To Catch a Gust of Wind [COMPLETE]

Chapter 4 - She of His Soul [#15]

"It's too early to prepare for the alumni homecoming," Thea Marie said with a suppressed smile. She wore a white, embroidered cami top matched with white denim shorts. Her arms and legs shone when struck by sunlight as she walked towards Rafael, her newly manicured feet clearly visible in black-dotted white flip flops. Her hair sported a long pixie cut that framed her diamond-shaped face. For someone who'd just given birth a month before, it's something of a feat to keep a figure like that, short of the miraculous, if you like. And women tend to get haircuts at crucial moments of their lives. A beautiful woman needs no comparison. The unsuspecting eye can see it instantly. 'Beauty is its own excuse for being.' The Rhodora, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Oh well, a woman is compared to a flower, right?

"And so are you. I think you're the one who's ready to go. Have you been rising this early?" Rafael said, smiling slightly, just enough without showing his teeth. "The sunrise is just too beautiful to pass up. Might as well not miss the moment. It's not every day I come to witness a glorious morning like this and...see a beautiful woman standing in the middle of the road..." Rafael's voice trailed off at the end. "I haven't seen this scene in a long time, and probably won't for some time more."

Thea Marie blushed. But she had learned enough of control so as to suppress her feelings. The two remained standing in the middle of the road. The sun had cleared the horizon and painted the road with reddish orange light that was slowly turning yellow.

"So you won't stay long, will you?" Thea asked. She stepped towards Rafael.

"Probably a week," Rafael replied. "The office gave me just a week. I would like to stay longer. It's been a while, ah... five years I haven't been home."

"So the death of our child has brought you home?" Thea turned around and walked slowly towards the bridge. As if she didn't want to hear Rafael's reply. She had said it directly without giving him any hint of what was going on in her mind. She brought up the matter that Rafael wouldn't want to talk about. Though he didn't mention it, Thea knew that sooner or later they would talk about it. She had brought it up and there was no better time for her to say it than right now. Here in the middle of the road at sunrise. What a weird twist of feelings, destroying a perfect moment reserved for romance and beauty.

The bridge marked the end of the rough road. And on the other side of the bridge was the iron gate that guarded the village school. Thea sat on the squat, concrete railing of the bridge, her face turned away from Rafael. She had opened a can of worms. Why prolong the inevitable? As they said, if not now, when?

Rafael followed Thea to the bridge, his face solemn. Suddenly he became silent, absorbed in his thoughts, oblivious to sunlight gleaming through the branches of kapok trees. A beautiful morning could not have just changed his mood so suddenly.

He sat down beside her. "You're blaming me for what happened?"

Thea faced him. "You could have, at least, come home for the burial, or when I gave birth. It didn't really matter to you. All what I did. It didn't matter to you what might have happened to me." Her voice was beginning to change but she managed to stay cool. She got to deliver her message calmly. There would be time for crying loud later.

Rafael said, "I supported you. Even though we're apart I did not abandon you." He edged closer to Thea. "Please understand, it's not your fault, it's not our fault that this has happened to us. Our child was not meant - ."

"No, Rafael," Thea cut him off. "You are just trying to make me feel comfortable. What you're really trying to say is that we go on our separate ways. Now there's no reason why you should care for me. I don't matter to you at all." Thea could not help it. She began to whimper like she was in physical pain. But the pain she was suffering was more than physical. It went deeper in her heart. Pain like that not only affects your body physically but can chop your soul into pieces, as if one's soul could be made corporeal.

"Don't put words into my mouth, Thea. You're really putting all the blame on me. You don't know what I had gone through protecting you in front of my family." Rafael had brought up the topic again. They quarreled over this in the cemetery when he first arrived and the argument didn't end there. His omission had become a demon coming to torture him all the time. One's demon could become another one's responsibility. Oh, he could take the responsibility alright, but unsure if he could face his demon.

"I know that. Now I don't need your protection. I can stand on my own. If you want everything to be over between us. Just say it." Thea said softly, her voice now calm. She's confident she could say what's in her mind in front of Rafael, but she's unsure whether she's prepared for the inevitable. "I won't stop you. But I'll finish the sentence for you. If our child was not meant for us, then maybe, maybe I'm not meant for you. Just say it, I'll let you go. I hate to say this, but maybe you are never mine in the first place."

Thea Marie felt Rafael would leave her, that's why she said it first. She would not give Rafael the first chance to say it's all over. Won't give him the satisfaction to be the first to say it's over. Never. She's in control. She had lost her child, she wouldn't want to lose her pride, too. How love had turned to what may be the beginnings of hate.

And yet...she felt afraid. She wished Rafael wouldn't say the things she feared most.

A woman suffering the pangs of love, Rafael thought. She wants it to be over. Shall I say it? Why do I sense she would rather wish me not saying anything at all? What did he learn about her loving him, if he had learned anything at all? That she doesn't hate you. What this beautiful woman hates are the things that made her want to hate you in the first place. Don't you get it? She has said it already, she needs tender loving care. Oh damn, Rafael thought. He hated it when she said it in the negative. Why can't she just say 'I need you rather than you don't need me at all'? Like what she said in the cemetery. Her need had indeed become his demon.

Rafael's thought wandered to a place where and time when it all began. Right here in the middle of the road. One night. Under a full moon. With Thea Marie. Catching stardusts. Reaching for moonlight beams. All in the name of love, and hate was a distant thing in the future...