#cycnis

[flwrfanta]

coming back,

It’s the smell that he senses first, old rust, black mould climbing up the sides of the tiled walls. The shower head smeared in white scaling, parts of the bathroom they had never gotten to fix, and he may never get to—the splattering of water keeps him constant, present. There’s a persistent push to breathe, and he knows it's something he will have to resist, but in the moment he lets it take him, opens his mouth and lets the water seep in—fill out the hollows in his body. The taste is weird, the feeling is foreign. 

His hand reaches out as his eyes open to more darkness. The tiles slowly appear; they are warm against his hands. Fingers then palms, it’s the warmth that keeps him now. 

The taps are running in the other room; he can hear them in the silence—can hear the footsteps and the rustling. 

The lights break through, under the cracks of the doorway, as his voice travels into the bathroom. 

“Lukas?” 

The shower turns off, the water escapes him.

He leaves it behind, only for a while, he tells himself. The return, it's his only consolation.

“Guess who I saw today?”

There's a softness to his voice and a light in his eyes that Lukas had not seen in years. That's what compels him to ask then, against all his better judgment:

Who?

[huatea]

Walking along the familiar path, he looked up, and as always, the trees seemed to change like magic. This time was no different. Among a sky of green, specks of amber scorched the edges, subtle heralds of autumn. They say hair holds memories; you could see it in the stubborn ruby leaves that refused to bend.

He wondered if trees remembered too.

Amid light laughter and the faint scent of yeast from a nearby bakery, two pairs of footsteps drifted in and out of sync. They were not deaf to the world: the shadow of seven trees flickered like flames in a lantern, but the candle had not burned out yet. In its final glory, a few sparks still flared, unnoticed by them both.

“Honestly, I have lived with him for a while now, but it is still hard to get used to,” Lukas admitted, words tumbling out as if they had been waiting for release. “Maybe it is because I have only ever lived with family before… or maybe it is just his stubborn streak.”

Kyan let out a low laugh. “Could not it be both?”

Lukas blew a strand of hair out of his eyes, a small huff escaping. “He means well. I know that. I cannot really ask for more. It is just, he is scattered. Forgetful. The kind of person who leaves trails everywhere he goes.”

“Would not be Aidan if he was not a mess.” Kyan nodded, shelving away the little tug of recognition at the mention of family. He would ask, one day.

Under an orange sky ablaze, the two came upon the empty playground and settled side by side on the swings, chains creaking as they pushed gently off the ground.

It was all too familiar, these quiet moments with him. It felt as if no time had passed since high school, as if nothing had changed.

“These swings got smaller,” Kyan stretched his legs. “I swear they were not this low back then. And that was not even long ago.”

Lukas laughed, loud, unguarded, the sound bubbling free of pressure.

Kyan smiled, the sound pulling something loose in him. “You know, my parents used to joke about me being old enough to date. They would tease me, drop names of classmates, ‘What about her? What about him? You are always around them.’ “ He shook his head, laughing softly at the memory. “I brushed it off every time. It felt ridiculous back then.”

Lukas tilted his head, curiosity flickering in his eyes. “And now?”

Kyan hesitated, fingers tightening slightly on the swing’s chain. The creak of metal, the hush of the breeze, the scent of leaves, it all seemed to hold its breath. “Now…” His voice trailed, gentled, as though the words might break if he forced them. “I thought… if it is you, I would not mind giving it a try.”

Lukas turned, the fading light catching on his face as if the sky itself waited for his answer.

“Can we?”

———-

Adapted @sssymn LuKy writing with an extra confession scene. Just a little writing swap ~ A fair amount of the words aren’t mine.

[sssymn]

My piece for the writing swap w/ @flwrfanta

He was so still. A body, a breath. The slow rise and fall and the rhythmic beep…beeps of the machine droned on. Truthfully, I had never seen him more peaceful than this; even more so than the rare few times I have seen him asleep.

Lukas lay, motionless in his hospital gown— this was all too familiar. Four blank and endlessly white walls and even whiter lights caged in the dizzying smell of sterility around us. It was either that or simply being here, it was all dizzying.

