Icarus and The Magpie (Short Story)

(8) A thing you cannot Touch

Iris wished it was the rain. 

Pennon had thought it was. Or so he said.

But it was much more than that. Pennon was changing, Iris was changing, and it had only been a few days. A few days more was all it would take. 

Iris begged the rain...

Pennon no longer thought he could... he was falling away. 

"There." Iris dusted off her sketch, taking away the eraser bits from the page. "Tomorrow morning you'll be good as new. Light as a feather." She adjusted herself in her chair at the counter. "What do you think? I made a few more changes to you. I think they'll help."

Penn was at the window. Watching the storm clouds roll by slowly.  His two, small, wings tucked up into fuzzy huddles at his back.

"Penn?"

Penn had rarely left the window over the past week. He couldn't bare to do much else. Penn felt like parts of him. Parts that were important to his being, were leaching away. And it wasn't because of the rain. But Iris had taken it as so. She hadn't called into work, there was no phone for her to call with. She hadn't gotten groceries, and her bread was going stale. But most importantly, she hadn't slept. Iris hadn't slept and Pennon felt himself slipping. He was being explained away. The more fleshed he felt, the less of himself he could find. He was beginning to be an ideal. Something perfect. Something unnatural. 

"Can you say something?" 

Penn had nothing to say. "Something..." 

Dreaming, and sketching were tricky things. Only certain details could be conveyed. Never touch, never sound or smell, and never could they convey breathing. Iris did her best to capture them anyway. 

Penn was tired of changing. And he had only changed a handful of times. But with each one he felt further and further from himself. He understood more of her world, but he hadn't seen it, and less of who he was. His mystery was now answered. His dreams were becoming less like dreams, and more. like nightmares. "Coming." He whispered and made his way to her. 

Looking over her shoulder at yet another iteration of himself. This one, he could tell, had received a few larger changes than before. This time the drawing was made entirely of words. "Words?" This was the largest of details. 

Iris set down her pencil. "Well, I thought I'd try something new. Since I can't lighten you up, I started by writing light as a feather and it kind of went from there." Iris hadn't slept in days. Not since Penn had disappeared. Not since the rain began.

"I don't know that I like being made of words." Penn sighed. 

It was a freakish sort of rain. The kind that came on with no warning and lasted days on end, Night after night and at present. Had gone a week with little more than light lifts between; a muggy heat settling with crisp droplets that sizzled when they hit the ground. It was a summer rain, a wretched rain.  Now, it didn't stop for more than a few hours, neither of them left the apartment. Iris did not want to risk anything ever again. "I thought that I might be able to describe you instead. That maybe this would work." But, if truth was told. She had no idea what she was doing, she held a feigned confidence. For his sake. He after all, was the one with "lucency issues." She had to fix it. 

"Hmm." Penn ran a finger over the page. It left a charcoal run down its side. Even though the words were good. All of them. He looked less alive than he ever had before. "So this is the me you wish to see?" He was a mixing concoction of thoughts and phrases that he could have said. But all that came out was "Is this all?" 

"Hey- don't." Iris batted him away for a moment. "This is you described." She hadn't slept and was beginning to grow more and more irritable. She could not sleep.