Chapter 3 - A Constellation of Waves and Hearts

"Miracles, yes, I've seen

You are the strong, and I am the weak

It's raining and it's so cold...

You are alive inside me"

Sora's rolling on the waves like he was born on them. He's a mess of matted hair and slick skin, tumbling over and under the water, laughing as he reaches the top and reaches for the culprits who are splashing the water. He leaps at Riku and Kairi before the trio all slip under the shallow waves. Riku acts like he's bothered but his shoulders are quivering and he's suppressing full out laughter. Kairi's trying to make her hair look presentable for the two boys whilst they wrestle and make up contests to see who can win naming rights, building rights, rights of who gets the last of the penny candy...

Axels chasing after Xion on the sand, hands outstretched and hair tied in a low ponytail. She's only three, but she took such a shine to him like all the rest of us. He took care of her since the second she was born and we all kind of felt like she was one of our own sisters.

Namines laid next to me, carelessly humming as she doodles the mountains and trees with oil pastels, fingers and nails smudged in rainbow. Once in a while she checks on Axel and Xion and smiles affectionately.

I'm reapplying sunscreen and working as spf police, yelling out to Axel as he hoists Xion over his shoulders.

After a while Sora, Riku and Kairi come to the shore and run off to the sides of the forest for their raft which was their summer project. Namine holds Xion as she sleeps and Axel gets out sea salt ice creams. The two of us sit with our backs to the waves and laugh about stupid things that didn't really matter.

It's like the waves were just a part of us as we were a part of them back then. They'd wash around my shoulders and neck, push and pull until me and Axel were pulled together, closer. It's like there was a current beginning between us, we were just drawn to each other. Slow, uneasy steps and open arms, we'd meet one another, every day, every night. Slowly the shore and the beach became memories of us and family and not individuals. Like the different particles that mold together and flow to create the waves themselves, we fit, and we were a perfect cycle.

The sun would rise and fall but the people stayed the same. The heat was constant, decorated by low chirps of frogs and sound of wet feet on loose sand. Faces got older, wiser. As the summers slipped by the girls stayed closer and closer to the shore, longer lashes and more careful of their hair. Sora and Riku's contests became heated and they were always silently begging and pleading for Kairi and Namine- their affection, their approval, anything.

Axel got taller each year. He towered above the rest of us- he loved to shove that in Sora's face. His hair grew longer, wilder. Even the way he moved along the shore and the fields became majestic, pure and completely graceful. He didn't have to try. His natural beauty spoke to me like the hazy mountains spoke to Namine in her artwork.

We'd slip away from the others alone, 'partners' as Axel dubbed us from reading too many mystery novels. He had such an insatiable curiosity that burned within him like fire. He had to know, had to create. Where I would see a clearing he'd made a hideout, where I'd seen empty trees he'd found canvases, and where I saw the end he saw the beginning.

We'd run through this empty field of tall sun bleached wild grass together, racing. We'd run until our lungs begged for us to stop but we'd keep going, racing each other as the field rolled downwards and creased. He'd laugh, always laughing, and we'd finally collapse somewhere completely untouched. We'd stare at the empty sky and he'd tell me how full it was, pointing at clouds like they were the work of artists themselves. We'd always be close like that, so close that I could hear his frantic heartbeat until it finally relaxed to a dull beat. His hair would tickle my face. He'd sometimes hold me in his arms without shame, like it was completely normal but I knew it was special. I knew it meant something, I knew I was special. I was just as special to him as he was to me.

Sometimes he'd get it in his head to fish but I never could kill anything and Axel could never catch anything. Other times we'd try to scale up the mountainside but I'd give up fast and we'd decide to dangle our feet and procrastinate about going back to the cabin. My mom had shown us Wishing Trees, which were basically gangly, old trees that'd grown together to form hollows in the middle of the trunks wide enough for people to sit comfortably in. They were strange in a way, but mom would plop both me and Sora onto the trees and she'd tell us to be very careful making our wishes. It became ritual for me and Axel to climb into one of the 'wishing trees' and read our favorite books and poetry to each other. I'd occasionally slip in a poem that was written by me and he'd compliment me until I felt like I was going to burst.

