returns to his bed from the Pharos, he finds it there, like always, a painful and sometimes happy reminder of what used to be.
He tears it in half. The baby is intact, next to his father's body-less legs. It's haunting, so he throws both pieces away.
--
An image, not on paper, but within the eyes - a world of magic and ethereal beauty. An entire universe hidden from technology's eyes, withering away in a very pretty tomb in a forest somewhere that few dare cross into. There are no people, no moving parts to the image, but a place, a memory, a breath of wind and whisper of the gods she doesn't believe in.
Instead of being preserved perfectly as it should be - as any other photograph - the trees turn browner as time passes, the leaves fall, the echoes of the gods distance themselves, forgotten. She is losing her past.
And when she blinks, it is gone.
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(A/N: ...I can't even begin to apologize. I don't even know what was going on here. Really, I don't.)