“Look,” I said. “The sun gets paler everyday.”

She lifted her head to look at the sky, glanced at the waning white sun, and uninterested, put her head back on her knees.

I tried to crawl towards her. I dug my fingers into the hard frosty soil, and nudged my body an inch further. Then my strength gave away. My body was wet with cold sweat, and darkness closed in on my eyes.

When I came to a while later, she was perched on a tree. The tree was scorched, black against the pale grey sky, its branches extending thin and dark like long fingers of a monstrous giant. Her white robe swirled gently. Her wings shone. They looked beautiful, strong, healthy.

I crawled until I reached the base of the tree. I laid on my back, and with my head facing the sky, I saw her – an angel, no doubt – looking down at me. I kept staring at her as if she were some apparition, all the familiar features now looking so alien, so distant. And only yesterday…

Only yesterday, she had held me tightly, her hands wrapping me by my chest and my head resting on her breasts. “Grow,” she had said in a firm voice. “Will strongly, and they will come. It will hurt awhile, but come they will.”

I had willed, but weakly. I couldn’t have willed any stronger; by then my spirit was already dying. My skin was coming apart, falling like orange peels. Wherever the flesh was exposed, a layer of white fungus had spread resembling an old man’s hair.

She was different. She was strong. The white sun nourishes the strong like an elixir. The meek it devours, eating flesh and soul. When the white sun set in, it parted us – we who were never supposed to be together.

“Stay,” I whispered.

She was looking at the sky, and on hearing me, she turned sharply. I shivered; I had seen that movement, that look, those eyes before. They glimmered – hope, determination, desire, things I never knew of.

“Once you were so close. I thought we could have been forever,” she said. “But now…”

“But now?” I asked resolutely, afraid my voice wouldn’t reach her, more afraid that even if they did it wouldn’t matter, she wouldn’t answer.

“… you are so distant,” she said. Then she stood up on her tiptoes, the thin branch firmly supporting her weightless body. She stretched her majestic white wings, and up she went with a silver shine.

“Ah!” I gasped. “Stay. Do stay…” but it was too late. She was just a speck of whiteness in the pale sky.

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Posted by daulat in Fiction on June 28th, 2006  |      795 Views     Share This     Print This Post