"When you're black and white there's no use hiding in a field of colours," his umber eyes so solemn, "Anthony T. Hincks."
But when Cillian looked at Oliver, he couldn't help but disagree, because to Cillian, Oliver was all the colours o...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The flower that smells the sweetest is shy and lowly William Wordsworth
IV HE'D NEVER BEEN QUITE fond of bouquets. Sometimes he laid awake at night, staying still enough to hear small flowers from the vase on his bedside table fall off and spiral to the ground like transient, self-propelled butterflies.
The cornflowers Oliver gave him had been doing this for the past three nights. The flowers had an almost celestial appearance to them at night, when the moonlight streaming from his window illuminated the membrane-thin petals an incandescent, empyreal blue. Their veins, too, glowed like they were auriferous, yielding tributaries of lunar, liquid gold.
It was only on Mother's Days that bouquets had meant anything to Cillian; when his mother's black eyes—hickory brown in the light—crinkled in a soul deep smile that poured with love and care and beauty. Cillian sat up, suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. It was an unfamiliar memory to him now, one that didn't belong to him, but to another boy that resembled him only in looks; he mourned the loss of that former self. Cillian was crouched on the edge of his bed, bent over his knees with his head in his hands. One couldn't know what Cillian Woulfe was thinking at any one time, but when the dark hued boy glanced to his right at the blue bouquet in his mother's old glass vase, he smiled. Cillian's never been quite fond of bouquets, but, for once, he was fond of this one.
HE EXHALED lazily, the smoke from his lungs mingling with the cold wintry air, as soluble paint dissolved in water. It was morning. He regarded the park before him with lidded eyes. When the trees were denuded and done shedding their tears of scintillating orange and gold in mourning for the warm season, when their naked branches were bare and weary, like an old man extending his hand palm-up, ready to catch the first soft falling flakes, and when the evergreens and dripping pines have transitioned to a shade slightly more seasoned than the one before, then at last, you knew winter was at hand. Such trees lined the perimeters of the park now, like charcoal outlines sketched by a passing artist. Cillian checked his watch again for the time, taking a long drag from his cigarette. In the morning half-light, the grass was casted on by a blackish-green silhouette. The very tips of every blade caught the sun and shimmered with early-hour aurora. And there was still time before his shift started for work.
"Fancy seeing you here," a chipper voice remarked to the right of Cillian, who at the time was sprawled over a park bench. He looked up slowly, mild irritation in the way he raised one eyebrow.
Cillian was surprised to find light-boy standing a short way from him (though he wasn't surprised that he hadn't noticed his approach; he must have spaced out again). He was also exuding an unsurprising amount of lightness. Oliver smiled, glimmering a shade of honey-yellow so intense it rivalled that of the rising sun behind him, which now crested the dark city skyline in an aureate glow. Morning people, Cillian rolled his eyes at the thought.