I could try not thinking about the circumstances. It was easy. Trapping the panic purely in the drumming of my heartbeat, I focused all thoughts on his recovery. Repeating and repeating, “it’ll be okay, he’ll be okay, it’ll be okay”, aggressively, forcibly, scribbling over the words and words, memories and past faces speeding through my head, that sickening and cyclical nature of loss pounding against my chest quicker, faster, my breathing choking and trapped in the centre of my throat, escape, escape.

This was easier when Suiren was here.

Tears, angry and hot burned my eyes. With a sting, blood coloured my lips as I examined my nail bitten ruthlessly. I didn’t even know I was biting them. I had been doing so well.

Giving Lukas’ blank face one more look, I stood up quickly to leave the room. I needed fresh air.

Pulling the door open, she was simply there. A face so familiar and distant, here now as quietly, abruptly as the day she was gone, one that I had only seen in a past of dreamlike memories, ghosts, one standing in front of me now, skewed frantic. It was unfamiliar, this expression drawn into that face, so unlike her, yet unmistakably, she was standing here, in front of me.

The sound of my heartbeat, quick and violent, filled my ears with thunder.

“Rom…”, Aidan’s voice trailed and in my surprise I hadn’t even realised he also was there, here, standing in front of me with an uncertainty to him that too was unfamiliar.

Fire bubbled in me, the stinging in my finger burning and burning, the taste of iron clinging against my tongue. The world spun out in red.

Absurdity struck my mind blind. With thoughts quieter than it ever had been in the past hours, I slipped past the two, feet carrying me away, anywhere down the hallway. I needed air. Mind whirring, spinning and spinning, away— I needed air.

Ever since I was little, I have had nothing but ghosts chasing after me. Even now, they taunt me with faces so familiar and painful.

[sssymn]

We had sat here once, slumped against the bus stop seats, huffing from having run with all our might.

The streets had still yet been quiet, with the building tensions of the half hour before three o’clock, where the rushing of teenagers and their laughs and shouts filled the atmosphere with their exhaustion and relief of finally heading home.

A loaf of white bread, unopened, had lied in between us then, and we were giggling with pure adrenaline and disbelief.

It was summer and a blistering hot day when we had run away from school, with that loaf in hand.

An awkward distance separated us now, seven years since those school days. I, sitting on one end with my suitcase and he on the other, cigarette lit and stuck nonchalantly in between his lips.

It was an addiction I had been struggling to get him to stop, but it was far too late now, and he was too stubborn.

Aidan’s smoke drifted by.

“I guess I never asked,” the sound was his voice was sudden, unexpected. It caught me off guard. “Where even are you going?”

I stared at my shoes, as I had been this whole wait. I tried to reply, mind spinning out the countless explanations for my entirely abruptly announced departure, but not a sound escaped.

I had trapped in my own web of unexplainable guilts.

“I think you know, but Sui took quite a hit”, he drew in another breath of his cigarette, “none of us have heard from her since… you know.”

He was right. That evening a week ago that I told them, voice echoing in a room rendered so quiet that anything would’ve cracked that fragile moment, under a sky so red.

Sui was up and gone in an instant. Not a word, nor a change of expression. Just gone before anyone could stop her. The mention of her stirred a painful tug of anger that I couldn’t place.

The anger covered me in waves. I continued to stare at my feet. Aidan sighed.

“I don't know Sylvia. If you’d just explained yourself–”

“Then what?” I looked up at him, that hot anger freezing over, “What would that have changed?”

He looked confused, pissed off, like I wasn't making sense.

He was right. But I had nothing to say, to explain.

“Maybe then everyone wouldn’t be so fucking confused or even angry with you.”

“And what would that change? I’m leaving either way,” cold words spat out of my mouth, “Sui wouldn’t have even been around for long enough for me to explain before she stormed out.”

A long silence stretched out in the distance between us.

I thought of that loaf of bread that we had shared after cooling down after running out of school. No bread I had eaten after that day was ever as sweet and rewarding.

The bus pulled up, doors opening with a light squeak.

I carried my bags in and Aidan followed on.

[flwrfanta]

Sometimes, when the worlds don’t come out right, it feels like wading through water.

“You could live here!” She jumps up, excitement jolting me out of my daze.

