When I was younger, a forest fire erupted in the village I grew up in. No one knows how it happened, or exactly when it started, but everyone remembers the sight of the ferocious embers: dancing, entangling, prancing in their vivacious reds and fluorescent oranges, the goddess of fire putting on her earrings, flames licking each tree delectably, seductively.
'The Blazing Fire' they called it. Overwhelming, overpowering, destroying everything that wasn't necessary – it left a trail of smoke in its wake.
I remember the sight of the charred forest, the bark of trees like burnt charcoal, peeling away from the decimated bones of their tree trunks; only the ashes of leaves remained. The fire devoured everything, leaving the skeletons and carcasses for dead, desolate.
In the middle of the wreckage, there stood a lone sprout, fighting against the soil, one leaf still entangled in the ground. Its leaves were the colour of jade in my grandmother's pendant, its bud prettily coiled up, hiding the precious flower from all the bad in the world. I'd thought it looked pathetic, lonely, like it was fighting a futile battle. But there was something endearing about its determination to recreate itself.
A year later, it blossomed into a multitude of snow-white violets, the middle of their petals smudged with deep lemon yellow, with short white lines, colour like their namesake, painting the bottom petal. White symbols of the fruitfulness of perseverance. My mother told me that in the language of flowers, white violets mean, 'Let's take a chance on happiness.'
Lately, I can no longer tell whether I am the fire or the sprout.
I'm not sure which I would like to be either.
"What are the things you believe in?" I pondered wonderingly to Chase, feeling the gravelly sand prick into the skin between my toes. My hands rested delicately behind me, supporting my weight; the beach grit pressed roughly against my palms, leaving erratic indentations.
"The full spectrum of human emotion," he replied breathily, almost like his words came out in a wisp, landing their fairy legs on the faltering autumn wind, "Oblivion. Disappointment. The fleetingness of everything."
He turned his jeweled eyes to me, glimmering the way the cuts in a diamond do under light. Magnificent. Iridescent. Watercolour violet pools swirled with intrigue. "What about you?" A small smile tugged at the edges of his lips as he spoke, the effortless curl of a looped leaf.
"The fullness of the world. The shortness of life," I relayed, words spilling from my mind to my mouth, "How everything is temporary." I let my fingers waft in a line in front of me, tracing the smudges of sea meeting horizon – pale dusky pink melding with whipped cream orange. The setting sun was like an egg yolk, sunny side up, descending slowly into the ocean.
"So we share a belief then," he murmured, pulling his knees up so they bent at a ninety-degree angle, feet resting languidly in the coarse sand. His toes disappeared into the latte coloured peppering of the beach. The chilly fall breeze blew his messy hair out of his face, brushing his disarrayed strands of hair back with her ladylike fingers.
"Aren't you concerned with how life's so short? That there's a clock ticking over our heads each and every second of the day?"
His knowing eyes darted over to me, gaze flittering over my face as he deliberated on his words. "Isn't everyone?" he retaliated, head tilting slightly.
Understanding and confusion washed over me, like a shower of rain beating down against my body. Nervousness tickled at my palms. "So how can some people be so content living such lackluster lives then? Just floating along everyday, not worried about their impending doom."
"The irony," Chase elucidated softly, svelte fingers grazing through the rubbly sand, "is that if you get too caught up with the inevitability of death, you forget to enjoy life. Wouldn't it be disappointing if you came to the end of your life and you realized that you'd never really tasted the food you'd eaten, or seen the places you'd been to? I think we're all obsessed with the transience of life, but it's actually the longest thing we're ever going to experience."
Beaches aren't as calming as poets would like you to believe. Sand isn't soft like those writers say. Sand is jagged and will cut you with wounds that scar.
Like a jigsaw puzzle coming undone, my mind fell into a jumble of crumbling beliefs and galaxies being tilted on their axes. Everything I had held firm to since the day I'd became painfully aware of the tragedy of life was disintegrating, like the morning fog that dissipates with the first daylight's sunbeam.
I blinked once, twice, thrice, chestnut eyebrows furrowing as I stared intently at my feet. The sound of waves tickling the shoreline resonated in my ears. Laughing mockingly as the biggest thing I believed in was washed away in their imbibing sprays.
"Do you think people can change themselves at any time?" I dared to voice out, amber eyes rising curiously to focus on Chase, whose hand was rooted in his pant pocket, digging for something.
"Definitely," he replied, hand emerging with a packet of cigarettes, "It's helpful to do so. Life isn't about finding yourself. It's about creating yourself."
"What if you've already created yourself, but then you realize you can't be that person anymore?" I worried, an involuntary tremor of disquiet growing in my voice.
