The Wings Of A Caged Bird | First Draft

chapter 58: forever and nevermore

18 August, 2019

The flame from the beeswax candle has extinguished in the breeze.

For the first few moments, I look all around me with a frantic urgency, desperate for a miracle, for it all to be a mere act. But the more I look, the more the wil-o'-the-wisp of hope in my chest begins to die. I clutch my temples tightly, gripped by insanity, feeling as though I am being skinned alive, the flesh of my body being peeled off from my bones. It's real. He really is gone. He really won't ever come back. I really won't be able to see him ever again. This is all real.

I want to scream. I want to wail and thrash my limbs around like a baby. I want to be consoled with false hopes. I want to be cradled in someone's arm and be told it's all going to be okay.

But I know I can't do any of that. So instead, I slowly stand up, hugging the candle to my chest. And then, I run.

"Whenever shit goes down, just fucking run."

I run along the edge of the lake, as fast as my legs allow, strong wind crashing into my face, thunder rumbling overhead. The ground shakes beneath me, while I run and I scream, the warm tears that trickle down my eyes cooling down in the wind. My body breaks as I visualize a future where I've lost everything and everyone that matters to me. My legs wobble at the possibility that loneliness will feast on me in my adulthood until I end with no soul standing by my bedside. My heart aches as I realize that my youth is slowly slipping away from between my fingers like fine sand and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

So I run and run, until I bump into something on the ground and stumble over, pain shooting up my cheek and elbow. I manage to turn around right in time to save the candle from breaking. Lying on the green grass I stare at the reflection of the starry midnight sky on the lake. I remain there for as long as it takes for the stars to be covered by dark clouds, my thoughts drifting miles and miles away. For a moment, I forget entirely about what happened to me just now. But only for a moment. When the reality smacks my mind once again and droplets of rain begin to kiss my face, I feel as though I have been beaten all over, bones broken, blood ooozing out of invisible wounds.

It begins to rain, but I lie there motionless, letting the clouds hover over me, letting the drops soak my body. I can't cry, so the sky cries for me. At some point, I fall asleep.

Next morning, I wake up to a world without July, just like I had awoken to a world without Dawn 10 months ago.

I can no longer feel my body. I can no longer feel anything in general. I open my eyes and am hit with a blinding sunlight, a tremulous reflection of it falling on the wavy surface of the lake. I close my eyes again. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I try searching for whatever part of myself I've lost. But I don't manage to find it.

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I send Edgar a message letting him know that I'm coming back and will be getting off at Arleise Station. He sends a reply within a few seconds, but I'm not in the mood of checking it.

Instead, I decide to finish the two pending jobs: read Dawn's last note, and see the rest of July's sketches. I realize I'm still not ready for the former, so I go for the latter. I take out July's sketchbook from my bag. I hesitate a bit to open it, but curiosity gets the best of me.

I move past the sketches he has already shown me, which don't amount to much. The last sketch I saw was the sparrow one, which he claimed to be me. After that, July chose to not show me any of the drawings he did next. He would mostly draw when I was asleep.

As I'm going through one sketch after the other, I feel my heart clench tighter and tighter as I view myself through the eyes of someone else, captured in vivid details.