To Catch a Gust of Wind [COMPLETE]

Chapter 4 - She of His Soul [#14]

Rafael got up early to catch sunrise beyond the kapok trees. The sun was just starting to appear on the horizon, still minutes away to herald a new day. Its light now painted the dawn sky with deep hues of red, orange, and pink. If he had wakened up an hour earlier, he might have gotten a clear glimpse of the heliacal (visible) rising of the constellation of Aquarius in the eastern sky before the brightness of the sun blotted out the Aquarian stars. When Aquarius can be seen on the ascendant ahead of the morning sun during the spring equinox, it can be said that the Age of Aquarius has begun.

Rafael remained standing still in the middle of the road that led to the village school, gazing at the sky, savoring the moment and thinking those days when mornings like these were taken for granted. If you've lived all your life in the hacienda village, a vista like this doesn't matter to you anymore, unless stamped with an experience too beautiful to remember or painful enough that you couldn't get rid of it. Either way, you can't escape from it. Your experience shapes you to what you are.

Rafael watched the edge of the sun draw a crimson curve on the horizon. A few moments later, the sky changed to subdued yellow orange. Sunrise had begun. The morning air smelled of fresh cut pieces of sugar cane. He could almost taste it. So refreshingly sweet. His long years in the big city had made him a foreigner in the place where he grew up. He strolled towards the school, the rays of the rising sun slowly casting a carpet of mottled light upon the still gloomy road. Kapok trees lining on both sides displayed their bulbous fruits in a riot of silhouettes, as if they hung from giant chandeliers. He was in the elementary when the trees were first planted. How huge they had grown. Their thick branches and foliage arched above his head and reached out to the other trees on the opposite side, forming an arched pathway on the road to the village school. Slivers of light came splitting through the spaces between the leaves of the kapok trees.

The scamper of children's feet he could still hear as they ran towards home during lunch break from school. How many feet, those of pupils' and teachers', had this road carried through the years, come either rain or shine? How many of them, like him, had gone to other places and tried their luck or sought fortune? How many had come home and looked back to the times that were? To a time when this road was witness to the scurrying of little feet, on a path to an uncertain future where ambitions and aspirations were like stars sparkling above in the night sky. The feet of students were stuck in the ground, but occasionally there were some of them who tried to look up and saw the twinkling lights, inspired by their teachers who saw promised in them. For that, Rafael was grateful to his beloved mentors in the village school.

The road held other memories for Rafael. When the rainy season came, he and his childhood friends would take a shower in the rain, running all the way to the village school, laughing and shouting, pushing and splashing rain drops over their innocent faces. And when they came back their hands were full of shiny, little stones which they meticulously picked up from the sands and pebbles which were used to flatten the dirt road. The stones were mostly quartz, colorless or milky white. But sometimes they found other stones with interesting colors like yellow and pink, and with luck, purple, the color of amethyst. They were precious to the eyes of a boy, playthings that filled his heart with emeralds, rubies, and diamonds.

Rafael had momentarily forgotten the sunrise. He was lost in his thoughts. He was halfway through the distance when he spotted a figure at the far end of the road, either standing still or walking towards him, he couldn't quite determine. The morning sun had wholly appeared on the horizon, and its rays struck the figure in white making it shine in the glory of the morning that seemed to promise a wonderful day.

There's no way he could be mistaken. Distance faded away the moment he perceived who he saw standing in the middle of the road. If you've known a girl both body and soul, you'd recognize her everywhere. Even when she's just standing still. Some sort of an entanglement. Literally. What you feel could affect the other instantaneously, regardless of where the other is in distance and time. Like two particles of light entangled in some quantum mystery. Take away one and the other will react even if they are light years distant from each other in the universe...