Can't I Touch Your Heart?

Chapter 73 Goodbye

"Arorhea!" She heard her name and looked at the crowd. Her father was standing in the first row behind the ropes separating the park from the stairs, "What are you doing? You're running out of time! Paint!"

A frozen, brown seed planted on a small piece of golden glowing coal. This is us. 
This is love.

Rhea got up and ran away.

"Where is she going?!" Mrs Laghari exclaimed.
"This girl is reckless even during such an important competition! She will lose!" Mr Laghari yelled.
"You don't want her to?" 
He looked away and she smiled.

Rhea ran into the flower bed and plucked out some flowers and grass. She crushed them between two white stones and ran back to her canvas. Only an hour more left. The crushed yellow and red flowers in her hand, the water on the colour palate, reminded her of the day they painted together, he told her he'd paint with her. And here he was, standing beside her, watching her paint again. She mixed those colours into the paint and swiped the brush on the canvas, the colours melted right into the board, lit up with the fragrance of flowers.

"What is that girl doing?" Some people mumbled among themselves, "I've never seen anyone do that before,"

Ember sat on his bed as he looked at the oak pollen flying outside the window while Loraine and Maple stood beside him. The forget me not now lay all over his bed, making him a beautiful casket. The oak pollen sitting on his eyes, the Gulmohar trees outside, swinging their yellow flowers. Spring was finally here and so was the pain. The guitar slipped from his hand and he let himself down slowly on the bed of blue flowers. The guitar fell on the floor making a huge cracking noise, covering his final shriek for help.

"Ember!" Loraine and Maple ran towards him.

He felt a sharp sting in his heart as if someone had seized his heart tightly. He bit his lips and watch the world above him spin. Time seemed to have stopped as his lungs fell apart, his throat pulling out a strange voice as he lost his ability to breathe, flowers grew in his chest, choking him. Spring is so beautiful. 

A galloping heartbeat of a bleeding heart, delirious state mind of mind as he watched the red gulmohars fall into serenity. The belongingness to the world falls apart, like flowers when they ripe to give fruit, the crushed petals on her palate, his pink finger clenching onto the white sheets, drenched in sun; oblivion had come.

"Ember!" Elford yelled. Ember was reclining on the bed, panting while his shaking extremities. His body was falling apart, so beautifully, like winter snow once spring wipes it away. Like snowflakes as they dance merrily along with the breeze, so happy, so beautiful, so pleasant, yet so short lived. 

He gasped as they fixed a ventilator over his mouth.
"Ember! Keep breathing!"
"It's a cardiac arrest!" Elford yelled as he pressed Ember's chest and rammed it down to give his heart some space to function again. The electrocardiogram had faint beats to it now. Everything in life comes with an inherent sacrifice. Whatever makes us feel good will inevitable also make us feel bad. Like flowers that come as a precursor to love and poetry but eventually become empty envelopes of grief on tombstones.

'Watch me, Ember,' Rhea looked at him as he stood beside her, 'Watch me bloom and wither. I am no longer afraid. Because I know that my broken petals will find you on your road to heaven and cover up all your wounds.

They'll make you walk only on flowers, love.
I'll make you flower way' She smiled at him, watching him stand before her as she painted his eyes. He pressed his fingers on top of the canvas and looked at her, 

"I really want to live, Rhea," He said as the paintbrush strokes began tracing his body, covering his stomach, his lungs, his heart, and wherever the paintbrush touched him, his body turned translucent, as if the paintbrush was taking away the colour from him.