Foggy Roses (gerita)

A large window

Felicano sighed, pencil in hand, sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table. He couldn't quite get the angle of the room right, the drawing looked off somehow, and he knew it was because of the proportions, but he didn't possess the skill levels to know how to make it look right yet. Glancing around the room Felicano watched as his parents continued to carry boxes from their rooms and into the car outside. He saw Lovino outside too, helping their grandpa get into the car as his knees had been bothering him lately.

"Hey!" Lovino shouted after slamming the car door. "Feli, get your ass over here and help us load up the car."

"Watch your mouth, young man."

"Sorry, ma."

Felicano huffed one more time, finally giving up on trying to draw their living room. He crinkled the paper up into his inside jacket pocket along with the pencil. "You need to learn to have more patience, Lovino."

"No, you need to learn to not be so lazy," Lovino jeered as he walked back inside.

"Won't you miss this place, though?"

Lovino looked around the empty room, glazing over the chipped paint in places and faded wallpaper in others. He remembered the hardwood floors covered in dust as their original playground and their creaky stairs as the imaginary mountain on which the brothers played on as kids, and the old piano they had to leave behind in the corner where they spent most of their evenings trying to train each other to have perfect pitch. The brothers both had a painful ache in their chests, looking around and such, and hoping that maybe one day they could return.

"I was hoping to turn 21 here," Felicano continued when Lovino didn't answer. "21 is the age when everyone says you're an adult, you know."

"I do know, I am 21," Lovino lightly elbowed Felicano's side before ushering him outside to say their final goodbyes.

Their grandpa Roma had rolled down the window of the back car seat in which he sat, staring up at the roof of their home with sad eyes. His gaze shifted from the sky to his grandchildren as they locked up. Felicano left one last kiss to the door before he turned away and got into the family car, the last one to buckle up. His father prompted if everyone was ready before sparking the automobile to life and driving off down their little dirt road squished between two rows of cookie cutter homes.

Feliciano gazed from the backseat of the car, watching as the familiar sunshine in the orange setting sky slowly turned dark and purple and stranger, as they neared their destination. Clouds marched on and on, the moon following them and sometimes disappearing behind the dark trees along the road. Forever, it seemed, passed as the family travelled in silence, and to where, Feliciano wasn't too sure anymore. Their boxes and trunks overflowed in their car, leaving hardly any room to move, hardly any room to breathe, he found it impossible to sleep, laced with worry and his mind contaminated with dread. Though always trying to find the beauty, trying to remain positive, the darkness of the world around him started to seep into his mind and heart.

Everything was going to change.

It was not too long before the family pulled into a small driveway and was instructed to get out and help with the luggage. Lovino awoke from a deep sleep and Romulus was the first to get out of the backseat. Still a long ways away from their destination, the family had some trekking to do, and each member was told to grab a trunk and get moving. The blistering feeling of dread and tiredness lingered on their feet and backs. They left behind their car to rot and their lives the same, as they continued to move forward into a strange land they didn't know and an unsure path of a life of hiding. Feliciano didn't like it. But as they continued on, Feliciano noted the strange and scary architecture, cloudy skies and one too many political officials standing on the streets.