(ON HOLD) wanderer | kny

2 - 流浪人

2 - time and greed

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Time was hard to grasp, it always presented itself to be stagnant, standing still, moving at the pace of a snail.

It felt as though when she closed her eyes and reopened them, time had passed.

The boy was sickly, as she had expected, he did not wish to die and would fight for it, she also expected this. What she had not foreseen was how quickly he seemed to grow. As if every time she turned her back he was suddenly able to walk, then his wavy black hair was getting a bit too long and his height began to grow, and then he was able to talk and understand the medicine she worked with.

Time pestered her every second. Despite it all, she knew her medicine was working. His once sickly and pale skin was now flushed and full of the glow of life. He could take walks in the sun, and his blurry eyesight had begun to improve. She did not mind this, not until time began to steal from her.

It was small at first. His walks had begun to get shorter. He wanted to fall in love, he began talking about the past as if many years had passed, he complimented her looks -- mentioning how despite her mask, he could tell she hadn't aged a day. She brushed it off and continued to focus on her medicine, her cure.

Then she saw it. His hair.

She enjoyed the boy's company, he had a sweet soul and a kind heart. Despite his previously frail frame, he fought to become healthy, ambitious you could say, longing for near impossible things. He most certainly had been blessed with his mother's looks (although she could barely recall what his mother looked like, it was more of a feeling that she had), and his soft, beautiful, black hair.

There it sat amongst the onyx sea, a single strand of white. Then it was four, and ten, and then soon his whole head was covered in a mix of grey, black and white.

So she put away her books and medicine. She sat down with the boy and listened to his stories of things he saw while on his walks, or she would cook him a meal -- he would politely take a bite, then laugh about how awful it tasted, and say: "No, no, it's alright mama. I may be old but I can still make a mean pickled plum onigiri!"

She watched once again. Her eyes catching every detail if his thin frame as his chest rose and fell with every breath while he slept, worry clawing at her own chest that maybe that breath would be his last.

And so she found herself wishing, wanting more time with the boy that lied before her as an old man. She just wanted more, she craved it, begged for it.

She ran her fingers softly through his thining hair while humming a song she recalled hearing a few years ago -- was it a few? The people dressed much differently nowadays and the cities had definitely been smaller when she had seen it performed, perhaps a "few years ago" was actually a hundred years ago, she never could be sure.

When the boy awoke, his eyes were foggy but he still looked straight at her masked face, "You're still here, mama? It's been a few days, go take a break, I'll be alright."

She was greedy. She realizes that now.

When she returned, his skin was sunken and more wrinkly than before, his hair was gone, and his eyes blinked slowly every now and again. He took a wheezing breath, bones rattling with that simple action. It pained her to see the boy like this.

Time was so very hard to grasp.

When she knelt down beside him once more, humming the tune she hummed so many times before, he smiled a weak smile that showed how little energy he had, and slowly felt around for her hands.

"Mama... it's been a while. Now that your back," he paused to take another thin, rattling breath that was followed by a deep cough, "I suppose I can stop fighting now."

That was the first time she ever buried a human body.

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he took his first breath
fighting so he would not stop
as he took his last.