There are so many memories that I have with him that I sometimes feel like he is a part of me.

Sometimes the memories are rooted so deep its like it didn't happen but it is you. Memories that alter you forever without you knowing- simple things like the way mom sang as she cooked or the lake itself. It's just an object- right? Over time and after so many years the memories and objects brew inside of you until they're so much more than that. That lake is my entire childhood.

A mass of waves.

Axel had spent the entire day with me wandering. It was nearing the end of summer vacation, seeing as the rest of the gang had demanded to be in town for the blitz tournaments. Axel was never one for those kinds of things. On top of that, the adventures I went on with Axel were always worth more than a contest. I'd figure out who would win later.

We walked a trail that had been crumpled by hooves and atvs, small enough for us to get through without the brush slicing our exposed flesh. He stood close to me, closer than normal. Eventually he decided to just reach for my hand. He didn't let it go the entire time we walked the trail and the two of us acted like we were still walking side by side. We knew to stay close to the cabin because I didn't want to worry mom but we strayed just far enough to our pre determined borders.

He stopped, not letting go of my hand. He looked up to the star filled sky and started with poetry. He repeated two really old ones with beautifully sounding words that didn't quite make sense but were fun to say and sounded intelligent. Then, with childish eyes that were closer to mine because our height wasn't so differentiated back then, he asked:

"Do you think maybe hearts are connected like constellations?"

I giggled- partly because of the blood that was rushing to my face from having him so close, and partly because I couldn't understand any of my feelings or compulsions at that moment. For once in his life, the felineic boy didn't laugh. Instead his gaze intensified. He drew his spare hand to his chest, over his own heart.

"I think ours are."

It was that moment that I realized I couldn't have been anything but in love with him.

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We enter the darkness barefoot, drenched and cold. We're alone, empty-handed and hollowed out on the inside. We don't need flashlights- we know this trail from our daydreams and our childhood nightmares. It's as easy as sleepwalking.
Stray rain scrapes down leaves until it hits others. It holds the illusion that it's still raining. We wouldn't have known the difference and on top of that we're too wet to care. As we enter and the sand gives way to pebbles and mud Axel takes my hand in his. I want him to be closer, but don't say anything.
Every time he gets close to me I want him to be closer. I want to feel his bones and find a place in them, just like he seems to be able to do with me just with a simple look.
I sweep away the branches and ferns as they slid towards us. Axel walks blindly, clenching whenever he has to let his eyes readjust or when he's trailing a little too slow behind me. After the rain the only sound is his breath and mine. It steams from his lips, evaporating into the cool air. It's driving me crazy.
The trail narrows now, overgrown from when we were regulars here. Too many summers left behind, too forgotten. Maybe it's us, growing wider and taller and becoming older. We're not the same children we were when we lived in these trails.
"I don't recognize any of this," Axel whispers. I realize how close his face is to mine and shudder. "Are we lost?"
"No," I try to control my breathing and my voice. I don't know whats coming over me but I'm leaving it to being nineteen, in the dark, and so fucking close to the one person who's the exact thing I think about when- I stumble over a rock and bless the pain for taking me away from the trails I was walking in my mind. Axel reaches for me but I shrug him off, distracting one of his hands with mine as I lace our fingers together. I think I hear him smile but it's probably just the leftover rain.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
He pauses in his reply, looking back in forth in the empty forest blindly. "Are you sure we're not lost, Watson?"
I laugh, glad he remembers the pet names we gave each other. "What do you think, Sherlock?"
The further we venture, the closer we get to each other. I can feel Axels breath, smell his hair and shampoo, his wet skin. I'm begging for the clearing to come, the Usual Spot but it's taking so long and I'm betting we actually might be lost. I don't know what I'll do in here. It's dark, it's wet, I'm cold and I can't get sick. I have a bright future of probable court and or jail.

I try to think of what life will be like when we get back into the pickup and I have to face tomorrow; another day. It's not going to end just because I want it to. Regardless of how much I'd like to just let time slip and sink around me nothing can make it stop. No matter how hard I dig my heels into the ground it's going to drag me forward, using whatever means necessary. And those means usually come with faces of police and dollar bills. There's no reason. Just like my mother, time will extinguish me. No warning. It'll just happen.

