Memories (Of Dreams and Demons)

A Promise Rekindled

I waltz down streets of dark grey, heavy clouds overhead. Large trees lord over me, their wild roots slowly churning up concrete as the years pass.

Argyle is a rough country town, a broken collection of old homes. Its defining structures are a jail, an abattoir and a policy academy.

Vuitton strides ahead, confidently leading the way, as if he's taken this path a thousand times before. About halfway down one of the main roads leading to Argyle's heart, he takes a sudden right turn and vanishes into a large, poorly-maintained park close to the center of the town.

I dart after him, not wanting to lose sight of my guide for a second. We both struggle through overgrown brush, wade through leafy plant litter, and clamber over fallen branches, paled from the constant rays of a rugged sun.

Vuitton leads on to cut through the overgrown half of the park, wild and untrimmed, hiding us both completely from outside eyes. The sickly green, mocking sludge of the school left behind unable to penetrate the nature that surrounds me. The maze of nature untamed forces us to zigzag a path.

Tall trees rise about, an otherworldly pale bone colour, standing guard against the human city beyond the park. Ancient guardians, bold and defiant, refusing to budge. I look up at them in awe.

For an instant it feels as if they too look down at me, in surprise, curiosity, their long, drooping strips of bark wooden waterfalls frozen in time.

"Why this way?" I pant, sticks scratching my arms and face, "we could have walked around."

"Through the middle," is Vuitton's response, "the harder path, away from sight."

The sick green fades away; it becomes nature's beautiful natural hue instead, hiding me, protecting me.

After a solid fifteen minutes of adventuring through an untamed wilderness, we reach the far side of the park. It clears a little, trees more spread out, the grass recently mowed. A solitary, wooden old seat waits for us.

Vuitton hops up in a single motion, with an agility beyond his tiny frame, and looks at me expectantly.

"Sit," he gestures.

I jump up and join him, happy to rest.

"Now we wait," he finishes.

"For what?" I ask.

Vuitton just tilts his head a little and looks at me knowingly, "Naoko."

"You've spoken to her?" I rush out, "she knows we'll be here?"

Vuitton glances about, "you will understand soon enough."

An hour passes: almost the entire length of lunch. I have just under two hours left before having to catch my only bus home. I glance over at Vuitton, my childish impatience coming to the fore, tapping my feet, anxious to see her again. Far more than anxious.

"I guess you have to make a choice," Vuitton says as if reading my mind, "would you risk a world full of trouble for Naoko?"

Without hesitation, I answer: "I would risk it all."

"And if we are waiting here past when your bus leaves?" He asks, "what happens if you miss your bus?"

I am silent a moment, going over the consequences in my head: an angry family, a locked room, lashings and beatings, grounded for at least a month.

"Of course," I say despite it all, "if it means seeing her again. If it means she is.. real."

And with that answer the second hour passes, leaving us just one left until my own bus arrives to take me home. Vuitton sits beside me, swinging his legs back and forth on the seat, watching the human world pass him by.