KIAN'S ACT

Thirteen

I breathed in the air, taking it in as slow and long as I could. I closed my eyes, feeling the heat of the sun on my skin– it was warm and gentle, since it was a bit after noon. The glow of the sun had taken on an orange glow, and the sky was cloudless but a beautiful light blue. An airplane had flown above some time back, and the kite that I was flying at the moment, for a split second, almost seemed to soar as high above as the plane had been. I could hear the buzzing of bees on the sunflowers that surrounded me in the sunflower field that Kian had gifted me. 

I let out the breath that I had taken in and slowly looked up at my kite, smiling at the way that the breeze seemed to cause it to fly and stay in the air. I began to laugh, excited that the air had picked up. I began to run, wanting the kite to fly higher and higher, so I began to run in a zigzag pattern. My grin was spread wide on my face, so much so that my cheeks started to hurt but I didn’t care. 

Flying kites had been something that I had done with my father ever since I was a little girl. It had been so basic back then, so simple. My father would take two sticks and tie them together in a cross form, and then he’d take a black refuse bag and rip it such that it fit the sticks to form a kite. Then we’d attach string to it, and run down the streets of Soshanguve, laughing all the while. 

After my dad died, I used to fly a kite alone. I tried to do it like he did, tried to tie the sticks together, and then the black refuse bag, and then string, but kites just never flew the same when he wasn’t by my side. I still tried though, tried for years. Until I met Shaka and he brought the solution of brand new kites, but that we could go down to where my father and I used to fly kites every weekend. So, we did that. Every weekend, Shaka and I would go down to Soshanguve and we’d fly our kites– in memory of my father. 

I stopped in my tracks, “oh no!” I gasped as I noticed that the kite had ripped and was now falling down. I sighed and caught it in my hands. I stopped running and then turned, looking behind me to where Kian had been standing. 

I don’t know how Kian knew, but I figured at this point he knew everything. He found me in the kitchen this morning and told me that we were going to fly kites. He brought me out to the sunflower field, and when I looked around to find the kites, it turned he hadn’t bought any, but he’d gotten sticks and a black refuse bag. I watched him, in silence, put the kite together, the exact way that my father did; maybe even better since with him the kite flew higher and seemed to have more wings than the one that my father did, but the gesture had been so beautiful, that I’d cried. 

I cried because it was so beautiful what he was doing for me, and I rarely had people do kind things for me. I cried because it was Kian who was doing it for me, someone who’d brought me so much pain, abuse and trauma, yet here he was, bringing back a memory of my father that formed such a huge, happy part of me. I cried because only Kian managed to turn me against myself. I wanted to hate him with every fibre of my being, but he had this way of hurting me so bad, and then doing something so good that I’d be reeled back in. He was the textbook definition of an abuser. 

“Kian, it ripped!” I yelled, to carry my voice over to him as he stood somewhere in the middle of the sunflower field, on the phone since he was doing work. He stood there, in a black suit, his ivory mask almost seeming yellowish due to the way the sun cast a glow on his face. He seemed so out of place in this sunflower field, but he hadn’t let me leave his sight. 

He always did that– never let me leave his sight. 

It was terrifying how it seemed to be so normal to me now. 

I rushed towards him, my boots stepping on some of the perfect sunflowers as I made my way towards him with the wounded kite. I wore a pair of coral ombre baggy jeans and a thin white off the shoulder sweater, Kian had forced me to wear a straw sun hat since I burned easily under the sun. I could feel it slipping off my head as I ran towards Kian, “call me later, I’m busy.” I heard him say as I finally reached him, presenting the wounded kite to him.