A low-hanging branch from a tree that lined the sidewalk brushed my hair, tousling it. He straightened it out before I could.
"You've become smart."
"Wow, what's that supposed to mean?"
"This whole time, you didn't know that you were an idiot?"
"Maybe back then I was."
"I don't like that you're admitting it."
"People change."
"How have you changed?"
Dramatically. Well, at least relatively. I was still as reserved as I had been before. The silence came naturally when I was younger; it knew it was desired and valued. Navies would spar in the tides of my thought, and a beautiful storm would ensue to violently wreck them beyond repair. A painting would coalesce out of the transient wisps of silence that had chosen to bless me.
I hadn't known then that silence had as many shades as it drew my now tired mind in. Empty and a void-like calm engulfed it, the kind that came from the lack of inspiration and thrived on gnawing away at any approaching morsels of it.
Nobody likes looking at an ocean that is calm for long, but the waters have to live through the infinity of stillness. A tempest is not alluring to the cruel eye, it is magnificent to the beholder who is not on the ship being swallowed into the depths of Calypso's throat.
"Well, I think now."
"Right. I didn't know character development could happen to people who weren't destined story leads."
Of course he didn't. He was one. In his story, and in mine. Well, at least once upon a time. I was always the sidekick in my own life, and it never struck me until I was truly left to live with myself.
"Heyy, I'm just kidding," he said, bumping into my shoulder.
"I know."
"You still are so rigid."
"I am?"
"Yeah, jokes just fly over your head and you practically never smiled."
"There never was a reason to."
"You don't need a reason to laugh."
"Yes, you do."
"No you don't."
"You do."
"Nope."
"Why would anyone laugh without a reason?"
"Because nothing you do has a reason."
