Gazing up at a brilliant white sky. The sky fractures into drifting shards, softens into the floating petals of a cherry tree. Pink blossoms twirl down like snowflakes. She reaches up for them, spiraling around, watches them dance around her whirling arms. Spinning a little too fast, falls over. Dirt smudges her robes, pain sparks, she cries out. The sky goes dark. She looks up. Someone is standing there, long black hair cascading down into her tear-stained face. Gentle hands grasp under her arms, and she's being lifted high up into the air, soaring back up into the cherry petals. A soothing hum, a soft thumb brushing away the tears. They begin to spin around together, and she squeals with joy. Laughter like a stream trickling down smooth stones. Warmth, comfort, embracing.
The petals swirl, turn pale, turn cold. She's watching them twirl against an inky black sky, glittering in the light of a full moon. Trembling naked on her back, feeling warmth starting to creep in, the snow a blanket around her. She reaches for the tumbling snowflakes, but her arm barely moves, her fingertips blackening. Her eyelids weighted down as if by stones. The soft brush of snow in the silence, she turns her head. Eyes glittering, ears twitching, a hare watches her, nearly invisible in the snow, transfixed, wary. Her arm shifts, it leaps towards her. It hangs in mid-air against the moon. She's falling, falling down into the snow, the white over her head, the black over her head.
He's falling endlessly, weightlessly, in the infinite black. His eyes burst open, and the black weighs heavily on him, pressing against his eyes, pressing against his ears, filling his lungs. Spinning in the void, falling backwards, floating up towards a distant white. The sky shatters, drifts apart, separates, opens a space for him to rise out, the black washing away. Air bursts into his lungs and he takes a first, staggering breath.
Air rolls into her lungs, and she leaps to her bare feet. They're no longer feet, but white paws. She wiggles clawed toes, blinks her round blue eyes. Twitches long ears, hears the turning of the wind, the rustle of leaves in trees, the squeak of mice deep beneath the snow. The hare gazes up at an enormous, wide world stretching over her head. Gazes up at the moon.
He hangs below a full moon, water tumbling from his cloak. Settles down on the icy surface of a lake. He takes a step and nearly trips. Inspects the culprit, a long stick, a walking stick, a staff. Bends to pick it up, nearly drops it. One end snaps against the ice, frost leaping from the bark, spiraling against the ice. He taps the trunk of a tree, more frost patterns circling. Seized with wonder and joy, he runs along the ice, making the frost dance, laughing. Scooped up into the air by a breath of wind, tumbling about wildly. Crashing through tree branches.
Leaping through the forest, ducking under the brush, tossing around leaves. Quick as a flash, faster than a bullet. She stumbles over her large feet and lands sprawling over the roots of a tree. Shocked, scared, annoyed. Ice prickles under her paw pads, shoots out along the tree root. Blue eyes round as coins, taps her paws against the trunk of the tree, watches more ice push out from under the bark. Squealing with delight, kicking from tree to tree, filling the woods with the sparkle of ice.
Far off the glow of a fire flickers in the woods. He jumps, lets the wind carry him to a small village, all ramshackle wooden houses. Villagers bustle around, children run. He turns to greet them, but they pass right through him in a bluish haze. His stomach drops, his body shakes. Stumbling out of the way of the other villagers even as they pass right through, unblinking, unnoticing.
She peers around the edge of the porch, ears twitching. A woman's long black hair tumbles over a straw mat floor. She's bent over in grief, clutching a small robe and wailing. The little hare hops up onto the wood planks, nudges close to the woman, her legs stretched. She presses her tiny cold nose to the woman's hand. The woman shrieks, makes a swipe at the hare. The hare flees, screeching with bewilderment and sorrow, streaking back to the forest.
