The eternality in our ephemerality

Chapter 56. I search for answers and find a photo.

Time, unfortunately, did not slow its pace; and after I had had my daily dose of reading as the sphere of light warmed my frost, my agile hands headed once again into the kitchen and made breakfast...Tried better said. It was quite challenging  to feed properly four mouths, but i still tried. 

My hands danced across the table, setting it up, and checking the pan had not entirely burned my oatmeal cake.

"Good morning dear!" A sweet voice forced my head to turn and noted the slim presence I adored once again laying on the pale white wall.

"Hi grandma!" My hands rushed to a hug, she embraced me in.

"Dear, it smells delightful, but are you sure you are not my grandmother and I your granddaughter?"

My eyes, automatically, fell towards hers as my tongue struck out: I was aiming for sarcasm.

"What can I help with?" Her voice purred again, I smiled sweetly.

"Well...The oatmeal cake is almost done, it is a little burned but I think it tastes good" as I spoke, she examined; my heart thrusted to an end and she laughed at what I thought an atrocity, then nodded her head and kissed me on the nose.

"Oh! For sure! It is burned into ashes;" I laughed "No, seriously, what must I do?"

My head evaluated the chores to be done, not many.

"Can you cut the bananas please? The plates are on the table and the knife too" She automatically headed to the instructed place; sat down and humped her lullaby she always sang.

"Did you sleep well?" I inquired, she smiled.

"No, this is my bed and I slept dreadfully" Her sarcasm struck again, my lips chuckled. "Of course I did Alejandra!"

"I know you did!" I corrected my mistake.

"Did you?" She inquired back

"I....Did?" Her eyes piercing fell on mine, my lips shone scarlet red as my chin lowered to her threat.

"Did you have a nightmare?"

"No. Yes? No, I mean...I wouldn't know"

Her eyes persisted in insist, she would not surrender until the whole, undeniable truth was obtained and heard by her ears.

"Well..I dreamed of you. Well, sort of, more like with you? It was strange and you know I barely remember any dreams but this one was odd: I was initially running through the woods catching raindrops and then all of a sudden the wind was swooshing and I was in the ocean...." My voice turned numb, there was nothing truly understandable about my fragmented imagination.

Yet her eyes laid fiercely on mine and pressed me to go on.

"I was suddenly...sinking. But I was sinking from chest down, nor backwards like most do, but chest down: as if my heart were my weight. I know it sounds crazy and it is probably a result of over addictive sugar-"

"Sush" She huffed. I proceeded.

"I was sinking, then you appeared and I was watching you sink...in the same place I was sinking a couple seconds ago. I tried to help and save you but....A boy, Spencer, also strangely appeared there and told me to..... "

"What did he do?!" She questioned, much more hasty than she ever spoke: her voice rose.

"He told me to let you go" I answered plainly...my lip was then bit.

"You said you sinked?" She inquired, more thoughtful than she ever could be.

"Yes, but I am sure it must be a metaphor of needing to be hydrated" I coaxed, yet her mood would not lighten... "Grandmama are you okay?"

Her eyes glued to the wall, her face serene, no brusque movements: the only sound created being her beating heart each second doubling its pace.

"Yes but of course! I was simply thinking..." She hushed. Her eyes left, they turned white. 

"Grandma?!" I questioned as I rushed towards her. I dropped the knife and heading towards her. Her skin was ice cold, her body fragile. 

Her pulse weak...My heart was beating like a maniac. My fingers trembling. 

Thank god she was sitting

"Whoops" She mumbled "I almost fainted".  I hurried towards her desk in search for her medicine. I rushed towards the cubbords for a glass and rapidly filled it with water. 

I handed it over to her and, with my eyes, examined she drunk every last drop of water. 

"It's strange," She mumbled again. My eyes wouldn't leave her. I shut. What the hell had happened?  

"when I was younger, " she continued "much like your age, probably the same, I almost drowned and a boy, Nathaniel, took me out. I suppose it is another mysterious coincidence this strange world brings."

"I guess" My mind responded, now much more intrigued about the hereditary leverage I had been bestowed above...no answers.

I stood up, grabbed a piece of the cake and placed her in front of her. 

"Eat" I enforced, she obliged. "I need to run for a sweater i'll be right back" She nodded as she ate a couple of pieces. 

"Wait!" She rushed, I ran back into the kitchen. "This boy, Spencer, is he the same... boy you've commented to me about?"

My embarrassment rushed up to the corner of my lips: redding them as if it were an eclipse of red blood cells. I could not bare speak: and so, my head simply nodded a single time and rushed out of the kitchen.

I confess as I dashed upstairs my aim was not a plain sweater, but answers I would not have bared the bravery to possess. I rushed towards her bedroom, my conscience warned me once again...But the urge drowned the hail.

 I headed into the drawers where she kept her most shameful of truths: a drawer where the photo, I always admired, was initially taken from. My hands sank deeper into their sin: targeting whatever piece of tormented paper that could give me hope.

Bills, work notes, ancient to do lists, a picture of my mother as a child....

But the sin was already committed, I had become entranced in incorrect sources that had bewitched my independent hands.

The searching resumed: yellow colored folders with more photos: my mother always in them; the fact only caused more shame to shedded in my heart like charcoal black ink in a damped piece. Photograph after another I examined the source: dates from all times and places permanently scorched in them a blue, neat handwriting. Photograph after another the figures remained indifferent to my memory...until one caught my sight.

My grandmother, in the bloom of her youth, stood swinging underneath a vast oak tree: a beige sweater wrapping around her waist, peach colored jeans accentuating her figure and an unforgettable smile eternally imprinted: a smile, far from the serene glimpse she now has, decorated the small picture, torn from the left side. My heart swell with joy, it felt as if this photograph was the only photo I could encounter that would be true to her essence...

Yet a foreign silhouette, smiling with the same vehemecity, stood behind her: a grey jacket covering most of his body, black jeans and a turtleneck finalising the touch. The photograph, much too old to properly decipher the figures' true shapes, appeared to be drizzled with sunlight.... Her coal hair shaped into freedom and his mahogany hair sculpted into adoration. My eyes zoomed closer, my fingertips touring the plain card, noticed, or rather interpreted, the piercing grey eyes the gentlemen had....eyes that reminded me of a particular someone.

However, his hand locked with hers in the swing and her gloves, beige like the ones I was given, captured my specific attention. My hands clung the photograph with more ferocity: zooming it closer to my dilated eyeballs.

The hands locked with each other: her fingers tightly grasping his and the glove, the more I examined and censured my attention to it, the more I realised a blinding similarity.

The photograph, invigorating my curiousness, was tilted now demonstrating the backward frame: the same delicate handwriting decorated the plainess:

March 2nd 1964

 Me and Nathaniel D.B