Title: And Miles
Words: 1150ish

A/N: standalone original piece written as a challenge from sciathanfile on lj. Looking back, it could possibly fit into the Acta Solaris storyline I'm working on in a flash-forward sort of way. Background music was the lovely 'Set the fire to the third bar' by Snow Patrol and Martha Wainwright. Enjoy & please review.

x

The farewell that was not said replays in her head a hundred different ways. A letter would have been the best. No, a letter would have gone unread. She did the right thing, she tells herself, leaving no room for regrets. All of this is thought about while staring at the irises in the front yard for the third time today out of the windows of her borrowed house. Not home. No. Never home. The flowers don't do justice to the blue she remembers, or the thought of the associated name which still has the power to produce a bitter taste in her mouth.

The owner of the house, an old woman not much younger than her former neighbor's grandmother had been, once asked about her friends back at home among other things. They were the things spoken scarcely of unless someone asked first.

And how many lovers for a beautiful girl like you?

Not one, she had said elegantly, wanting to feign a desperate sigh for additional effect but decided against it. Keep it simple for yourself.

Within days of her arrival, she had felt herself drawn to the coast as if pulled by strings of a marionette that was destined to drown. In time, she caved in and took herself there, likely to relieve the anxiety of being so far away from water as it was the first time her living conditions permitted such distance between herself and what she would forever refer to as her One True Love That Will Never Fail. And yes, the capitals were necessary for proper nouns. It was a name after all. Nothing in this world could conquer a bond like that.

Watching the rise and fall of the waves had been almost therapeutic. Almost mesmerizing. Almost sufficient. If only the colour—no, she will not obsess about that at every given moment.

The first time she goes to the town square in the evening is in the company of her hostess who insists that she will get lost otherwise. But how to explain to the woman that getting lost is so necessary at this point in time? She walks aimlessly through streets that are decorated with gaudy tents, a multitude of flags, and glittering lights at this time of the year. An annual festival, she is told. With a smile, she nods. She is used to these back home, hundreds of these for every odd and even holiday that would fall on the overactive calendars of her people. Nonetheless, this place is far from a second-rate version of home. For that she is glad.

Without warning, the music starts. The commencement is a medley of tambourines, woodwind instruments, and a xylophone, fading in and out of each other, harmonizing, lapping like waves, but it is the fiddler who takes her by surprise. So this is the real thing—the elusive essence of what someone she once knew had tried to capture all his life.

That night is the first in weeks in which she sleeps well.

Tomorrow, she will make a trip to the college in the heart of the city, send her father a postcard, and hope that it reaches home before her. She could send a couple more but she

knows that it will not happen. That was not the reason behind all of this, nor would it achieve the entire notion of being away.

Tomorrow, she discovers—with a look on her face not far from that of a child at the carnival for the very first time—that it is snowing.

It had never snowed back home. Back home, back home, back home….where there was only water and land and grass and sand and rain and the air of salt and sea and blue and blue and blue and blue and home and home and home and home—

Facing the sky, we used to stand in the rain.

The next few nights are chaotic again. A swirl of dreams, bleeding and seeping into each other such that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. In her mind's eye, she is home again, on Aeternitas(1), sitting on the top step like something lost and windblown.

Alas, there is nothing to wait for anymore. The droughts are here. Or so it seems. And then: escalation. The music grows louder, stronger, very nearly deafening but she cannot wake.

Trapped in that dream-body of the fourteen year old girl, she longs to remain in it, watching for billowing sails on a scarlet horizon. Let me come. Let me go. Anywhere with you…

Remembering days of bright lights and rainfall, she sees herself suddenly thrown into her old academy. The chanting of children perseveres as the stone angels stare blankly into her eyes.

Large windows, old walls, high ceilings, and empty halls, and with a breeze in her hair, she is once again standing in front of the glass door to the music room, watching graceful fingers wrap around the violin's bow—some pieces of the past never truly leave us after all.

And back at Aeternitas again, the three of them on her neighbor's porch.

As we sit, we smile into the sun.

If only the story had ended there.

But no, not now, not so far away.

And sometimes it is difficult to ask: was it a dream? Is this a dream? And what to tell them when you wake up, return?

Make up a story. Make up a lie. Who will stand and prove you wrong?

And there is still something about the irises tonight. Every night. She thinks that they will haunt her the most.

The snow is melting now too although the frost remains, spreads itself graciously over the grass at dawn.

She visits town square for one last time, listening to the mystery unravel while the music of strings pulled tighter and tighter recoils inside her head like echoes of touches placed long ago. With the music in the air, carving her like this, she finds herself absolved of all but the memory of deep blue. That ocean.Those eyes. She finds herself simply lost in what once was, tugged by the strings of the past, and moving gracefully towards a feeling she cannot hold within her hands.

You were an artist, as it were,with the most beautiful…she turns away from the crowd, heads on back towards her borrowed home, and wonders if he still leaves the celery on his plate, catches red grapes with his mouth, and smiles that ethereal smile on those rare days. I somehow doubt.

One last trip is made to the water's edge that resembles home but not quite enough.

Closing her eyes, she lies down on patches of grass by foreign sand while frost glimmers under the moonlight at her either side.

Absent-mindedly, she wonders, who do you think of when it rains?

x

end

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(1) Aeternitas - a fictional coastline-town on a fictional island in my fictional story. And yes, the very same oneas my username.