His hand trails around the curve of a tree trunk, frost curling up the ridges of the bark. Peering around the tree, he sees the girl again, her back to him, her legs dangling off the edge of a boulder overlooking the lake. Her long brown hair falls over the shoulders of her dress and past her face. He sits down next to her, but she doesn't turn her head, doesn't blink. She gazes down into the frozen surface of the water, her eyes unfocused. He leans over the edge, but he only sees her broken up reflection, tears streaming down her face. Turns to look at her, but she's gone, running off into the forest.
She crouches on the edge of the forest, her ears laid across her back, her eyes round as she watches children play in a snowy field. They run after each other and laugh, their arms out stretched. She looks down at her own paws, looks back up at them. She creeps out over the snow, edging closer. One child nearly stumbles over her. They spot her, and the chase is on. She's much too quick, running them around in circles. She'll slow down just enough for a child to brush the fur of her tail before leaving them behind in a cloud of snow. The sun sinks to the horizon, staining the snow a deep crimson, and the weary children leave the field for home. She sits alone amidst the kicked-up snow, her blue eyes watering in the waning light.
In the misty dusk light, he watches the wooden casket lowered into the cold ground, surrounded by a thin crowd of mourners dressed in black. His eyes stray to the words etched in freshly hewn stone, pass over the scroll of dates. Wasn't it just yesterday that he'd sat next to her at the lake? When was the moment that her youthful laughter aged into silence? Now her own children cluster around her grave, their wails piercingly loud over the pastor's eulogy. He gazes down at his own hands, every shallow line familiar, his skin smooth and unaffected by the rigors of time and the fragility of the body that had laid her low. In that moment he understands that he will not, cannot, ever join her.
She dances around the frost-covered trees in the dead of night, her paws leaving tracks in the snow. A child dances after her, wheeling around the tree trunks and singing out of key. He stops, looks up at the light of the stars, and turns towards home. She stops, watching him look around in confusion, stumbling back along the trail of her paw prints. No. Stop, she says.
The children scream beside the grave. No. Don't leave, they cry.
Don't leave. Don't leave me here.
He clutches his hand to his chest, his eyes squeeze shut. He thinks, Don't leave without me. Don't leave me here alone.
Alone. She's racing after the boy, her fur glowing softly. Her heels strike the small of his back and he goes down into the snowy underbrush. His head hits a rock with a sickening thock, and he lies still. She sits beside him, wide eyed in disbelief, in horror. Her paws settle on his arm, and the glow seeps from her to him. From his back emerges a faint light, growing brighter, coalescing into the shape of a tiny hare like a dancing flame. It leaps towards her, and she reaches for it, feels the warmth as it touches her paws. Her whiskers twitch as she feels life pour into her. In the back of her mind, she still hears the boy's toneless singing.
The men on the field below him are singing a rousing, patriotic tune, their voices thick with drink and hope. The men are screaming and dying in a raging hell. The men are silent, their bodies strewn across the field, the remnants of a flag fluttering in the wind.
The wind sweeps back her robes as she steps through the forest, a trail of blue lights waving behind her like a cloak. In her head, children giggle and shout and screech. Children murmur and sigh and sob. Her teeth grit with the need to push the voices back, to overcome the smile on her lips.
He smiles as he watches the children play on the lake their grandmother once visited. He knows all their names. He knows their first words, their first steps, their first friends and their first heartaches. He knows them better than he knows himself. And yet he still sits silently, woefully, apart.
The animals of the forest stand apart from her. Creatures of myth big and small flee from her. She's swallowed up by rage. She's drowning in sorrow. The voices are an endless roar, and yet she's alone in a deafening silence.
In the silence of the night, he gazes up at the moon.
Beneath a bright round moon, she closes her eyes.
He asks of the moon, Who am I?
She whispers beneath her breath, Why am I here?
What am I meant to do?
Why am I so alone?
If I could have anything, he thinks,
If I could have anyone,
I'd want someone to finally see me.
I'd want someone to set me free.
I want to exist.
I want to let go.
The moon was a white disk in a black sky. Its glow burned and grew to a brilliant thunderclap.
They splintered apart.
