When It's Time to Move On

Door 4 - Chapter 57 - The Exhibit

It was when a particularly plucky person took the stage and proceeded to absolutely botch his presentation due to a minor slip-up that Harris abandoned his notes. The person's images were breathtaking, to say the least. He'd beautifully captured the visage of a sprawling mosque at whose doors children rested. Harris's head filled with a number of things he could say about it but the participant's mistake ruined it for him. All of a sudden, the whole event felt like a facade.

It was his turn at last. He was stopped, however, by Huey who took his hand.

"Listen, even if you don't win, no one here can beat you, at least for me. That camera's special and your photos are too."

Touched, Harris couldn't think of anything to reply other than blinking back in gratitude. Reflexively, his gaze turned to Zafina.

"I don't what I'm going to say," he said truthfully to her, feeling no reservations about his honesty. But I'll be here listening, and I'll know what you mean...." she glanced up ever so slightly, which urged him to go forward.

Harris climbed the stairs – the silence in the hall was palpable. On the podium, he found his pictures and a button to flick through them. Instantly, he was taken back all those years ago. Back when he'd asked his sister what her pictures were supposed to mean. And she'd looked at her younger brother with a mixture of wisdom and amusement. He'd forgotten, then -- but he remembered now -- that he these pictures were meant to be experienced, not explained.

"You know what?" Harris heard his voice booming around the room, but this only fuelled him further. "Why would anything I say have a bearing on the outcome? Would it mean that each moment I captured an image meant something more? I don't want to be thinking about why I feel about something a certain way, what matters is that I do feel."

He stared directly at Zafina at those words.

"I should be asking you all. What do you feel when you look at these pictures?"

Total silence greeted him, as he had expected, but judging by the reflective expressions on their faces, he was confident they'd gotten the message.

"My sister called her pictures her 'Timeline.' She always showed her pictures in chronology. It was her idea of how a journey was supposed to look. So here we go, let's see how far I've come." Harris left the images running on a slideshow.

The screen behind was scattered with images, beginning from his view from the plane window, the home he had left behind to search for another, his days circling newer lands, people he crossed by, and the landmarks he visited. 

He paid no heed to the crowd behind him, as the appearance of Huey made its welcome. The lost boy he'd captured, not knowing just how much they would mean to each other. Zafina's scarf flashed on the screen; her face looking away into the vast desert, a lonely soul searching for answers that she was destined to find.

Pictures of the wishing well meadow; the gorgeous backdrop looked doubly so in such magnification. A collective awestruck reaction was heard across the hall as the audience marveled at the ethereal magnificence of the heart of the sand storms colliding. Harris barely saw them. At the time, they'd felt so important.  

"All this just reminds me of what I felt within each of those moments. But none of this matters really." He proclaimed to the surprised crowd. "Because I'll always have these in me, it doesn't matter if I have a picture of it or not. We try to save these images that we think might be lost in this vast, incredible cycle of life, hoping to relive maybe a semblance of what we felt then. But I know that I won't ever forget it. Never. Not those memories, not the people in them.

"Still, I'm probably not being honest here. Sometimes we need an outlet, a passageway for us to convey a message that words just cannot express. No matter how much I would like to explain, I can't hope to."

He saw Huey and Zafina once more, only this time he faced the screen. The masterpiece he had captured was finally in full view of everyone else. The two were wrapped in an embrace; behind them was the decorated memorial of Huey's parents.

"This is what no one could ever describe. And that's when I finally understood why my sister would always treasure her pictures, why it was so personal to her. It's that connection from one soul to another, and that is something to truly cherish..."

The hall was completely silent, each eye up at the screen. Save for Harris who had Huey and Zafina in full view now, nor did he bother to look at anyone else.

So many emotions resonated through those pictures, all of them so incredibly human. A boy wracked with grief, seeking solace in solitude, yet he just can't resist the warmth offered to him by someone he trusts with all his heart. A woman with deep troubles of her own, who opened herself up to let someone in. This was selflessness, not because of what they knew about the other, but because they let their vulnerabilities show. 

That, in Harris's opinion, was true beauty. Because he wanted to be overwhelmed, he wanted to have as many questions as there were answers.

Harris said didn't utter a single word of everything he'd just felt. But he heaved a huge sigh because all he wanted to say had been said with that one image of Huey and Zafina. 

He finally broke eye contact with them when he heard the sound of thunderous applause around him. He descended from the stage, grabbed both Huey and Zafina's hands, and left the exhibit.

There was silence in the car as they drove far and away. He watched both of his companions directly, not caring in the slightest about hiding how he felt. He ruffled Huey's hair, no longer resisting the urge to pull him in for a hug.

"But why'd we leave without knowing whether you won?" Huey asked.

"They'll call me if I do win. But who cares?" said Harris. "And you, Zafina? Am I a genius or not?"

"You could be crazy for all I care. I could do with crazy in my life, Harris." she glanced sideways, still driving. There was no hesitance in the statement she had just made. He said nothing but didn't shy away from her gaze either.