“I have a whole extra room and Mal's just a road way, I could drive us to uni,” and I knew what she was doing, I’d seen myself doing it too, holding on as the waves crashed around us, “it’s perfect come on!!”

It’s then when it comes out too quickly for me to hold: “What happens if we don't? We could go to different unis, you don’t know the future,” the realisation dawns slowly, I look back at her as it does. I search her carefully years of her stare back at me, faces upon faces, masks upon masks, but I see it regardless, there beside the cracks, the fickler of disappointment.

She gets up quickly, walking away to the kitchen, cups in hand, denial written out in her path away from me. I etch the pain into my heart, soul screaming to reach out and savour the time we have. But I learn it instead, the look of her back, face turned, her anger and hatred of me in that singular moment. And I wish I could tell her.

“Hey, you wanna stay over? It’s kinda late, right?”

The smile that washes over her face is electric, she giggles slightly at the stupidity of it, sun shining through the deck window to mock her. 

It’s hard to resist her this time, to say no and let go before it’s time.

So I stay.

[flwrfanta]

Like the grains of sand, we don’t know when we'll come back again

They arrive at the beach at noon, their cars pull in slowly, like the tide. The air is brisk, stale with salt, it coats the back of her throat when she steps out. 

Out in the distance she catches a glimpse of something, a tracing in the sand—small flicker of light and the memories wash up like sea glass. 

They’re like a trance that pull her to the shore, shoes abandoned. A summer breeze rushes past her, they’re wading amongst the water, shells glistening between their fingers, sand up to their thighs. They’re laughing. 

But it’s not summer.

The cold wind creeping up her spine tells her that. She can make out the clatter from their unpacking and the slight shouting that travels up to her. 

“It's too cold for this” Rom’s voice caries the clearest. Behind him, she sees Sylvia and Malum carrying out the mats, they say something back, but she can’t make it out. In front of her thou, there with her by the waves, is Aidan. Again. 

“It’s weird, you know.” He turns, looks at me, maybe past me, at some memory of us all holding hands, feet dug into the sediment.

“I told myself that I was alone now, again, and I was ok with that this time. But I rehearsed what I’d say to you, to all of you, when you came back to me.”

In the quiet of my bedroom, the hushed whimpers into the wood on my decking, spirited mornings and golden sunlight, “I’d tell you about my dad and homes that weren’t really homes,” the tide retreats, “and if you think about it wasn’t that me just hoping I would see you guys again?”

Then crashes back in, out and then in again. We sigh in tandem, it breaks something between us. I look over, at home. Not place, just person, people.

I know the smile is weak, but I let myself have that, enjoy what I can and maybe a little more. I cup them in my hands, these moments shining in kaleidoscopic projection.

I cast it out into the curling waves, leave it up to chance.

[flwrfanta]

There’s a feeling of ache when Aidan leaves the room, and him behind in it.

It grows up from his belly into his heart, then his throat. It takes him a while. To realise its bile, mangled sickness sitting alongside his tongue. He lets it sit there focusing on the slide of acid against his teeth.

It’s rancid.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were here,” she said “would you like to join us for dinner?”

He nods a small no, words clogged too deep within him—tongue too paralysed.

And no matter how much it breaks him the world keeps going. He find his way home, past the hedges and play grounds gone silent. In his room the tears slow down into small drops coating his eyelashes. He wipes away at them but finds they never leave. In his relentless pursuit they start up again, like waves crashing against cliff sides—unrelenting.

Outside the moon shifts the tides, and Rom loses a part of himself again.

[flwrfanta]

We meet on the cut granite, near the amphitheatre. The slabs hold more memories than just us, but I can’t help but find our marks worn into the grate and the wooden decking just the same. Like time had stopped for us here, held on when we let go. 

“I’ll never love you the same.” I voice it without knowing, realisation bloomed into reality, my voice is steady regardless. 

I look at her with fresher eyes. I see us again on that hill, summer heat dancing around us as we found ourselves on a singular bench. 

But here when it’s us, again—just us, I feel it like loss. The aching subsides somehow, slow when we first saw each other and then like a wound stitching together, it had stopped without our knowing. It had changed us though, as wounds tends to do— as healing tends to do. 

Her face doesn’t crumple, or maybe it does and I miss it.

There’s so many things I’ve missed about her.