wanderer's moon | kaedehara kazuha

07 | my days without you are so vapid (ii)

1 week later

Change is constant in no particular order, like how emotions tend to drift through our minds like the weather. If summer falls to autumn, then—what kind of change would happen in between weathers?

Are people kinder and colder; for which one would hate the blinding sun but one misses being embraced by warmth like an old lover. Are flowers blooming and withering; for which one blossom potently when swayed by the cool breeze but one would shrivel from the crisp cold air. Are our hearts full with love and longing for the spring; for which one has chambers that belonged to each special someone and something but one beats hollowly as a piece of it is miles away.

Change is constant. Change is strange. Change is...terrifying.

It terrifies Nara whenever she thought about change. Nara wants to change. She wants to let go of the shattered little pieces floating in the chambers of her heart, anchored by strings of denial and delusion—as if there is a tiny hope somewhere down there that is convincing her that it is worth keeping forever—when all this while, it has been grounding her from spreading her clipped wings, to be free. To wander the earth and stars and galaxies she has never seen.

This is not the first time Nara thought about letting go of everything. She had thought about it when she sat on the porch in front of the backyard of her home, gazing up at the moon hanging in the sky. She had thought about it whenever she was passing by the crystalflies en route from Hanamizaka. She had thought about it even in bed after all the lantern lights flickered until nothing left—after she left her tears drying up on her red cheeks.

And yet, at the start of autumn, the thought of change lingers in her mind until her heart throbbed. It hurts. It felt ominous. It felt far too foreign now if she were to mull on it over and over. But after all these years, Nara was more than aware that her heart was growing tired of hanging on a thread that should not exist anymore. It should not have been there all along.

Nara is no longer a child to rely on her parents, so why is she conflicted?

That is why she finds change so terrifying.

"Why the long face, dear?"

Saimon Eri points out the distant look on Nara's face, akin to the harsh cold that arrived in the morning. When the young woman's blue eyes snap out of the conflicting reverie, only then does her expression soften like the sun melting snow. She finds herself back in the humble garden in the village, knees digging into the dirt while her hands hover emptily over tomato crops and vines, inviting her soul back to earth where the world was birthed. Eri knelt across from the other side of the vines, leaves and stems obscuring her view yet the concern could be seen among the gaps.

"It's nothing," Nara's hands started moving again, plucking at the dead weeds. Among the soft chilly wind could she hear the weary sigh coming out of the elder's mouth.

"Nara-chan, I have known you ever since you were brought into this world. Yet, no matter what kind of face and empty words you bring me, I know it is not nothing," Eri's tone is laced with worry, a strong hint of disappointing sadness within. The older one is, the wiser they are.

Nara says nothing, head purposely lowered as if to feint focus on her task at hand. She feels the old lady's gaze linger for a moment longer before peeling away.

"I want a different life."

The words that left Nara's lips felt relieving, yet it almost felt as if it was clogged out of her throat—a sentence expressing her deepest desire yet also a solitary dream she loathed.

Eri looked at Nara again, a knowing gaze meeting hers. Nara knows that at some point she would fly higher and higher, eventually being able to touch the skies, and take herself to the moon. Nara knows that Eri knows at some point she would have the desire to leave her hometown—especially when her mother and father left before she could fly.