The Frosted Optimism ✓

The Frosted Optimism - 02

Finding his vision, a rush of pride ran through her as she wore her brightest smile. "The words of my father. He was a man fond of cycles and it's expert mechanic as well."

To her obliviousness, a storm started brewing within him as his eyes lifted up to met hers, all too blank and unreadable. A gasp escaped her. "Oops. I didn't intend to degrade you. It just slipped. I'm sorry."

"Was?" His unexpected word paused her moment to recall his meaning and the next moment, her eyes snapped down at her palms, more like reading her fate lines which further tensed him.

"Yeah, about that," Her lungs started suffocating. "He was once with me---" Her every word slightly screened his eyes in the layers of his longing emotions.

"Paying his time to nourish me."

A fatherly hand raked it's fingers through his windy hairs at the school gate, instilling it's warmth on his senses.

Her words reverberated her pain whilst his silent breaths echoed his guilt. "Teaching me cycling."

A cheer resonated as the small boy jumped with raised hands up and down upon kicking his father to feigned death.

"Always ready with his earnings to gift me one." A sob was hardly held back by her.

A smile graced his lips on the sight of his table surface, strewn with his admitted papers and the flying tickets to his favorite university.

"Taking care of it's maintenance while--"

With a puzzled look, after several knocks, he opened the door to his father's room only to find him delved in deep sleep which further addled him after his father's constant reminder of strictness with time. He turned around when upon catching something, he twirled back to see his electric guitar, with the fixed strings at one corner, for which he cancelled his performance in his college.

"Storing it's broken parts to fix later." Her volume weakened with his shallow breaths, both struggling souls burdened their memories in their own phase of agony.

"His words made me feel big, yet he treated me like a kid to take care of."

The small hand lifted the tip of overloosed cap up for the umpteeth time away from the view but this moment, it failed to flap down when the large hands came to his rescue, holding it up. His baby eyes looked up to find his father who remained busy with his mobile, feeling himself over cloud nine with the view of his son in his father's cap.

"Although, I'm deprived of it now-" Her words breathed craving, cutting through his thoughts, hoping for someone to deny her truth.

"But he's still alive in me-" She denied. Her throaty voice phrased her everyday rhyme, soothing her heart whilst she managed to gulp down the lump of her tears.

"In my head-" She indeliberately paused, closing her eyes to retain focus. "In my heart, in my eyes, in my deeds, in my prayers––."

How much she wanted to call him alive in everything, a living being, to announce that she's still breathing in his sanctuary yet the moments, she cherished more than anything, betrayed her. Left her like a breath, leaving her vulnerable and desperate, alone on a void land under her yearning eyes to seek him. Her wounds freshened, shaking her sanity to curl back into her utmost grieve and she collapsed, her forehead hitting the pulled up knees with a quick curl of her arms.

In the midst of drowning with fear, she felt a delusion of soft pat on her bowed head, her reason to a calm sleep everyday, a gingerly caress back and forth which used to pull away her miseries, lightening her head. A wave of bliss recovered her senses, stitching back her weary heart when his fatherly aura lured her to keep surviving. Indeed, she was under the thick clouds of his prayers.