Ghosts of her began to appear on his periphery – a shadow in a sheer blue dress, her brown curls bouncing in a slight breeze, leaving messages for him inside the structures of the plants. He tended to them and encouraged them to grow, all the plants except for her flowers – he left those untouched. He felt her in them and knew they were a focus for her – she was using the flowers to regain herself, much as he had down with the stardust that he’d used to first form this home for the two of them. She was as much the flowers as he was the earth and trees and sky.
Once in a rare night of sleep – he only choose to sleep once every few months – he awoke to find her curled next to him, lying in the crook of his arm. Tenderly he began to touch her, to coax her toward him and with him, until they were together, wholly physical again, moving together up and down in a locked embrace. Afterwards he slept and when he awoke she was gone, the scent of her still on his body and bedclothes.
When he was lonely for her, he returned to the moments before he’d released her and watched himself with her, lying in the yellow roses and green grass, laughing and holding each other. He returned also, over and over, to the moment of his daughter’s death, not to watch his daughter die, for he understood that she was alive a moment before and would always be alive a moment before, but to watch her, as she stood, aghast and writhing with effort to beg their daughter’s heart to beat again. This was but a memory – the timeline long passed, but still, he yearned for her and needed every moment he had of her that was.
Of course, he also returned to the two of them, back before they’d transitioned, and watched. He saw all his favorite moments – their wedding, the birth of their daughter and son, the smile on her face just before he went before her to prepare the way as she held her hand and whispered to him. His favorite moment he rarely visited except in particularly dark times, when the wait became too much, when he stood at the precipice and stared down into the despair – in those moments he fled and relived with the best of her.
They’d been camping all weekend in a state park, making love by the side of the fire and hiking through the gentle forested hills all day. It’d been three days since they’d came to the park, and it was only one day until they had to leave and it was that moment when he’d first had the idea, first learned how it might be possible to transition and become what he was now.
They were hopping over stones across a stream, one to the next, while the water rushed around them, throwing up white bubbles and spray. Their feet were bare and they could feel the rough stones under their pink toes. She wore a lavender summer dress – the hem soaked through and stuck to her legs.
It was that wet hem that had given him the idea and for long years he worked and researched in the basement until everything was ready. They way the hem clung to her legs – it made him understand – the circle of the thing, the way the fabric rose up and down but never came disconnected.
It took him much longer to convince her. But it won’t matter, he’d told her. We can still be everything.
He knew, of course, that it wouldn’t be true, but so selfish and excited was he that he’d told her anyway, and he knew that as she rebuilt and rediscovered she would find that out – she would find out that he always knew it would be like this but he made her come anyway because he didn’t want to be alone or without her.
So he’d sold her dreams of eternal heaven.
But in reality there were challenges. And there was still despair. But the wet lavender hem, the way it stuck to her thigh – that was still his favorite because he hoped that it would be like he told her it would be, even though he knew that no one would ever follow them – he’d made sure everything would be destroyed after they transitioned – that sealed it – he knew no one else came – he’d watched the rest all the way to the end – what people were now would never understand how to do what he did all the way to the end. Nothing would ever follow them – it was only the two of them for all time and she was spread out and finding words and he was afraid she would never rebuild as he did and never come back to him and that was the despair, or part of it.
While he waited for her he replayed it all, over and over – the moments spent convincing her were not his favorite moments – they’d been exciting and powerful when he was still physical, but later, when he was able to see moments for what they really where – the deception there reminded him too much of the despair. But they still contained her, so he replayed them over and over anyway, just not as much as other moments.
They’d talked about everything, about meeting all the important historical figures and learning everything there was to learn, going back to see all the great masters and watch them, and forward into the future to watch their children and grandchildren forever and ever. They’d even talked about learning the solutions to all the great mysteries of the past – all that human mysticism that caused so much conflict – they wanted to go back and learn the truth of it.
But the hard fact was all those things weren’t nearly as interesting when he understood more, after he renamed it all and seen it all a million times and learned what great men were really about – they were men, nothing more, reinterpreted over and over by the hard line of time, and that was a line he understood better than anyone else. Even better than her.
Still, he wondered as he waited and tended to the plants, relived his memories and grew the world, about something more. Maybe there was something more, something buried deep past where he was and where she was, but if there was, it was only a renewed level of baseless mysticism, because nothing had ever given him an indication that the old ideas about a higher power could be true. He’d looked everywhere except the despair and there was nothing in there. He knew it.
While he waited, he did follow the growth of his old species with relative, if simple curiosity, just to see the big moments, but he felt nothing for any of it. It didn’t affect him when they left their planet for the stars, spread to distant planets and forgot where they came from, only to fight each other millions of years later when they were all something else. He tracked his line, just for idle curiosity, but so different where those things now from anything he recognized that he felt it was pointless. His joy was still in simple things and the dull ache of waiting for her – he felt it like savoring the hunger before a meal.
But he watched the races spread and fight and die as the their suns burned themselves out and the entropy of the universe sank all matter and energy together until there was nothing but black and his world and him, still waiting for her. Her ghosts were long distant and it had been billions of billions of years still he’d seen her last.
When she finally reappeared it was late in the evening as he’d created it, late in the endless cycle of days he’d spawned because he preferred days instead of the endless bright purple twilight. He was sitting on the porch swing, gently swaying the in the breeze.
And then, there she was, sitting next to him, her arm around his neck, her head bent down to rest on his shoulder. He said nothing at first – there would be time for talking – he just wanted to enjoy her for a moment.
“I’ve waited for you,” he finally said, pulling back her face with his hands to look into her eyes.
He saw her struggle with words, the way he once did when they’d first met after transistioning, and when she spoke he was surprised at what she said.
“I’ve been everywhere and seen everything,” she said. “I’ve looked in every thing and every moment. And I don’t know what to do now.”
“Stay with me,” he implored. “We can do every thing together.” He put his hands in her hair and felt the soft breath of strands as they flowed over his fingertips like water.
“Why did we do this?” she asked. “I didn’t know it would be like this.” She pulled away to look at him. “But you did, didn’t you? You knew it would be like this.”
“We can do anything,” he said. “We’re limitless here. And we have all the time that is.”
“I know why you tried
to protect me in the beginning,” she said. “I know everything now. But there’s nothing else to do except go into the black. Soon all the last suns will die and it will come find us. I’d rather face it now. I’m not afraid.”
He pulled her close then. He’d known this moment would come from the very moment he’d first shown her the despair, but he wasn’t ready to leave – not yet.
They walked together through the field of roses, now every color imaginable, not just yellow. Hands clasped, they made it slowly through the forest, under the autumn trees until they stood at the edge of the despair.
“I missed you,” he said, whispering, barely audible over the roar of the twisting black nexus below. Lighting and thunder crashed in response. “But I can’t come with you. I’m afraid to go there. It will end us.”
She turned to him with sad eyes, but said nothing, just slowly backed away from him, staring into his eyes all the while. On the edge, her bare feet stepped off the rock and she fell over the edge, a splash of blue cloth, and then she was gone. When he looked down there was no trace, only the same twisting black fog that had always been.
And then he was alone.
perpetual autumn ©2010 by luke t. bergeron
Creative Commons 3 – No Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us
The author can be reached via email at [email protected]
or found online at http://mispeled.net.
Thanks for reading.
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Waiting (2009) Waiting is a story about a guy named Jack who returns to the small town he grew up in, ten years after he left. He’s returning to attend an ex-girlfriend’s wedding, but that’s not the real reason. And he knows it. He’s just sick of waiting.
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