*** K x D ***

Inspired by "Hand in hand", written by Mark Knopfler.

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New York was sleeping at night, comfortably in the slow lullaby of the rain that the black clouds were offering to it. It had been a while that the raindrops didn't sound when falling into the fishbowl because it had been a while that it had overflown, and the predominant sound was much more subtle. But yes, it was raining.

Inside and outside.

Three penguins were sleeping placidly in their bunks, but one was awake. Alone. Sitting on his lab's bench, looking at a photo and doing nothing for holding back his tears. Kowalski was feeling in line with the weather. If was as if the whole city was crying, but the others... what could they know.

Slowly and silently he left the lab and went to the ladder. He climbed up, he moved the fishbowl and the rain soaked him instantly. When the fishbowl was already in its place, below the ladder there was a puddle. Kowalski held the hope that the rain would wash away his tears.

He was only going to take a walk across the zoo, until his nerves tempered. All the animals were sleeping, nobody could interrupt his thoughts or his silent moans. It was him and darkness, and the rain with its monotonous tapping and its lacerating coldness.

Kowalski saw those three letters painted with a marker on a lamppost.

"K x D"

If he had known that she was going to break his heart, he would have written them with a piece of chalk.

In anybody's eyes, they were just an innocent act of vandalism surely perpetrated by a child. But it had been one of the zoosters. Kowalski couldn't say that he could read, but he knew his and Doris' first initials. And he had decorated several corners in the zoo with them. And he could read between the lines:

"Kowalski has always loved and will always love Doris, whatever happens, with all his soul."

It was a pity there wasn't a "D x K" corresponding him.

If instead of water it were something that truly deleted the feelings... especially the non-reciprocated ones, the memories... especially the bitter ones... Kowalski knew that humans looked for that reset in alcohol. He looked up and imagined countless drops of a crimson liquid, like blood, and with a sour and fruity scent, a mixture of a thousand things, flooding the city. Oh, the idea was absurd.

He started waddling under the rain. The dock was far, but what did it matter. Had he done anything that had made Doris feel bad? Of course it had never been his intention. But she had ended her relationship with him, and he could not get used to the idea. Why, if she had been everything for him? Why, if he had never loved another? Why, if he had made such an effort to always offer her his best version?

And why couldn't he make the dream last a bit more? Why couldn't he go across the sea, his flipper grabbing hers, as two lovers would do? Why didn't he even have the solace and the right to dream, imagine...? Why had she taken his heart?

When he arrived at the dock, he didn't remember if at any moment he had taken the subway or a bus. It was still raining... would it never stop raining? And inside him... even not there?

Where would Doris be? And what would she be doing? Sleeping, maybe, unaware of all the harm that she had caused him with her words that very day? If he found her asleep, he'd try to deliver his love message to her subconscious. A simple kiss which didn't awake her: shy, tender, innocent. And if he could change things with that... If she woke up, if she said his name and it wasn't for unleashing a storm's wrath on him... If she didn't roll over him like a wave devastating everything in its wake... Or maybe she felt that he was the one smothering her? But he knew that his feelings were true... How could something like that be misinterpreted?

Sitting on the dock rim he let the questions flood him. He remembered the times that he had gone to look for her: sometimes hoping to meet her by chance, sometimes calculating that she would be there, sometimes even tracking her. Damn... hadn't he gone too far? Why had he never considered it? Was that why she was trying to keep distance? And that invisible boundary that she didn't cross anymore... who had drawn it there? When both seemed to swim in the same direction... was it really so? Kowalski felt a stabbing pain in his heart when he realized: she didn't want to hurt him, but he hand't given her another option. What type of monster had he become in her eyes? He was just an adorable penguin, but... could his steps be so wrongly measured? Could his calculations be so inaccurate? Could he have misinterpreted Doris' feelings so much? And, if she was thinking about him, wouldn't it lead to the same pain as for him? And where would she be? And would anybody be kissing her? The stabbing pain grew to the point that he almost stopped breathing.

It stopped raining. Kowalski stood up defeated, ashamed. He had let her go with his mistakes. All his calculations were wrong: while trying to keep her on his side, the effect had been the contrary. Like a magnet with the same pole, she had got far... maybe forever. While trying to draw a route parallel to hers, she had gone off a tangent. And now between them there was just a river of mud, impassable, zigzagging, a scar inside him impossible to ignore.

Among the clouds at the horizon the Sun was visible. Cold, indifferent, shouting at him that it was the moment to go back home. Kowalski, downcast, grabbed his science and his conscience and started the journey back home. His beak was trembling and his heart was, too.