Eden

[07.30.01] » by Carme

your fixation on the past is a distorted one, dear.

***

"Let's go someplace nice for dinner today. Someplace different! Someplace fun and exciting!"

"What's wrong with the restaurant in Balamb?"

"We go there every time! C'mon! Let's try something new today! Aren't you ever going to be tired of eating the fish every time we go there?"

"Hey! Don't insult the Balamb fish! It's good."

"But you order it every time we go..."

***

The place was a wreck. They used a fallen pillar as a seat, the weeds as upholstery. Somewhere up ahead, Matron and the Headmaster greeted the others. He felt a need to describe the wonder, the pure emotion of peace he had experienced. 'Love! Peace! Happiness!' as she would say. Yeah, that was it.

"I was dreaming of you."

She looked a little disturbed.

"Not like that, Sefie! ...We were back at the orphanage before it was like... this," he waved his hand vaguely at the ruins. "And everything was just... you know how in movies there are settings and everything's just, like, right? It was like that."

"And I was drop-dead gorgeous and there were no other girls there! Right?" Behind that cheery, innocent smile could be a murderous axe-wielding maniac.

"Of course, Sefie." Well, it was the truth.

"So we were just standing around at the orphanage before it turned into a big gigantic blown-up rocket-bombed thing?"

"Yeah, but--"

"Sounds boring. Can I tell you about my dream? See, see, see, I was in the Ragnarok, and there were rocket launchers! And then there was this big big big monster-thing, and then I got out the rocket launchers, and I--"

She was starting to pantomine shooting a big big big monster-thing with rocket launchers. Somewhere in that brain of a hidden genius, a thought had hitched a ride on a bullet train to... well, somewhere. He gave up trying to explain the inner content of... nothing. It was nothing. She'd think he was an idiot, anyway.

***

"Don't you ever wish we were back in the orphanage, all together again?"

It was like trying to reach through the depths of a pit with no end, like searching for constellations in smoggy Deling. Orphanage? There was a snowball fight once. There were rocky flower fields, there were war games that ended badly, there was Matron. There was his name and the shade of his hair.
Beyond the smog were stars too far away to see.

"Not really." She plastered a smile on her face, as if she could actually remember all the "good old times" of being an innocent teddy bear-lugging brat. Kids were nice, really - but growing up meant raves and concerts and parties. Couldn't exactly take a six-year old to a heavy metal concert. The jigsaw parts of the tree bark jabbed into her back. "Wouldn't you rather look to the future, Irv? Don't you want to see tomorrow?" The mood for dredging up the past was an unfavorable one. Not today, please, not now, maybe tomorrow. Talk about something else for once. Who cared anymore?

Beside her in the moldy grass, he studied the glowering clouds like a half-asleep student with an upside-down book. "There's sorceresses and like, lots of dead people in the future. Remember, when we were kids--"

"--we played every day, we didn't have to kill people, it was us on a playground with no responsibility, we didn't have to worry about getting killed, blah blah blah..."

"Well, like... what are you so mad about today, Sefie? Geez." He sounded a little hurt. Had to be. People trapped in the maze of their own past were disappointed when they came out of the labyrinth and found to be alone.

Somewhere in her deteriorating memory, a termite-infested beam creaked and collapsed. "Don't call me that."

"What?"

"Don't call me Sefie."

"What's wrong?"

She was silent for a moment that was spray-painted gold.

"You know what? Things have changed. I'm not a child anymore."

He shifted onto his stomach, musty grass stabbing at his chin weakly. Blue eyes searched hers like a blind man trying to buy a newspaper to read. There was a passage of time, the speed of thought, that she tried to catch; it slipped away and over the ridges in her palms.

The blind man gave up. "Wanna go back now? It'll get dark soon and I haven't exactly got a shitload of ammo."

She shook her head slowly. They sat in the withered grass in the noisy silence of chirping bite bugs a while longer.

"A kiss, darling?" he drawled.

Her lips brushed against his cheek for a fraction of a second; automatically, robotically. The erratic buzzing continued; there was nothing to say.

***

"Come on, you'll catch something. Like a frog kerploppin' out of the clouds. Or maybe bird poop!"

Mouth wide open, tilted to the sky, he glanced at the girl in the rubber duckie-yellow slicker.

"Or just a common cold? You're doing it too. Watch us, like, be eaten alive by acid rain."

Cold drops hit his face and slid off in all directions; hit his cheeks, his eyelids, his forehead, everywhere but his mouth. Trying to drink rainwater by standing outside gaping at the sky that was pissing on one's face was, in actuality, a very time-consuming process. It took a jaw-numbing five minutes at the least to get enough to swallow. That didn't include chatting while attempting to keep the numbed jaw pried apart to catch sky piss.

"We used to do this when we were little, remember? And the Matron would come out and yell at us...She said we'd get pneumonia! Remember?"

"Um... sure!" She was skipping in delirious, erratic circles around him. Maybe he was to be sacrificed in some satanic storm-calling ritual. Or not. Could be a regular, everyday turn-this-guy-to-stone kind of thing.

It was not until the others labeled them crazies that they went inside and he felt the chill gnaw at his bones. When he reached for her hand, brushing the yellow raincoat, she yanked the long sleeve away.

"You're like a block of ice," she said, in wonder. "It wasn't that cold outside."

"I'll be your ice sculpture."

She laughed.

***

The whisper floats, a silken thread in dustless ray of sun, caressing the ear in promises of sweet summer. Hands on the ticking face of the timekeeper slow to a dream's euphoric step. In the early morning sunrise, there is only golden eden and two unchildren in a child's world. The sun of a trademark jumper shines, highlighting leather and earth. like a blanket for a picnic, an overcoat is spread out on the grass for two, sleeves reaching to embrace the ends of the earth.
{i love you.}
Midas' metallic brush dances across the universe. No need for color.
{perfection.}
Yellowed butterfly and dreamer in bronzed grass; lips draw near, and--

do something! please!

he's delirious! hold him! the medicine might not work...

Back to the house of old, back to the gold, the copper, the bronze and the silk; back to her.
Slip past, flash by like dreams do; yes, melt by...!

i'm sorry! i'm sorry!

hurry!

irvine! don't leave me...

i'm sorry, selphie. there's nothing more we can do.
it's too--

--late.

***

***

Major Agatha Christie reference in there somewhere. Like Fairy's Gift, written totally out of order. Eheh.