Moonlight Sonata

•4 - Fear•

Fear: an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.

•He•

It was one of those days which we spent completely at home, with either me reading to Her, or She painting for me. I hung Her paintings all around the house, those eccentric pieces of amateur art which often came extremely close to the real thing. She was good at picking up descriptions, always had been. And when She would draw the mountains and rivers that I described, I'd laugh like a carefree boy.

It was the colours that She mixed up, having no way to know which was what. But even then, the pictures always came out spectacular. Maybe it was a rare talent She had.

Once, She tried to draw us. She drew Herself first: close, yet far from who She truly was. And then when my turn came, She hesitated and dropped Her pen.

"How do you look?" She asked.

"I don't know," I replied honestly. "How do I look to you?"

After much consideration, She said, "you look like you."

"And how does that look look?" I asked.

"Like you," She insisted.

"And how do I look?"

"Why, you look exactly like you."

I sighed in defeat. And this was the cue for my mind to retreat. It crept back to the very shadows of fear; fear that She could see everything except me. Me - the one thing I wanted Her the most to see. It was so unfair, I thought, the way certain things were. You died craving for something, and instead got that for which you didn't care.

"Hey," She said then, breaking my stream of thought. "Tell me if you're old or young. And I'll try drawing you then."

How would She know how a young man looked, or the appearance of an old? When I told Her as much, She simply shrugged, and said it was all subjective.

"You know someone to be young," She said. "But for another, they may be old. You'll tell me which one you think you are, and we'll see if it tallies with mine. It can be the other way, too, this concept of old and young. Someone can find youth within, what you perceive as folded skin."

I gazed at Her in awe, and here, a fresh fear emerged in my mind. She was so vast, and I, so frightfully confined. I wondered if, when She got her eyesight, among the increased vastness, I would somehow get lost. Would I become a tiny pin thrown in a stack of hay? In a whole new world waiting to be explored, would She remember me at all?

I voiced some of these doubts aloud, as we stared at the graves that night. And I felt Her hand slide into mine, and saw on Her lips a tiny smile. Once She started to speak, the racket of the crows was gone. As if listening to Her intently, the crickets too, were still.

"These days," She said, "I can not only feel your presence, but I can almost see you in my mind. I don't know how you look, but when you read to me, I imagine two bright eyes. When you touch my arm, I imagine a serene face. When the piano sounds, I imagine two tender hands. I am excited for so many things, yes I am. To see the source of all the different voices, to see what it is that is so fearful about the dark. I am excited to watch the crows at dusk as they return home at the end of the day. But there is nothing in this whole wide world that I'm excited for, more than the probability of finally seeing you."

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