We are dancing as the awakened city lights blur behind, the night sky above us, bare-footed and free, himself with his gaze set to the scrawled stars, and a lopsided grin directed at me.
"Is it okay here? The forests deemed looming and there are the wolves, of corse..." His eyes, filled with the same warmth as the candles on his birthday cake, meet mine, and he grasps my fingertips and whispers quietly.
"I think it's beautiful." My brother is always appreciative of the world, like my mum was. He laughs and it ripples with the lake, catches in the wind. "The wolves are always welcome though," he says with raised eyebrows and I lightly hit his shoulder lacking seriousness - he knows how deep my fear cuts.
"Okay, sorry pal." We walk quietly along the mossy bridge, footprints left behind, and the memories stained in the polaroid picture scribbled best birthday, thanks pal in Forrest's sloped, tiny handwriting. He is my best friend, and nights like these alone with him make me feel alive, like my lungs deserve to envelope with air and blood to course through my crimson veins.
And then we're running and around us the world vanishes for a second, and he tugs my arm and pulls me onto his back; soaring like the planets are in reach, two breathing creatures in the kind of moment that is rare.
He eventually grows to a slow pace as his asthma burns and he quietly breathes with agonised seconds but he's still smiling. "Lo-ren," he says through breaths, "can i have more than one birthday from now on?" I smile into the darkness and lay on the cold, rocky surface with a rucksack as a pillow.
"Ma-ybe, depends," I whisper in reply, as the night creatures hum above the silence and the wind settles around us. I feel like dust, dancing in the dusk, weightless.
And so we lay there, two lifeforms blood-related, yet completely different, the contrast between his calm compsure, yet daring side to him, and myself, unsure and hidden in the shadows, drawn out by the only person in earth who is no longer here.
Two nights after his birthday, he disappeared without a trace.
YOU ARE READING
To find Forrest
Mystery / ThrillerWe are dancing as the awakened city lights blur behind, the night sky above us, bare-footed and free... Loren's brother disappeared as though a ghost two days after his birthday. After months of searching, Forrest is thought to be dead - but Loren w...
