The End Of Us

4. Sunset

-
If someone asks me
To describe my childhood in one sentence,
I'd say,
"A tender beam of a sunray."
-

Last time, when she visited her childhood friend, they talked about all things reminiscing bits and pieces related to their old days. All things that she didn't dare recall, her friend seemed to remember. And she was sure some memories were always forgotten.

Like how her friend forgot to mention her dead brother amongst some of many other forgotten memories.

Her friend then dragged her to their old school which looked a bit modified. They seated themselves on to a bench there.

Few kids were playing in the sunset while some other were leaving with their parents who were holding their hands, lifting them in the air and laughing at their silly questions.

While her friend looked at them in complete awe, she eyed them with curiosity. The same look, when she thought she'd found another metaphor for life.

"Our parents were our life as kids and we were their's." Her friend seemed to have laughed, a sad and pathetic laugh.

"It's ironic." Her friend continued with eyes then watery which twinkled under the orange light of the sun. "Things sure do change. "

Indeed!

But she didn't say a word. Because she already knew the answer this time.

Watching the orange tinted blue skies, the orange and white broken clouds, the street lights blinking before fully coming to life, the birds chirping on the wires and from the branches of the green trees, the creepers growing on the lamp posts, the jolly and playful voices of the kids, the buzzing of the vehicles, the shopkeepers closing their shops, her running back home, the budding flowers in the whizzing wind and everything else included.

She missed it all.

But she couldn't bring herself to tell someone how she felt about it. Because she knew what humans were incapable of doing. And this was one of the things.

Her childhood, which no one for sure could give her again.

So she kept silent the rest of their time together until they were but silhouettes under the blazing orange sunset.

On her way back, her friend's mother, when she looked in to her void eyes, told her what a happy bubbly kid she was back then.

"Time take things along with it." She had replied her. To which the woman didn't know how to respond. So she had just given her an apologetic smile.

By the time she waved goodbye to her friend, the stars  twinkled in the dusky sky, the crescent moon smiled upon the earth which shone under it's light.

The crickets chirped along with the birds that left for their nests.

The plants closed themselves up as they went to sleep.

The bats could at last rule the sky.

When  the sun finally set.