"Then you create yourself again." Upon uttering this, he proceeded to hurl his almost full packet of cigarettes towards the ocean. Its cardboard cap flew open as one lone stick flew out and landed headfirst into the vicious sea. The compact box did somersaults in its descent through the air – first loop: six points, second loop: four points, third loop: nine points – cutting the wind so quickly you could almost see the path of nothingness it left in its wake. It fell into the waves with a ceremonious plop, droplets of seawater flying up, like butterflies awakening from their slumber.
"Didn't know your pockets were dripping with money," I managed to joke, referring to his redundant waste of a perfectly good packet of cigarettes.
"A chef in a tiny bar in a tiny town? I don't know how you could think otherwise," he drawled sarcastically, good-natured smile lazily lifting his lips. His sylphlike fingertips entwined softly with mine. "Actually, I'm thinking of giving up smoking."
"Why's that?" I questioned, heart thumping aggressively in my chest as I anticipated his answer.
His lips found mine, pressing ardently against them as his wispy eyelashes brushed against my eyelids. Stars spinning in their formations. His large hand wrapped around my waist, holding firm the way a lost sailor clings on to an anchor out at sea. My fingers grazed their way through his strawberry blonde hair, touching all the good in the world. His kiss made me feel like I could be anything, do anything – it made me feel like I was fluid, water, the ocean. A series of constellations that could break apart and reform at my command.
The word raced through my mind as his lip melded softly between my own, the only inkling of clarity in the blur of my thoughts: ai ren. A Chinese word that literally translate into 'love person.' Lover is so vague – it could mean the person is either the one doing the loving, or the one being loved. But ai ren suggests that this person is not merely someone you love; this person is love itself. This person is adoration and beloved and all the wonderful things you have trouble believing in. The fairy that comes in the dead of night to whisper soft encouragements into your soft hair and caress your infantile cheeks. Who sings you lullabies when you're up at four in the morning and can't fall back to sleep.
"I think you know why," Chase finally spoke after breaking away from my lips, indolent smile playing gently on his juxtaposing sharp face, cheeks painted a coy shade of pink apple, the colour they are when they're bobbing in water. His back arched as laid his hands back into the sand, reminiscent of a leopard's spine. His eyes glinted as he looked at me, magic and crystal balls and luminescent chandeliers – the first fall of snow, "Recently, I've found something to quit for."
"Why quit?"
"Because," he sighed, melancholy, "before, I wasn't concerned about shortening my life. Didn't seem like a big deal." His gaze pierced my heart, the final puncture that shattered the porcelain into dust, "But I finally found something worth holding onto."
Whether I was prepared or not, the miasma underneath my porcelain exterior was about to be unveiled.
The edges of my eyes crumpled, like an angrily balled up wad of newspaper. The inside of my chest suddenly burned with a searing hotness, so heavy I feared my entire being would collapse into itself.
"Nothing lasts," I said, a little crack in my voice, "You might think it does. You might think, 'Here's something I can hold onto,' but it always slips away." I glanced at him coldly, iciness forming an impenetrable shield over my soul. Haphazardly picking up the shattered pieces of porcelain scattered around my ribcage, cutting my hands on their edges. "And love?" I let out a derogatory snort, "Love's the worst of them all."
This is the riddle of love: everything it gives to you, it takes away.
I couldn't bear to have Chase taken away from me, to see love crumble and rot the way it is bound to do – love, love is organic. So I decided on my own doom; my own undoing.
I love you too much to let you be destroyed by me. I am a time bomb who will kamikaze and set everything around me ablaze.
Chase's features contorted in confusion and hurt – hurt. My desire to run all but crumbled when his violet orbs fell, like spilled ink.
I do not believe in love, but I love you.
I shut my eyes, exhaling, willing my ribcage not to disintegrate. I picked up the pieces of porcelain faster, droplets of deep red blood dripping from my sliced palms.
I suppose Chase tried to help, silently handing the pieces he'd gathered to me. Wounds that would never completely heal painting his lithe hands.
I have to get out of here.
Now, I understood. When you are the fire, there is no chance of you being the sprout.
You burned those chances away a long time ago.
Disclaimer: I do not own 'Memoirs of a Geisha' by Arthur Golden, 'The Spectacular Now' by Tim Tharp, 'The Dovekeepers' by Alice Hoffman or Julien Smith's works.
Author's Note: Hope you enjoyed! Gosh, things are getting so angsty. Please review/like/comment and let me know what you thought. And thank you for all the continued support, I really appreciate it. Please continue to stick with me to the end!