It could probably happen to the person holding my hand before me.

I think about the stars that connect us, like Axel promised. I think about the heart that is connected to mine by vessels and unspoken contracts- ones I wished I had the nerve to say. It's undeniable, the fixation I have on him. I'm too worried to ask if he feels the same. I get so addicted to people that I can't slip away and realize how irrational I'm being; I'm always being.

Sometimes in life, we are given options. Choose one or the other. What do you love more? Who do you love more? We're driven by fate and some kind of cynical God himself to decide what means more. Those options create us as people.

My mother chose to be with my father her last day. Was that her final decision? Lover over life? He created pieces of her that are forever banished to the murkiest depths of those waves; the waves that were my childhood.

I wonder what kind of decisions created me. Shit that's supposed to matter didn't really matter at all in the scheme of things. Inanimate objects and ideas become feelings and eventually fractions of me. I guess that's the kind of person everyone is- or maybe it's just me.

Yet again.

It's like this one-sided relationship I have with Axel. Sometimes I think so hard about how much I want it that I see it in his actions or words. I spend so much time dreaming and imagining that it seeps into my reality and I'm left so unsatisfied and alone, with the hand of my best friend locked in my own because we were 'always that way' and because I'm madly in fucking love with him.

Axel is touchy and careful with all people. He hoists Xion up the same way he holds me. He flashes the same polite smile for everyone. I'm stupid and naive to think it's just for me. Why would it be? Why should he care? While he lets his feelings go I'm holding mine back and it kills me. It slaughters me. It is a force that lives within me, awakened by darkness and plummeting attitudes, closeness and distance. It's a voice that resounds in my head : a reminder, a 'You're not good enough', 'You never will be good enough', 'You never were good enough'. I'm not supposed to feel this way for a man. It's supposed to be Namine, or Olette from the Clocktower. It's supposed to be a decent girl next door or any girl for that matter- but instead I'm chasing after valedictorian lawyer from the wealthiest family in town. I'm holding the hand of the boy whose mother runs the Christian Mothers Club, and whose father brags about him at company golf trips and at the rich cocktails and at gallery openings.

And no matter what I do and no matter how much I warn myself about the fire I'm playing with, I can't get that fucking idiot out of my head.

"Wow." Axel breathes and I know where we are.

We're here, the usual spot.

Axel lets go of my hand and outstretches his arm. The leather of his jacket creaks and his scarf sloshes as water bleeds from the fabric. I can't see the colors except for his red hair, his glowing eyes. Like a rifle they trace his line of view.

The chairs and tents we'd set up here are all gone. Most of the clearing is grown over. The rocks we'd drawn on time and time again are further in the edge of the clearing and Axel's reaching towards them in curiosity, squinting as though it'll help make the markings clearer.

I flip out my cellphone from the inside of my hoodie under my jacket and hope its dry enough for the back light to work. I curse the idea me and Axel had got to go barefoot- our shoes were so soaked and it was too cold to wear them anymore- and crouch down next to him wielding the phone and scanning it through the air over the rocks.

For a while we don't see anything, we're just watching the light ricochet from the slick rocks with baited breath. Then finally we see tiny scrawls and random letters in black. We can't make them make words, we can't make the tiny pictures to make sense, it's just there. The canvas isn't wiped clean but it doesn't make any sense and it's not important.

It's comforting in a sense to know that a part of us is still here and yet, it feels like we were never here at all.

Axel reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out the sharpie he always keeps on hand. He scratches his name in, writes Sherlock and hands the pen to me.

I finish my own name along with adding Watson beside it.

I reach into the inside pocket of my jacket and pull out a tiny fleck of moms ashes and let a pinch of her go because I know its beautiful here. Like us, this is one of the many places she belonged. She settles into the damp ground and I feel like maybe I could cry again but I don't. I hand the sharpie back to Axel and he nods like he understands. I feel like he does.

I try to think of poetry but I can't so I just tell him:

"You were right."

He smiles and runs his hand through his matted hair, "I'm always right."

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