To Catch a Gust of Wind [COMPLETE]

Chapter 1 - Hidden in White [#1]

"A place where nobody needs to go..."

An airplane left a long, narrow contrail in the clear blue sky. Streaks of condensed water vapor in the air followed the airplane as it flew serenely in the atmosphere. From the ground, all it seemed so orderly above. However, up there, as the airplane traversed through the air, turbulence swirled around it.

It's a miracle of engineering and technology that a metal craft so heavy can lift itself up and you wonder how it can navigate in the air.

The sun was a hot riot of fire hanging above the towering coconut trees in the distance, scorching the surface with its intense heat this unusual day in February, its rays so harsh it could burn anything if it stayed outside the shade for too long. February was supposed to be a cool month still bathing in the cool dry air from the North, yet the plants in this sacred place lay withered, dry, and brown, for want of precious moisture to quench the parched earth. Even the cogon grasses, usually resistant to the vagaries of Mother Nature, turned pliant and lay low, yielding to the power of the sun.

Two persons looked at the airplane for a few moments before staring at each other again. But only for a moment. It seemed they couldn't bear to look at each other for too long. Perhaps there was something between the two that should be cleared away. Like the airplane flying above. They didn't hear the constant humming of the airplane engines of course. For them that thing flying overhead somehow became a symbol of separation, of parting, of saying goodbye, then to meet again, not knowing whether to reunite or bid adieu for the last time. However, in parting they came to realize how each one needed the other so badly.

How true one must leave to realize what he or she has been missing all along.

After seeing each other again, they both went in a hurry to a place where one could hardly feel the wind blow, where everything was silent, save the occasional gust of the wind making noise on the leaves of the trees. The place reeked of desperation, decay, and death. The ground on which they stood was eerily quiet today.

A place where nobody needs to go, busy as they are, to pursue the humdrum activities of normal lives. You wake up in the morning, go through your routine of a job and come home in the evening, have a little chat with your family after supper and you're set to retire for the night. You can do this forever until your earthly body succumbs to the vicissitudes of life. And then, only then you remember to go. Because you need to.

This place is placid in this hour of the day. Not that it needs sounds to be alert. It simply is. It has its reason for being oblivious to things mundane. It doesn't need to be alive; it simply waits. The soil covers those that have become silent in the endless struggle to survive.

Everything was quiet today. Not even the rustling of kalachuchi leaves. The quietness of the place was drowned in the whiteness of its cover. The place glowed white, immaculate white, shiny with the white paint, dulled by areas of brownish gray smudging the rectangular, concrete shapes of the structures, one on top of the other in some places, lined in neat rows, here in front. And to the rear, lay the miserably congested graves in slabs of cement, most of them half-buried in the grassy ground, and the part of each tomb that was still visible wore a gravestone that displayed the name of the deceased engraved in marble or etched when the cement was still wet, and usually with a figure of a cross drawn over it, or a sculpture of an angel silently guarding a forgotten broken tomb. Its whiteness hid the decayed and the dead inside its womb.

Everything is so perfectly still in its place, and peacefully quiet. For us normal people. But not for those who have the long ears that can hear the silence of this place. Today might be another ordinary day, born to pass uneventfully, just like yesterday, and perhaps tomorrow too would not be that much different.

None would come to this place today. This place was not for the faint-hearted that they didn't need to be here. Except when they had reasons valid enough to come to this place, like the two persons who had entered the gate with a sign that said 1933 Cementerio Municipal...