It's strange how life works. Some days of your precious life can pass in meaningless existence. The colours appear dull to your glazed over eyes; the sounds are all muted when they hit your tired eardrums; your bones betray you by only dragging you along with gravity. The edges of everything seem to smudge into one another, creating a big miasma of nothingness.
On other days, you see the world in Technicolor, kaleidoscopes – everything sears your imagination like molten rods. The reds resemble a geisha's lipstick against her stark white skin, the blues the azure created when one shade of the ocean hits another. Your eyes focus in on the small intricacies – the tuft of silvery mussed fur peeking out from behind a rabbit's ear. Everything appears to you in all the fullness life has to offer.
That's the difference between existing and living.
"I've been thinking about you."
Luke's trademark cat eyes turned momentarily golden in excitement, forehead creasing up at my unsolicited confession.
"That's a first," he chuckled lowly, gloved hands bringing to his lips an egg sandwich I'd brought him. His gloves were deep mocha leather, fraying where he'd cut the fingers off. Blackened spots painted the palms, a sign of the burns and callouses they'd saved Luke from countless times. A small tear had appeared in the grimy, hardened leather, reminding me of a solitary tilled hole in the middle of my fields. "What about?"
"It's like you're looking for something," I replied, watching as he took on the buttery egg sandwich with vigour, "but you don't really know what."
"You're right," he conceded, back of his dusty glove going to wipe his mouth. Retrieving a napkin from my backpack, I passed it to him to grant his poor gloves absolution from another layer of filth. "But you didn't need to tell me that."
"It's not love you're looking for," I voiced out, stretching my legs out on the grass patch where we sat. Angled blades of emerald grass tickled softly against my calves. The giant oak tree we were planted under kindly sheltered us with her rapidly browning leaves. If you looked up, you would see how the thick, heavy trunk divided unevenly out into its branches, which had arranged themselves like a giant bonsai. The leaves towards the top had been painted the colour of rust, while those at the bottom had turned a pallid green colour. A gradient remained between them; the inevitable onset of death.
"Why do you think that?" Luke asked, testing my confidence.
"I know that," I started, a quiver manifesting itself involuntarily in my voice, "because I'm looking for something too. But I don't know what it is."
"It's not love?"
"I don't believe in love," I stated boldly, eyes boring into the peeling skin neighbouring my fingernails. It reminded me of the skin of a mandarin orange being peeled away from its translucent flesh, leaving the white veins of the fruit exposed.
"You can not believe in something, and still feel it," he lamented dangerously.
Just like how the driver in a car that has hit something flies forward, so did my body seemingly jerk forward in this sudden realization. My eyes widened into discs that darted painfully conspicuously away from Luke's vigilant gaze. My breathing started to mimic the erratic rhythm my heartbeat had fallen into. Noticing my suspicious lack of response, Luke's entire demeanor visibly fell. "You love him, don't you?"
"Don't be silly," I berated, in an attempt to hide my quickly manifesting panic. I looked up to the sky, hoping to calm myself. A thick blanket of cotton wool clouded it away from view.
"It's funny, though. You don't seem to have changed much."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I've been told love changes people," he admitted happily, glancing at me again.
"That's ridiculous," I shot back, indignant, "My life isn't going to magically change and become perfect just because I meet some guy." Annoyance built up inside of me, like a flickering spark from a fire had just landed in the pile of crumpled paper that was my gut. "My life does not depend on some outrageous notion of needing a prince charming to come save me from this horrible world I've been thrown into," I ranted to Luke in irritation, "I've never needed anyone and I still don't. I was thrown into the world and that's the only other thing I'll ever fall in love with."
"Other thing?" Luke questioned in shock.
"There are only two things I'll love," I relayed to him, "Life and myself."
"You sure there isn't one more thing?" he teased coyly, trademark genuine smile playing on the corners of his lips. Loneliness meshed with cheerfulness. Like the way a flower blossoms, I began to realize that Luke wasn't depressed at all. He was acutely aware of the solitary condition of humans, but he still managed to keep afloat. He could still smile and he could still cry – it was just everything he did was tinged with his painful knowledge.
I began to wonder if that was true for me too.
Deftly evading his question, I fired one right back at him, "Do you think you can love someone and still be lonely?"
"Hell," he swore, utterly uncharacteristic and strange for the easygoing carpenter, "I think you can do everything in the world and still be lonely." My eyes fell to his fingers, blisters and callouses sprinkled across them, like bubbles atop the boiling soup Chase was always cooking. "Loneliness isn't a feeling," he continued, as I observed how the skin peeled back on his fingertips to expose soft pink flesh, "Loneliness is something you carry."
