Tatemae

Day 6 - Night - Star Explosion

My monster has grown well beyond my cell. It breathes with a sort of white, chalky cough that is barely noticeable to someone who is not looking closely. Only when the light catches the cell at a very specific angle can you see the dust it coughs up as it breathes into the dying light. The sun is about to go down, but my monster shows no sign of drifting off to sleep.

I'm hungry again, but it isn't the hunger I'm used to. Or maybe it is. I don't really know what I feel, but it doesn't bother me.

I watch as the light dies against the wall in front of my cell. As the day dims, the bars almost seem to melt away. I can feel them with my hands just fine, but when I really concentrate on the wall, my vision blurs and I see nothing but freedom and a show of shadows all around me.

I'm going to die, but at least I'll die seeing one last beautiful thing.

"What did your friends call you?" Someone asks.

I freeze. I fall to the ground in my startled state like paper being carried across the room with a single gust of wind. My hands are twitching as I look up at my intruder with a caustic fear. They twitch like plants taken to fire.

"They called you Ash." Poppy said. "That's a strange name."

"It isn't actually mine." I say, watching as she glares at me with a slight smile. She stops to look over the fresh whiteness of my cave. Her eyes grow wide as she realizes the chaotic color is not only all around me, protecting me with its purity, but also extending well beyond the cell, and out into the world around her. She's just an animal trapped in a cage too.

"...You did this?" She asks. "All of it?"

"Who else could have done it?" I say.

"Why did you destroy the beautiful drawings of the heart, and that religious imagery, and of your—"

"—Family?"

"What was left of them. You set them on fire, didn't you?"

I smile. "Yeah."

"So why then?"

"I'm a fan of beautiful things." I say, watching as the wind picks up dust from the chalk and cloaks her in the particles. "I wanted one last beautiful thing before I die."

"Oh..." She says, her face growing dim.

"Why did you come here? It's dark. I was about to try and sleep."

She nods, but I can't tell if she's there in that body in front of me anymore. She looks so distant and confused that I'm almost certain her soul has vanished and all that stares at the ground idly in front of me is the shell of a sacrificial animal. A beautiful one, but an animal all the less.

"I like to look at the stars." She says suddenly, returning to the time and the place like a magician. "It... relaxes me... when I'm having a rough day."

I nod, and sit myself down on the ground. "Sounds lovely. I used to look at the stars myself at home."

"...You did?" She asks, visually shocked again. She states the words with a sort of quizzical disbelief, like she's questioning me on what I just said.

"I did! Actually. Actually, I looked at the stars a lot. It's easy to get lost up there."

She puts her hand on one of the bars. "...Would you... like to come out and look at the stars with me?"

Something inside me awakens.

"What?"

"You can come out. To look at the stars. If you want to."