| Fan Fiction |
by GreenHammock
“You’re beautiful, you know that?” he says, fingers in my hair. I look at him with curious eyes. What does he mean? I do not know, so I ask him.
He laughs softly – I like his laugh. It makes me feel nice, feel light. His lips meet my forehead in an affectionate greeting. “You’re beautiful,” he says again, with much more meaning in his voice this time. “From head to toe, inside and out.” This is a compliment, I know. My head tilts to the side without my noticing and I think of his words.
“What is ‘beautiful’?” I finally ask, unsure of what the word means. I haven’t heard it before…He laughs again, and his arms are tighter around my waist, suddenly. He shifts me in place, moving me to be more conveniently placed in his lap, before he speaks.
“Beauty is all around you,” he tells me, eyes shining. “It’s something that, for whatever reason, stands out more than other things. Jumps out at you. Something about it is better than the other things in it’s group…Like something you want to look at all the time, because it’s so nice,” he speaks fondly. His nose rubs against mine. “Once,” he continues, in a different voice than before, “a long time ago, everything was beautiful. The world was beautiful – big, wide, orange horizons that peaked over sharp, crystal-like mountains or rolling hills. Bright green pastures. Colourful flowers, home grown food, handmade houses and love that radiated through the air.”
I do not understand what half of those words mean. It is because they do not exist for me. I frown at him, “What happened to the beauty?” I ask. I am curious; I want to know where all the beauty went. Is it still there, beyond the white walls?
He flattens my hair with his hands; smiles. “No one respected it. Everyone took the beauty for granted – thought it was something that would last forever. They treated it badly, and one day, when they awoke, the sky was on fire. When it finished burning, the beauty was gone.” I don’t understand, but I pretend I do. What is the sky? I do not know. “Humans,” he murmurs, eyes looking me over. “Killed the beauty.”
“They killed it?” I ask.
“We,” he corrects. “We killed it.”
“I am a human?” I ask. I do not want to be responsible for the death of the beautiful horizons or pastures or flowers.
He nods softly, but he does not look disgusted with me, as I am with myself. He kisses me. “But that was a long time ago – you have nothing to do with it.”
I want to know more about beauty, but I do not ask. Instead, I lay my head on his shoulder and think.
“What is your favourite part of the beauty?” I ask.
He hums, swaying gently in thought. Finally, he does answer me. “The ocean.”
“The ocean?” I ask. “What is the ocean?”
He is quiet – I know he is trying to think of how he can describe it to me. He hums again. “It’s a large body of water. It’s a huge, long landscape of blue. It’s so big, that when you look at it, it looks like it would continue on forever.”
“Does it?” I ask. He sighs.
“No,” he says, sadly. “It’s gone now.”
I frown. I do not want him to be sad. I sit up again and smile at him. “It was water?” I ask, and he nods. I get up quickly and run to the wall. I no longer need to search for the slightly intended portion of the wall, as I know where it is without looking. I press down on it – it is a cupboard. It opens and I take the large bottle over to him. I give it to him. The water inside is sloshes against the sides as he holds it, looking at it curiously. “The ocean,” I tell him.
He smiles and he laughs, and hugs me. There are tears in his eyes, and I brush them aside. “You are crying out the ocean,” I tell him. He laughs more, harder, and hugs me tighter.
His laugh is beautiful.
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10.07.09