I ran away...

Chapter 2: So Long Autumn...

  -Dedicated to @CourageFlavored for all the comments and support! <3 -

The town was still asleep. Dawn was just beginning to break. The faded light carefully reached through the window. I brought my fingers to the ray, hoping to feel a slight warmth. But I still felt a weary, cold, emptiness. Today is the funeral.

I pulled out the short black lace dress Mrs. Colwell , sew for us couple of years ago. Mrs Colwell is an old lady we befriended as tiny beings. She made one for me because i sat there one morning admiring an old photo of hers. For twelve years she always sew two of everything, for both of us; and she will not, again. I did not see myself wearing it to your funeral even in my darkest nightmares. But here i am tying a black ribbon bow knot, all by myself.

I woke up early to avoid the realness, the rush, all the eyes of sympathy reminding me "what a sad day it was for our small town". I opened my window and stepped on to the roof. I have done this plenty of times before. It was always to meet Fiona on our little adventures. 

Today, it was to relive it all, before i bring myself to say goodbye. If i had used the main door, my mom would have woken up. She is always disturbed by the slightest sound. I wanted everyone to be asleep. I wanted to be alone.

I saw the sky slowly being painted in orange. A ray of sun came through the leaves of the big oak tree and made me narrow my eyes. I smiled. 

"It is the way sun winks hi" I told Fiona once right here,and she had smiled at me with the new gap between her teeth, as she wiped tears off her adorable freckled cheeks, with her tiny palms. Her rich red curls were  most beautiful during the orange hours of the day, I told this to her all my life. I brought my palm near upto my chest, and wrinkled the fabric of my dress, as if to lessen the sudden hollow inside the hollow, I felt within.

The big oak tree. I climbed the wooden planks to our tree house. We even had a pass-code to enter, even though it was just the two of us. I spent like an hour up here. Everything was here. Everything. From childhood to teenage obsessions we shared together.

Nothing out of the ordinary, Harry Potter, Wild thornberrys, Last Airbender, Lost, anime, anime, anime, Hannah Montana, Leornado Di Caprio, Hunger games, Josh Duhamel, Vampire Diaries even Shah Rukh Khan, i managed to spread the Indian fandom to her. We were more mainstream than we thought we were, i thought as I smiled. As much as I hated to be alive in this era, there were certain things I sure loved about this generation.

Posters, books, more posters, stickers, file covers, pencil cases, old school bags, photos, matching tshirts we printed, box of 80s highschool movies, 90s music. Old rom coms. My 70s and vintage obsessions didnt make it here. Obviously. This was us, together and for us..

Memories we left from different moments in our lives all around me. I feel her presence here in all these pieces of her. I found a painful comfort in it.

From the treehouse I could see Mrs. Colwell's house across the street. I hang on and slide down the rope with a tyre tied to its end. Exist from our domain. I put my legs through the tire and swung on it for awhile staring at Mrs. Colwells house while memories flooded in..

I could see the 4 year old Fiona with her red curls, and I at the doorstep at Mr and Mrs. Colwell's, holding cookies and colourful cupcakes on a tray and a bunch of yellow daisies. This was a weekly tradition. Mrs. Colwell would open the door and we'd run in. I could almost hear our laughter through time. My own vague, and lonely dimension of memory, no longer shared by anyone. Wed be the ones to eat most of it, along with Sally, the old couple's dog, as a "favour" to keep them away from diabetes. So we'd bring the flowers.