troubled waters (FierroChase AU)

twelve

Birds singing were what woke Magnus up. It sounded like a cliché, like something not possible in a big city in America, but it was true. Whirled up by yesterday's events he had forgotten to set his alarm back up after Sunday, and he had a light sleep in general, so that those beautiful sounds were the first thing that he heard waking up. He had wondered for some time, how he did not hear the cars that were certainly passing already right down the street, but they were rare in this street, what a joy, what fulfilment! Magnus had always been bound to nature, and here he had the chance to actively experience it in at least this tiny domain of his days, that is waking up. And what is better than hearing whistles and chants, a diverse and odd kind of harmony reaching the ear, bringing back memories, opening the mind and soul up early in the morning. It was peace he felt when this happened, and he was grateful every single time.

He took a moment, now fully awake and aware of his surroundings and his thoughts, just laying in bed, listening. There were single rays of sunlight passing through space between the curtains, forming a strangely shaped ensemble of light and shadow, on the floor, going up the walls. It was an ordinary play of lights, countless people must have seen it, some ignorant of its beauty, others lightly appreciative, thirds just angry about the incomplete darkness their curtains provided. Magnus had some sort of romantic touch to the world. He saw things everybody saw, everybody took for granted and ignored in some way or another, and Magnus was conscious of them.

He would breathe in the fresh, sharp and cold January air and he would feel the flavour of a season, of time and of change flow into his lungs, establishing associations, feelings and emotions, moving and touching something in his interior. He had a connection to his environment when he touched a tree in the park or heard the sounds of bees in summer, when his feet crushed October's fallen brown leaves, when he tasted the sea breeze blowing against his face in the port of Boston. He experienced deep impressions of nature, he lived through them.

He was not conscious of him being special in any such kind of way. He just acted the way he did, breathed, tasted, saw and heard, touched and was touched by his surroundings, to awaken something inside his soul, to solace and to caress it, to make it live. He romanticised and poeticised what he felt, he expressed the very contents of his soul when he was writing or playing. This was the purpose of his life, ever had been, since he had acquired the possibility to live that way, freely. It was deep inside him, in his DNA, or his soul, or a hidden consciousness, it was all there, as if experience, expression and creation were his very destiny.

Lying there, listening and observing, as the rays slowly moved a little, when the sun journeyed up into the sky, he let his thoughts wander. It wasn't long before they got back to yesterday's exciting, beautiful yet disastrous evening. Before they got back to that Alex. What familiarity laid in that word already, what force, what fear. It had become important in a vital, in a lyrical way, Magnus felt without understanding. That name meant something to him, without that he knew what exactly, without a glimpse on what his heart contained of storms and waves and lightning right now.

It had been so awkward, and then so good, and something he had said, something, had led to her ending it, upset and angry, leaving a mess of a Magnus behind. He had stayed down there for at least an hour, staring at the sky, wondering what he had done wrong. He continued to do so, now that he was awake again. He just could not understand it. What led you to it? What was wrong with asking that? There had to be some background story Magnus obviously was not aware of. It made him sick how easily this nice atmosphere, the time they were sharing, getting to know each other, had been disrupted by one imprudent question. But then again, how could he have possibly known? These interior questions and doubts, not far from actually blaming Magnus of being socially incompetent, destroying any young root of possible friendship, disrupted his inner peace. He thought and thought and did not come to a result, for there was nothing he could blame himself for.

He tried to stop thinking about these questions repeating themselves, tried to come back to life, metaphorically speaking, to break free from the dungeon of his own thoughts, making him anxious and unhappy, bending him, oppressing him. He stood up, finally, slowly walking to his kitchen, still a bit shaken, though he had slept well and was now calm and fully rested. While casting a glance at the red digital figures on his stove, he realised that it still was not late. 7:23am, the birds had woken him just in time. He would have an hour of calmness, before heading out for college. He made coffee, and while waiting for the machine to give him the signal, he was staring out of the window, his cup in one hand, the other one put on the window ledge. He was on street level, but there were no cars driving right now. What joy! On the other side of the street, there was the park already, extending far in lanes and trees and little ponds, and so much grass, so much green.

It made Magnus dream, dream about hikes with his mother, about the view from a hill they had climbed, or a mountaintop in the Appalachians they had once reached. He felt invincible, invisible, almighty. He would stand there, on top of the world, and feel free, imagining how he'd start to fly and go on and on, crossing borders and roads and rails, just flying, breathing in the smell of the clouds, talking to the birds. Sometimes, he would go on like this, going from one village to another, to little towns, to bigger ones, finally flying through the sky of Boston, looking down at the millions of people everywhere, everyone of them pursuing some kind of purpose, dreaming their dreams, living their life, having their little goals and their big ambitions, feeling love, sadness, joy and anger, none of them noticing Magnus. He was alone up there, and at some point, sensing the ocean, he would turn around and fly back, all the way to the mountains, where he would see his mother, at first far away, then coming nearer and nearer, like a point, that is suddenly being multiplied with each second, and he would soon recognize her face, then the colour of her eyes and her nose, and the shape of her ears, and in the next second, he would stand next to her and realize that he had never let her hand loose, that she had been with him all the time. He would turn to her, standing tall next to his childly figure, and he would hug her.

It was the magic of nature, of mountains, the magic that only his mother owned and had transferred to him, so that he would always remember her and be happy and sad at the same time, crying silently, without knowing if he was crying of pain or of joy or of both, this beautiful were his memories and his dreams. Sometimes they were mixing and changing, and he was confusing one with the other. At other times, he only saw his mother's face in front of him, glowing with some kind of interior light, that seemed to come out of her mouth and lips when she smiled, and in these visions, she always smiled at Magnus.

He scented the coffee, the aroma growing stronger and stronger with the time, disrupting his bond to past times, to memories and dreams, to his mother, bringing him back to the present. He infused the coffee in his cup, tasted the hot liquid cautiously, rejoiced at the thought of the black magic flowing through his mind and body so soon. He was an addict. Coffee determined his life; it was a force he just could not neglect. The view of the park's trees, the taste of coffee in his mouth, a pen in his hand, the cold wooden surface, a bit rough, pleasantly tickling his palm, he was ready for a morning as he liked it. The pen started moving as if it was autonomous, some sorcery originating deep in Magnus' heart; soon there were beautiful curved and straight lines on the paper, some circles and triangles, geometric figures that joined to letters, to words, to sentences, which Magnus combined to a beautiful poem about mornings and life and being torn between memory, hope and loneliness. He glanced on the paper, then looked through the window, holding the pen in his hand touching his lips at times, putting it away, drinking of his coffee, in changing poses, with flowing poetry and flowing time.

First AN: I don't know if you guys read until this part of the chapter, but if you did I would love to hear your opinion on whether I should place my own (unpublished or unwritten) poetry in some places of this book, so that when Magnus writes, there are actually poems to read for you. Naturally, I can follow the plot and write about subjects fitting into the story, I just don't think my own poetry matches the quality of the one I'm attributing to Magnus. So yeah, please tell me your opinion on this question! Thanks for reading this far!!