All that Glitters

And there are footsteps, footsteps where I would not expect them to be, where they should not be. They are small and light. They belong to someone so free, so careless. The footsteps did not depress the freshly fallen snow so much as one would expect, and they trail off into the forest. Alone. Others stood where I am standing now, behind the public benches, but they went no further.

And then the wind causes song and dance. It carries an angelic voice, of all things, in this dead, muted night of winter. The snow dances and glitters in the dim orange light of the lampposts. Soon these footsteps start to dance, as the snow in winters, as the blossoms in spring, as the leaves in fall, a graceful, weightless dance, and when the clouds roll past the full moon, a ballerina reveals herself, but she is not real. The clarity of the trees behind her betray her spectral frame. Any sane man would stop here, but I am no sane man.

So I continue, as I approach the ballerina, she disappears and turns into azure wisps. These wisps come close to me, they dance in my face, they try to hypnotize me, and they try to lead me away from following these footsteps. But she is too weak.

This ballerina is not the girl at the end of the trail. This ballerina is a lost soul, but maybe that’s too harsh of a judgement, maybe she flows, flows to wherever the winds lead her. Wherever there is pull, and to be sure, this voice has pull. The voice, that girl at the end of the trail, strong, but hints of softness - delicate - vulnerability leak. A strangely familiar voice. Not lost, but maybe waiting to be found.

A few minutes later and I’m at the edge of the forest. Slabs of stone prevents nature’s advancement. Grasses grow, sure, weeds one might say. Moss grows. But anything else? It will take ages. Yet. Yet maybe that is the point. For there is an near-abandoned memorial, to remember the sacrifices of those who fought wars, so that we might live in peace. Our connection them are now lost, severed. Their enemies are now lovers. Their grand-children espousing the very same thing the soldier fought to destroy.

The girl, she is thin and pale. She looks frail. She has to have noticed me, she has to have known company was arriving, because I was not quiet. I stepped on branches I didn’t need to step on. Yet she didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe she knows me. Maybe not.

I clear snow off one of the benches. And still she doesn’t move or say anything. She’s staring at the pretty lights in the sky.

For what seems like eternity, neither of us say anything. We enjoy the silent comfort of two strangely familiar strangers, taking winter’s tragic beauty all in.

And then without looking, she asks, “Why are you here?”

“Same reason you’re here,” I say.

“I wish it were so,” she says. Her voice says she wants to say more, but she can’t find the words. Eventually, she does find them. “You’re not here for me, you’re here despite of me. I sung a siren’s call, yet you’re here all the same.”

“So why are you here?” I ask.

She turns around and leans back against the railing. Our eye contact says everything that needs to be said. “Why do you think?”

“I thought you were a dream.”

“So did I. But then I saw you in one of those fights in the cove. Call me sappy, whatever it is, but I was looking for you,” she says. “Not actively, but passively.”

“I-“ I start to say.

“You don’t need to say anything,” she says.

“They made me think you were a dream, that you never existed. But one thing never made sense. They could never explain-“

“The scars. The one on your thigh and forearm. They could never erase those memories fully. Deep down you knew how exactly you got them. Maybe that was better than giving you a bracelet or a necklace, or something. The scars are what made me know that you were you, that you were real.”

“But it’s been so long. A little more than a decade. We were just kids.”

“So we are still kids. We look like we could be adults. The law would say we are, but honestly,” she says. “Do you think we are?”

“No,” I say. “Not at all.”

“Hmmm,” she says. Not really a word, but she’s telling me she’s thinking. She stands upright and walks towards me so she can sit beside me. “I want you to tell me everything.”

“Everything? Right here? Right now?”

“Yeah, why not?” She says with such a careless shrug. “But can you start a fire? To keep us warm. I suppose we’ll be here all night.”

“Think so?”

“Know so.”

And I do as she asks. For the wind, I am thankful. Otherwise it would have been hard to gather the kindling and the heavier dead branches. Into the firepit they go.

“Got a lighter by chance?” She fishes one out of her bag and tosses it to me. I look it more closely. Solid steel with scratches and dents and barely visible initials. “Your dad’s?”

She shakes her head. “Grandpa’s. From the war.”

I look at the monument. “That war?”

“Yeah,” she says. “What other war could there be?”

“Good point,” I say. “But where have you been?”

“Here. Around here,” she says. I look at her with a confused look. “You never noticed. And my glimpses of you… well, they were glimpses. I was never sure if it was you or not.”

“So it was you, all those years, all those times I thought I saw you but thought it was someone else,” I say. “Like we were ghosts. But the past is the past, I suppose.”

“Yeah, it is,” she says. “So… are you going to tell me everything?”

“I’ll tell you what I can.”

“I want you to tell me what you can’t.”

“But-“

“No buts, okay? I want you to tell me your secrets. Your history that you haven’t told anyone else.”

“Why would I tell you that?”

“Because you’ve got stuff deep inside you that you’ve got to bring to the surface, to let it escape you. It will poison you, if it hasn’t already. And I can’t say if it’s because it’s fear, that you’re afraid to reveal yourself, to be caught naked, or it’s some other reason. Maybe you’ve got a really good reason. I don’t know.”

“Where is all this coming from, Vee?”

“I want to know how you’ve changed, if you’ve changed at all,” she says. And her voice grows quieter. “And the terrible part of me wants to believe you’ve changed for the worse. That you’re a mess without me. I know we’re practically strangers with all the time that’s passed. I know you’ve got your life. But there’s a part–“

“Don’t torment yourself,” I tell her. “And you’re right. There’s something I can’t tell anyone. And it is poisoning me. It’s consuming me.”

“Well, what is it?”

And I let out a long, exasperated sigh.

“It’s why I’m here. This is where I find peace. Tranquility. That sort of thing,” I say. “Where I go to think. Meditate. I promise it’s nothing so grand. It’s… I’ve got decisions to make. Who am I to become? What am I to do? I know that’s vague. If you want to know the specifics, well, we have all night.”

“I would have thought you’d be the guy with clear eyes and big plans,” she says.

I shrug. “If you could see your future so clearly, if you know you’ve options, then don’t you think you’d have a hard time choosing what to do?”

“Maybe, but I don’t-“ She starts to cough, but it soon subsides. “Sorry. But… I don’t worry so much about the future anymore.”

So I laugh. She asks, “What’s so funny?”

“Did you come into my life to tell me that you’re real, but that you’ll die of some sickness?” I say. “How cliché.”

And she laughs too. “The absurdity of it, but I don’t know how long I have, but I know I’m not going to be sitting on that rocking chair on the porch with grey hair, watching my grandkids grow up. One doctor said 6 months, another said 3 years. Another said there’s no cure, someone else said there is. Strange how we know so much only to know so little.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

She nods. “I wouldn’t do that to you, or anyone else. That’d be too mean.”

“So now that you’ve found me, now that you’ve told me that you’re dying,” I say. “Where do we go from here?”

She places her head on my shoulder. “I want to enjoy this night forever.”


Originally written and published in 2017.