Estrangements (Phan AU)

Early

adjective

       • before the expected or normal time; of or occurring in the first part of a period or series; of or occurring in the distant past or near future.

Phil is four when his city succumbs to the silence. The yelling comes to an abrupt halt, slammed hands on hard surfaces and dinners thrown to waste no longer a permeation in the ozone layer of his planet. The silence is so much worse, he realizes as he lay staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling night after restless night.

His mother kisses him on the forehead each time she tucks him into bed, just like she always has, and his father still plays racecars with him in the living room, but it's different. They don't kiss each other and they never both play racecars at the same time anymore and sometimes his father looks at her sadly and his mother doesn't look at him at all.

When he's older and drifting between a city now split down the middle by a great incorrigible earthquake, Phil will understand that half the children in the world do not have married parents.

But when he's four and the now silent halls of a house that's always been so loud are all he knows, Phil doesn't understand in the slightest. He's too young, it's too early in his life, and instead of realizing that some things just happen, he begins to think it's easy to simply fall out of love.

Phil is four and love is conditional, love is uncertain, love is inexact and tangibly intangible and he doesn't want to fall trusting into its arms because he knows there's a high likelihood it's going to drop him.

Phil is four and love is already something difficult.