Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Final Note on Carrick Stray

CARRICK'S FINAL NOTE
AN ENDING BEFOREHAND
"THEY WERE SUNS"

To drum your fingers across your forehead means "I'm thinking."

The room was white. Curtains billowed in streams of morning light; walls glistened with the sun's bright glare; sheets sat made upon the two beds in the bedroom, recently washed in the basin out back.

The room was colorful. A breeze had drifted in through the open window, and it tickled every short stretch of fabric pinned and nailed and taped to those white walls. Ribbons - yellow, red, purple, blue, pink, brown, orange and green - fluttered and tapped at the neutral color. Some of them reflected onto the walls, made it more colorful with falsity and illusion, but did the illusion of it matter so long as it was seen by the two sitting on the floor?

The room was quiet. Aside from a chime outside and the shake of Seven's leaves against one another, nothing could be heard. Except breathing. Maybe the choked back giggle of a young boy. But that boy tried not to talk, because the other boy, the one he sat across from, didn't have a penchant for speaking, wasn't comfortable with it. He was a mute.

Instead of speaking, they used their hands, their own secret language.

To drum your fingers across your forehead and pat your head means "I'll think about it."

Sometimes, though, they didn't have signals for words, and the boy who did very much like to talk would have to give in for the sake of communication. "We needa come up with one for 'crown.' My sisters are kinda obsessed with the flower kind. Any ideas, Aikin?"

The other boy, the mute, simply drummed his fingers across the dark skin of his forehead and finished off with a brief pat of his head. He would think about it. That was good enough for Carrick. Another silence passed, and the talkative boy glanced up, his attentions caught by a particularly noisy ribbon flapping harder than the others against the wall. It was of a green hue - like the forest. He pointed to it. "Maybe we should move that somewhere else. Away from the window."

Aikin craned back, lips pursed curiously as the length of his black hair brushed his shoulders. He made some sort of noise at the back of his throat, then, like a "hm," and then quickly stood to unpin it. But then he seemed to be at a loss for where to put it, and looked back to Carrick for direction.

"Well, I don't know. You're the smart one. Put it where you like it."

Aikin stood there, swaying a moment and looking around at all the places he could've put it. But he just couldn't stop looking back at Carrick, and after a moment, he sighed and kneeled back down where he'd been before he stood, right in front of his friend. Brother, more like (save the blood and actual genetics, all those important things). The green was getting all tangled in his hands the way he was fidgeting with it.

Carrick, a bit concerned over this worrisome expression on his friend's face (for his friend's face showed very little at the best of times), leaned forward, but failed to say anything. It was here that he asked himself, and would continue to ask himself well into the deeper years of his life: will my face give me away?

Evidently, it did, because in looking at Carrick's expression, Aikin's own faded away, and the childish crease on his forehead smoothed over. His lips, too, smoothed over, and flicked upwards into a very soft, very gentle grin. His hands detangled themselves from the ribbon and instead got to tying the two ends together. When he finished, he beckoned Carrick closer, and then looped the ribbon over the boy's neck, shoulders. Like a necklace.

Carrick furrowed his brows. "Don't you think it'd look better on the wall with all the rest?"

To this, Aikin simply shook his head, smile widening.