Pulse

beat sixteen

"Why are you like that?" Eden asked.

"Like what?" Ace wondered.

"Like you've got it all figured out," she said, lying upside down on the couch. Her hair was touching the floor, her legs tucked around the back of the couch. Her hands were resting on her stomach, and she closed her eyes, feeling the blood rush to her head.

Ace sat next to her, leaning his head back and looking at the ceiling. His legs were stretched out in front of him, and he closed his eyes too.

"I don't know," he said, "I guess I have to figure that out too."

"Too?"

"Yes," he admitted, "I don't have a single clue as to what I'm doing. I just make myself look like I do."

"How do you do that?" she asked, truly curious. He always seemed calm and collected, while she was a bundle of tangled strings.

"I don't know," he said, "how do you handle everything?"

"I don't know," she admitted, frowning, "I don't think I handle it. I just, survive it."

"That's a way of handling it," he pointed out, and if her eyes were open, she'd roll them. He seemed like this moment was the right one to tell her, and he took a breath, about to speak.

"A while ago," he started, "someone called."

"And?" she urged.

"They claimed to know you," he said.

"A lot of people know me," she reminded. He sighed.

"The woman said she was your mother," he said, awaiting her reaction. Surprisingly, none came. She remained on her spot, seemingly unaffected, since he knew that she never talked about her parents.

"What'd she say?" Eden asked.

"That she wanted to meet up with you, and that she'd send you a letter," he informed, not knowing if he should have told her at all. She sat up, looking at him, his eyes still closed. Her face was tainted red from laying upside down, and the sensation of her blood rushing back startled her thoughts for a moment.

"I got a letter," she admitted, "but I don't think of that woman as my mother. My mother is dead. That woman is simply someone who I don't wish to deal with."

Ace could understand her, without her having to explain herself further. That was the thing she liked about him. She didn't have to explain everything.

"I like that thing you do," she said after a while of silence, and he opened one eye, staring at her questioningly.

"The one that makes me feel like there is some sense in all of this," she says quietly, and he takes in every bit of her being. She was lost, and that was no newsflash. But that she could navigate well through a foggy mind, it was a mystery as to how. She, herself, was not a mystery; she was simple. Simply complicated, and when you added all those complications together, you get something simple. You get Eden. A unexplained picture that one can see in many ways, and there is no right or wrong way to look at it; like a work of art, she was.

"You know what makes sense in all of this?" he asked, and she shook her head. "That nothing makes sense."

Ace was, admittedly, a mystery to her. She didn't know much about him, and she didn't know how to find out. He seemed to just go with the wind as it took him, and he fought it on occasions, but he just let it blow him away. While Eden planted herself firmly on the ground, refusing to let it get to her. She wished she was the wind, but she was also scared of heights; and wind would take her high.

"You really don't want to see your mother?" he asked after a while, wanting to make sure she was sure.

"I really don't," she admitted, "I don't know anything right now. I don't know what I'm waiting for. For Nana to get better? To die? What then? What now?"

"You ask too many questions I don't know the answers to," he said.

"Maybe it's because I don't know if those are the right questions to ask."

She didn't expect it to happen then. She sat on the edge of Nana's bed when she opened her eyes, when the paper said it was just days away from the first snow flakes. It should have been there sooner, the snow.

Nana had looked at Eden, a curious but gloomy glint in her eyes. Eden stared back blankly, not having any more strings of hope left in her. She was tired of hopelessly hoping, and she knew there was no point. Nana was not getting better.

She pictured the old woman sitting in the ricking chair, a gentle smile caressing her face. She looked at the, as they had told her, orphaned child as she sat on the couch, staring ahead at nothing. The woman was so sure that the scar on her face didn't mean that the scar-less Eden would be forever gone; but that she was, locked away. She hadn't seen her much before, courtesy of always travelling, but she got glimpses of her granddaughter that made her realize why she was named Eden.

"I dreamt of a clock," she said, "and time told me I was late."

Eden was not fazed by her speaking. She spoke nonsense quite frequently, and she waited for another episode of screaming and crying. She waited, but none came. She was numb to anything she could say, too tired to fret, too tired to register completely. But the words engraved in her mind.

"How I wished to see all that snow," were the last words she uttered, as she closed her eyes. Eden stood up, walking to the couch where Ace was sound asleep, and she peeked out the window. The skies greyed and the light was weak, but she could see the outlines of buildings far away, and where clouds ended.

She wished a lot. She wished beyond the stars, and as she wished, she realized that what she wished for would only be that; a wish. And that's what she was. A faded wish, scarred with the promise of remembering, but doomed not to. And for the first time, she was okay with that.

She was okay with not remembering. Maybe that was a better wish, if it had left such a lock. Maybe she shouldn't be wishing to remember.

+++

'where clouds ended'

She crossed a river

Without a start or a finish

With no way to flow.

And in that river

There was no water

Simply because it was no river

At all.

There was not even a where

It wasn't even a nowhere

It just didn't exist.

And now you see how it was

Where clouds ended

You saw it simply

Because it didn't

Exist.