River Dance ✓

three | dawn's first peek

three | dawn's first peek

          Asher Creek use to count his blessing when he woke up every morning, his room silent except for the air conditioning that shut off every five minutes and turned on for twenty. He use to even glance up at the popcorn ceiling print and thank the tiny rats up in his ceiling for not chewing a hole through his roof above the bed and eating him in his sleep. He had countless dreams about it happening, but ever since saving that girl down by the creek, his mantra kind of lost meaning.

          He wasn't grateful for another day. Rather, his mother was, grateful that her son woke to see another sunrise.

          She flung open the curtains over his window, gasping about how beautiful it looked outside, but he didn't care for it. He hadn't cared for any of it. Not the divorce between his parents, not the uprooting from his family and friends and definitely not the move. Yet it was all so necessary. Asher had to live, because dying wasn't an option, which kind of sucked.

          He wasn't depressed, though his doctors had papers stating otherwise. He didn't want to kill himself, but he didn't want to be alive either. Or something like that at least. He couldn't quite put into words what he wanted from himself, so he settled for rolling over onto his side towards the wall, his back to his mother that frowned at him, messy brown curls gray at the roots, her dewy eyes pulsing as tears threatened.

          "Asher, sweetheart? Come on, get up, you'll feel better once you do," she tried coaxing him, a soft, gentle, motherly hand on his shoulder which he shrugged off, rolling back over on his back to look at her.

          "No, I won't," he bit out, irritation lining his forehead in aggravated lines, harsh and rude against his skin. "I won't feel better because I'm still sick," he flung back the covers of his bed, the original one having come with the matching sheets and pillow set, the second and third one all that his mother must have draped over him in his sleep. He almost laughed, staring at the blues and reds and yellows of each blanket on him.

          "I could've had a heat stroke!" he shoved words at her, knotting his fingers in the threads of the blankets to contain lashing out at her.

          "You were shivering in your sleep, I thought you had a fever coming on," she tried to explain, but that's all she ever did. Explain and try to reason with him that mother knew best. But she didn't. She didn't know how suffocating it all had become. The doctor appointments, the needles, the tests!

          "Oh for fucks sake," his body heat thawed until he let all the anger out on a sigh. He loved his mother, of course he did, but sometimes he swore...

          "I'm going for a walk," he told her, leaving no room for argument as he shuffled his feet into his house shoes. His mother looked near ready to protest, or at least tell him to get better shoes on, but she knew not to argue with him when he was like this. Irritable.

          Outside the cold ate away at Asher's defense, nibbling until he was easing into a light jog, trying to get some heat flowing through his body. He didn't know where he was going, or if he'd be able to find his way back home after he got over his little tiff, but it didn't seem to matter as he slid across the forest floor, his shoes having no grip on them. The ice melted under his slippers, water soaking it through and through until his toes were making squishing noises inside of it. He continued, despite all this, forward and onward until the familiar trickling of water aided his attention.

          When he reached the cliff's edge, the river below him, he paused for a moment, taking in the view, the scenery a calming breath and peaceful sigh without the girl from yesterday teetering on its brink. He felt nearly calm, the sun bathing him in warmth, making puddles of the ground as spring neared, coating the earth in a yellow/orange tint. He breathed in the clean air of frost, moving on again, slower as he took his time to appreciate the soundless picture before him, no chirping birds or the shuffling of moose hooves, not even the mooing of cows could be heard, and that surprised him because his neighbor a few miles down the lane up by his house had lots of them, and they always seemed to be escaping the wired fence they chewed grass around. It wasn't like he was complaining though. Those things scared him.