"He was the second snowman melting before her eyes, only this one was different. It was a paradox. The colder he became, the more he melted."—Lisle Meminger, The Book Thief by Markus Suzak
Naive Treachery
I was alone in the cold, laying almost lifeless, almost buried with the snow, numbed by the frozen bits of everything around me. Or maybe it was just that I was too beat up to even move. I couldn't even open my left eye, covered in blood. A shade of red my eyes were similiar to, they'd said.
But it wasn't like I needed them anyways.
I saw black. I was blind.
But it wasn't that fact that led me to what happened to me. It was because I was different, physically. It separated me from the rest of the blues. Or that was what they'd told me. But I didn't even know what mattered anymore. Me or the fact that I just didn't care any of it.
If it weren't for that serpentine stranger that day, perhaps, I would have died. I would have lost for sure.
"Do you want to live, boy?" he asked, watching me through almost uncaring eyes.
What he wanted, I didn't know. To be honest, I didn't even had any answer to his question. Maybe because a part of me knew I was as useless as they said. But, somehow, another part of me also battled.
He stared down at me before he crouched down. I felt his hand then, brush the white strands of hair away from my other eye and looks into them.
He stared at my blind eyes. "Do you want to live?"
His cold fingers were still warmer than mine, and his voice was still warmer than the cold ones who'd kept living inside my memories, echoing, over and over. Recalling.
"I do..." I found myself saying, croaking. And, yes, in fact, I did want to. "I do... I want to live on."
And I know, I sealed my fate that day.
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