Aoihana 青い花

August

It was just another day pushing through the summer heat.

It was early in the month of August during what the people of Flowerbud Village called "the dog days of summer." Whatever that meant. All I knew was that me and Bruno were both panting from the heat and in desperate need for water.

"Come on boy," I called half-heartedly as me and the old dog made our way over to the small pond next to the chicken coop. The sky was so blue that day, the clouds reflected the sun's light so brightly that it hurt to look up. I kept my eyes downcast as I made my way across the thick green grass of the pasture-but I could have sworn I saw someone standing under the old oak tree that shaded the pond. I stopped dead in my tracks as I saw locks of pink hair dancing on the tips of the wind that gushed past me and brought the blades of grass around my feet in a frantic dance.

'You have to stop doing this to yourself.'

Bruno barked excitedly as I ran to the pond's edge and splashed the icy water onto my burning face. Nothing could wash away the feeling of her though; a feeling that was strong enough to take away the summer heat. I thought I was over it, or at least at a point where I was able to deal with it. I told myself it was a mirage caused by the heat.

"Ohhh, I feel so bad, you're out here working hard getting all sweaty, and here I am just playing like a kid!"

I was hallucinating.

In the water I could see ripples of pink slowly moving towards my reflection. I looked up to see her, the sunlight illuminating her beautiful face and the infinite, bright sky expanding outwards from her.

She looked just as she did the last time I saw her. It was as if no time had passed at all. She smiled and I felt that familiar, warm glow cast down on me.

"You look so exhausted, are you okay? Let's go inside and get some tea-oh."

I walked back through the field towards the house. I needed to sleep. During that time, I had been plagued by nightmares and I figured that the lack of sleep had finally caught up with me. Add the summer workload and the heat of August on top of all that and it would be enough to stretch any sane man to his limits, and I was far from sane.

"Jaaackkk! Why are you walking away from meee!" There she stood in front of me, her skirt moving freely in the wind and her pink lips twisted downward into a pout. Regardless of the expression, her face was enough to soften the hardest of souls. I sighed at the memory and bit my lip in an attempt to hold back tears. I kept walking to escape her image.

"Jack...do you...not like me anymore?" I felt a hand on my arm. Her hand. I froze in terror.

'What is happening to me...why is this happening to me?!'

Her slender, feminine fingers moved over her cheeks as tears started to stream down her face. She looked at me with those eyes-those eyes that I thought I had committed to memory long ago yet they looked so much deeper than I remembered. She hid her face in her hands as she began to cry.

"Poppy..." a name I hadn't uttered in years came falling from my mouth so naturally, "...is it really you?"

"I...I..." she pulled her hands away from her face and looked into them, then began to sob, "I don't know!"

I held her. Since that fateful day seven years prior, I hadn't felt her warmth, or smelled her hair, or touched her soft skin. I yearned for her with every day that passed; the mere thought of her was enough to send me into a week or longer of reclusiveness and depression. Since her death, I had never fully recovered and I had been living my days as a shell of my former self. With her, I had felt alive and free... and happy.

The loss of her had sent the entire village into a state of despair for she had truly been the light in all our lives. And somehow there she was, in my arms under the infinite sky as if not a day had gone by.