A Broken Wing

8. Ocean

Going under. Diving into that eternal blue ocean. Swimming through the silent depths, inhaling your new life. A needle that enters the skin like the mosquito, blood that drips into the sea blossoms like a rose. This new life, this new vision blooms.

She was there. The ocean changed from blue to sparkling amber. Her eyes were sharp and detailed, a living iris. Colour that was focused and living, eyes that had a soul, something behind them.

 “Why did you leave?” she whispered.

He swallowed and put a hand on her arm. “I had to.”

“James, you had to stay here with me.” She paused “With us.”

“I wanted to.” He said, it was growing harder to speak, the pain was growing. “I had to go though, they needed me.”

“I needed you.” She needed him. “James.” She said, a tear escaping her eye and falling across her nose onto the sheets.

“Yes.”

“You need to wake up.” He looked at her.

“What?”

Her face was now twisted and corrupt; fighting tears of pity. “Wake up James. Please.”

As all plants bloom they wither and perish because we are born to die. James opened his eyes. Their milky hue had now faded, the comforting clouds that bedded his imagination, and with it a new life. A life that was nothing more than a dream, the product of hope, the memory of a child, the mistress of silence.

“James.”

A blank face lay in front of him, the remnants of the drug blurring the features like a face through frosted glass. Gradually the image slid into focus, the harsh world sharpening around him. A face agitated with life, lines of war and experience creased him, greying stubble whilst the dim light danced off his cropped blonde hair and pale blue eyes, cold steely eyes that had seen too much. That had been numbed by years of death and destruction.

“We need to move now.” a harsh whisper, urgent against the silence of the night.

James rose to his feet and took a moment as the blood rushed around his body. A hand curled around his arm and pulled. The smoke and incense curled about like the murderous hands of sirens, luring them into the darkness. The door clicked open and they were out. The cold night air rushed around them like the embrace of a long lost friend.

They walked silently for five minutes before James spoke. “I saw her.”

“Of course you did.” Ben said “You see what you want to see.”

James stopped. “She didn’t want to see me though.” Knights turned around and looked at James.

“It was as if she pitied me. She didn’t want me there,” he paused, “in the mountains.”

Ben frowned. “That’s normal.” He turned and continued to walk into the darkness as if trying to escape, trying to get back to the safety of his own cage. James jogged to catch up.

“When will anything ever be normal Ben, really? Look around you. None of us belong in this hell hole. When we walk down the street everyone is smiling, dead bodies lie in the gutters and nobody gives a fuck. They just smile and continue their lives as if nothing happened. So you tell me, when will anything be normal again?”

“When was anything normal?” Ben said in a whisper. “When I was born my parents planted an ash tree in the garden, every year on my birthday we would go outside and have a party around the tree, looking at how it had grown.” He sniffed. “I found out why they had planted the tree.”

James looked at him.

“Nature is something that cannot change.” He said. “It will always be there, always just clinging on, controlling us however slightly. I left home at seventeen to join the police and we stopped the ceremony. The tree kept growing and life went on.” He stopped again and laughed with tears in his eyes. “On my twenty-first birthday guess what my father did?”

James shook his head silently.

“My father went outside and sat by the tree as we had done since my birth. He sat there for the whole day just watching the tree. Then at nine pm, the hour I was born, he stood up and taking his axe cut the tree down.”

James looked at Ben, the felling of trees, the killing of nature and the removal of something perfect.

Ben stared at James, anger and sadness blending on his face. “He couldn’t bear to see something that was perfect and pure because it reminded him of how hellish his life was. How corrupt and unnatural we are.”

They walked on, silence descending upon them once more, yet it was fought off, stripped from them like a rapacious animal.

“Do you think we’ll ever make it home alive?”

Ben continued to walk trying to ignore the question, trying to escape.

“Ben?” shouted James.

He continued walking. Silence is innocence.

James clenched his teeth. “Ben!” he yelled.

Ben stopped and turned around. He opened his mouth and said the one word he knew. The one word that confirmed everything, that shattered innocence and broke the only thing people had that was hope.

“No.”