The Weatherman

Part 6

      Apart from showing signs of age through yellowed pages and frayed edges, the sketchbook was unchanged. The Weatherman gently leaned over and removed it from beneath the lamp. He stroked the front cover as he examined it, tears once more beginning to burst from his eyes. He opened up the leather binding and began to look at the drawings within.

     The sketchbook had been filled since the day it was given away. Its inside was coated with drawings and doodles from the years since its crafting. The Weatherman studied each and every one of them individually, and realised that each one featured the same main figure.

     At first, the Weatherman didn't recognise the figure in the drawings. He couldn't place where the face of the person he saw had come from, but with each new drawing, it grew more familiar. After several pages passed by the Weatherman's aged eyes, a vague memory jumped into view.

     The memory was from the Weatherman's younger days. It consisted solely of the image of one winter, when the time had come to lay the blankets of frost on the grass and hang the icicles from the branches of the trees. In the memory, the Weatherman had been gently blowing a thin layer of ice on to the lake in the park when he looked into the water and saw his own reflection. It had been the first time that the Weatherman had been shown his own face, and the sight had surprised him in the same way as the drawings in the sketchbook did now.

     The memory caught. The Weatherman jumped. His tired and broken old heart began to hammer painfully on his old aching ribs and the Weatherman finally registered what he was looking at. Every drawing in the sketchbook was of him.

     Frantically, the Weatherman rifled through the pages, making sure that what he saw was real. It had always been impossible, no one had ever been able to see him for as long as he had been alive! He kept firing through the fine pages until he reached the very last one.

     The last page began a new torrent of tears. One by one, they fell upon the sketchbook's closing leaf, and the Weatherman closed the book and set it down. He was unable to tell whether or not the tears he cried were of joy or sorrow.       

     The final drawing had been of the young woman kissing the snowman.