She – She awoke to blackness, a blackness that never ceased. A mirror hung on a wall in her room but she might not have noticed it least of all care that it is there. She could only imagine what her reflection might be. She had no clue that her azure eyes held miles of ocean. She could barely remember that her auburn hair curled gently as it trailed down her back. Some days she'd get dressed only to find herself being told that her socks didn't match, that the shirt she was wearing was inside out and that her ponytail was crooked.

He – He awoke to silence, eternal and endless silence. His once beloved music collection lay in the corner forgotten. Dust seeped onto the records of Jim Morrison, onto the cassettes of Cream and Led Zeppelin, and onto the now brittle CD cases of Jefferson Airplane. His guitar stood in the corner also, preserved like an artifact from a museum. Occasionally he would sit, zoning out into some alternate world and never realize that someone was trying to get his attention.

She – Her parents tried to lift the darkness and occasionally she would get a reprieve. But it was artificial. The blackness never took a vacation; she could only pretend – pretend and dream. But she had to come to realize that this was the way it was. And she did. She managed to ignore the pity aimed in her direction. She reached out to those who treated her like everyone else and somehow she made friends. But no one really understood. They could feel compassion but not know, not know just how it felt.

He – He almost convinced himself to ignore the silence. To pretend that he could hear the lyrics of the music on the radio and that he could converse in a normal conversation without worrying that his voice would fail him. But it couldn't last. Nothing so artificial could. So he convinced himself of the truth and somehow managed to continue without or with little self-pitying despair. No one understood the silence, the lack of laughter and noise, the absence of banter and arguments. No one understood what it was like to be a man of few words and not by choice but due to unfortunate circumstances.

She – Was it through her parents friends that she met him? She couldn't really remember as she had to rely only on her spoken memory and had no faces to match to names. But she remembered him. He had this voice, a voice which sounded somewhat choppy – kind of like a person who had one too many daiquiris. At first his voice seemed rough and hard to understand at times. But then it became habitual, something familiar and comforting. She might not be able to tell anyone his hair color or the clothes he wore but she could tell them about his voice. She could tell people about his ideas, about how he carried a conversation, about his personality.

He – She was nothing he ever expected. Truthfully, he hadn't expected anything. He rarely expected anything anymore for he always seemed to end up disappointed. But she was something which he couldn't define, something special, something out of the norm. She was graceful even though half the time she narrowly stops herself from walking into walls. She was elegant even though her clothes never matched and her hair seemed to have a life of its own. And she was beautiful. He had thought it was a pity that someone so beautiful couldn't even see it to enjoy it. But that was before he realized that that was part of the beauty. She didn't have the vanity that usually followed such beauty. She didn't realize how pretty she was – and she didn't even seem to care.

She – It was difficult to hold a conversation at first – if you could call it that even. There she was, typing out her words. And there he was, having to wait patiently for her response every other sentence. It was awkward, having such an obvious disadvantage just in the simple action of 'talking' to each other. So she learned to talk with her hands. It wasn't easy, but yet neither was almost everything else. She imprinted each letter in her memory so that it soon became second nature. She wanted them to have a normal conversation, at least as normal of a conversation as people like them could have.

He – "I missed you." Those were her first words to him. The first words that weren't typed, that weren't scrawled messily on a scrap of paper. He had stared at her. Of course, she didn't know that but even so he felt himself blush in embarrassment. He asked her when she learned sign language. She smiled, happily telling him that now they could have a normal conversation. He winced. "I'm sorry I'm a burden," he began to apologize and suddenly her smile was wiped off her face. "You're not a burden," she signed. "Neither of us are." Somehow, he knew those words weren't limited to just this discussion but to everything in general. And somehow he knew that those words weren't to reassure him as they were to reassure herself. "I know what you mean," he told her, those words meaning more that anyone else could ever know.

She – She was understood. Being understood is an imaginable feeling. To just have someone know what you're talking about, to just feel that you aren't insane or imagining things. Just to know that you really aren't alone. It's like you're finally able to relax and be able to breathe again.

He – One day he asked her about music. She froze, almost uncertain on how to respond. But he coaxed the answer out of her and she showed him her music collection. It was mostly pop and other girly stuff. But even so it made him smile; it was familiar and sadly it was something he could never have. She picked up the guitar that stood in the corner of his room and held it in her lap. He told her about how he used to play. "I never learned to play an instrument. Kind of too late now," She told him almost regretfully. It was then that he found himself showing her the strings, the order of which they were played for a certain cord. And she played. He could tell from the way she played that it would have sounded like a mess of sounds. But he didn't care. To him, it sounded beautiful.

She – She told him about the books she used to read, all of which were now reduced to simple recordings or to complicated dots on a page. She used to read all the time, go through books as quickly as if she were inhaling them. And now reading (if it could even be called that) took an excessive amount of time, no longer a simple pastime. They exchanged favorite authors, favorite novels, poems, and short stories. She also shared her dream – she wanted to write. Write what? Something… anything.

He –He had a surprise for her. It was a book, a book of poems by one of her favorite authors to be exact. When he saw her he opened the book and read out one of the poems. She listened intently, and then slowly her lips curved into a smile. "Emily Dickinson," she told him. "Yes, it is." She sighed and told him to read her another one.

She – She found the paint in her room and she found some paper and then she began to paint. She didn't know what colours she was using, she didn't know how anything would turn out – and it's not like she'd ever know. "What are you painting?" He asked her. "It's a sunset," she replied even though she knew that whatever was on the paper in no shape or form would ever resemble a sunset. But it was the thought that counts, right?

He – It looked like a pile of colours. But somehow, somewhere, he could see the sun. It was a green blob surrounded by lines of orange, red, white, and black. Truthfully, it was more of a sunset than anything anyone else could ever come up with. He took the paintbrush from her and set it down on the table. Taking her hand, he led her outside. Over a nearby hill the sun was slowly descending. And he showed it to her. He told her about the yellow thing so bright it was almost white. He told her about the soft hue of red and orange surrounding it. He told her about the white spots of cloud. And suddenly she was no longer hearing a description but she was seeing it.

She – He was her eyes. She could see, in an obscure nontraditional sort of way. "I don't know what I would do without you," She told him, before pulling him into a hug. He didn't say anything for a moment, then: "I don't know what I would do without you either."


Thank you for reading.

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