Kaleho, no. 2 - WIP
The nights are always the hardest, no question about it.
Most days were fine, even good. Kaleho had become more productive recently, and although it was certainly a change for the better, he wasn’t quite sure what had spurred him out of his phase of denial. Maybe it was the food - at some point, even the most heartbroken of widowers (which he wasn’t, but maybe he was) recalls that he has other priorities, and that the fields that are drooping with unharvested grains and fruit will, if left alone, follow his example and waste away. Or, just as easily, it could’ve been the silence. Sitting alone in a chair for hours without awareness or concern for one’s surroundings sounds like a ticket to Paradise at first, but after a while the novelty wears off and the horror of reality sets in again, and if you do not move from your chair in time to stop it, then it will enter your home and enter the room and enter your mind and it will fester in your lungs until you have grown brick-heavy and life is nothing but a burden to carry into Death’s waiting arms. Or, as he was hoping it was, it was simply his body’s way of telling him to move on.
And so the days passed in cheerful monotony. Sunlight danced on the leaves and warmed the grass, made his skin shine in such a natural way that he could almost feel whole again, like a wound was closing. But then the sky would change, and by night, when the walls of his house were candlelit like the walls of a cave, when the pages of books and the glass in the windows and the soft sheen of floorboards looked so human, so unique to his life, he felt far too exposed. Too close to home. Too close to Love, who was too far away.
The hands of the clock beat like a mechanical heartbeat, a too-perfect imitation of the real thing. He’d thought about painting some glass jars, making them opaque, and placing the candles inside to dull the harsh light. If only he had any paints. There would be no use in looking for them at the market - nothing non-essential was allowed to be sold in public places at the moment, so that every coin that was not essential to spend at home was spent at the front lines. That was the thinking, although it had manifested as the almost comical opposite: every coin that happened not to be spent at the front lines was spent back home, and there was no shortage of expenses at the front lines.