I stood up abruptly, and began making my slow way over to the edge of the field we were sitting on, beyond which lay the ocean. "Where're you going?" Luke questioned, confused.
"I've got a meeting with a lover," I replied jokingly. The sound of the waves smashing against rocks reminded me of the first time I'd spoken to Luke, when I'd jumped off the huge boulder I'd been sitting on in an attempt to defy his noble offer of help. I was reminded of how it felt to fall through the air; to hear it breaking in my ears. It hit me the way lightning hits a lightning rod – Luke had changed since our first meeting. Now I understood: he used to be sad. He wasn't anymore.
He appeared by my side, amber eyes transitioning into a deep citrus colour, a result of the jade ocean being reflected in his eyes. When I'd first arrived in Castanet, the ocean had been a bright aqua, the newness of spring manifesting in it. Summer had brought with it a dark blue ocean that revealed translucent powder blue patches; a representation of the exuberance and erraticism of the season. The latest transition towards autumn metamorphosed the sea into a mix between turquoise and jade. The angry waves had begun to soften towards the still that winter would undoubtedly bring.
"You've changed," I finally brought myself to say to him, eyeing him carefully for any visible reaction.
"You think so?" was all he granted me with.
Casting my gaze back down to the ocean lying in front of us, I imagined free falling into the cool waters. I would turn around, my back facing it, before I took a step back and let my arms fly out by my sides. Slowly, deliberately, the oak tree we'd been sitting under would start to get smaller and smaller and smaller, before finally turning into an earthy molecule I could hold between my thumb and my index finger. The cotton wool sky would continue to sluggishly trail along, exposing tiny gaps of azure sky which sunbeams would shine their rays through. My back would be the first to be swallowed up by the salty sea, then my arms, legs, my hair, and finally my face would be submerged in the place I'd once came from.
"You know, the salt in our veins comes from the ocean," I voiced to Luke, letting myself dissolve into the welcoming ocean, "and the iron in our blood comes from stars."
A contented smile tugged at his dry, chapped lips. The corners of his eyes crinkled the way clothes do when you sleep in them.
"Why're you smiling?" I questioned.
"Because," he replied slowly, warily, "I used to think that you were a lost child looking for a home in this world. Now I realize that the world is your home."
"You can't possibly look at the world and tell me that you don't think it's wonderful."
"If you can love the world so much, what makes you think it's impossible to love Chase?" Luke hinted again perceptibly.
"Drop it," I warned.
"Seems to me like you're afraid."
"Quit it," I muttered in aggravation, eyes narrowing angrily.
"I'm just saying," he began again, before I cut him off by turning and storming away.
"You're wasting my time," I called out to him from the distance I'd created between us, "and I hate being bothered by people who waste my time."
"Are you really living if you're just fooling yourself?" he shouted to me from where he remained planted, words softening by the time they'd reached my ears. Their effect remained as sharp as a samurai's sword; a thin sliver of a needle jabbing through the porcelain exterior of my heart. I stopped in my tracks.
"We might be more similar than I thought," I admitted stonily to Luke, finally turning myself around to face him. Painted on his features was a strange blend of distress and calm at the same time.
"God damn it, Molly," he sighed in frustration, finally breaking character from the smiles permanently engraved on his face, "I want to see you be happy, even if that means not being with me. I care about your happiness more than mine. That's how pathetically in love I am with you, all right? And I know that's not what you want to hear, and you pretend that you don't believe in love, even though I've never seen anyone more infatuated with anything than you are with the world. But there you have it, that's the truth."
With Luke's confession, the thin layer of ice we'd been tiptoeing on all this time proceeded to all too suddenly shatter into nothingness. Every effort we had made to skate around the crack that was his feelings for me was whisked away by the wind, until no hope, nothing remained. We plunged into the abyss.
I turned away. "Don't talk to me anymore." The words spilled out over my lips; the prickling autumn wind carried them to Luke.
I had never made a habit of it, and I wasn't about to start.
I didn't look back.
Inside of you, there is a battle ongoing: to be shallow, or to go deep.
I used to believe that I had won that battle long ago.
I was beginning to realize that it was the battle that had beaten me.
Author's Note: Thank you for reading, and I hope that you enjoyed this chapter, despite it turning a little angst-filled towards the end. Please review/like/follow and let me know what you thought! Also, thank you for your continued support despite my long hiatus, I really appreciate it!