Summer Shorts - Anthology

We Don't Fly Away

We Don't Fly Away

by: @LucyGrand    

I asked for nothing in this world but the prosperity of liveliness. I tried to care, help, but I was afraid it'd turned out rather wrong.

My own animation of life failed to adapt the necessity of sketches and colours that painted my sun gold and moon silver; outside the window of the colossal house that I decked in my mind, the fluorescents of the bygone spring flaunted in the mead by the white cliff, overlooking the foreign horizon met with the sea. Amidst the floating white puffs stirred by the wind, was the ether luminesced in the cerulean hue⏤now I think I could be right for that solely.

Because my mother's eyes were the only world that could be fathomed by my prosaic sights.

It reminded me of summer, but spring was my favourite season for it is⏤for me⏤a symbol of regeneration after the frigid and bitter months as trees and flowers gain their energy and give the livelihood to a person like mum.

Yet, summer was mum.

A few people were at the beach fringed by the steep white-cliffs topped with a four-storeys lighthouse, strolling at the shoreline or shaping a castle that would tumble anyway⏤Wednesday, of course, some humans have works to do, otherwise, the hospital would be full of corpses, and the company would never get the chance to top over the world's most prosperous industry⏤by all accounts, it means 'money'.

I watched the woman before me, laying on the blue and crimson striped blanket, staring at the sky as it reflected on her orbs through the wilted eyelids. Her slender fingers waltzed around the flimsy sand, harking to each word I pronounced, speaking of faraway subjects. The sea breathed-forth the air that would be the last time she let in into her eager lungs. And so I thought.

"Look, Finch," mum spoke, her hand raised to the air and gestured at the sky. "It's a finch." Her voice was rough as stone scraped against the lumber.

I turned my head up, brushing my winding hair from my face and fixed my gaze upon a small bird with dull-olive over the plumage flying above us.

"It looks just like you," said mum, softly. "So, wild...and free."

A frown softly creased my brow. I whispered the word, "Wild." I took my camera and captured the motioning bird through the lens. Mumbling, I said, "I don't think I'm wild enough to be a free bird."

"You will. Why wouldn't you?"

I was too busy to actually heed her words that I responded almost absentmindedly, "A finch?"

She hummed.

"But how can I fly as a human?" I adjusted the lens of the camera, trailing the greenfinch around the beach. "We walk, only souls fly⏤to heaven, of course. Well, depends on how many sins you've caused." My shoulder tensed immediately after I said that. My heart skipped a beat, thus, I lost the finch as it flew passed us and into the treed-hills behind.

I turned my eyes to her.

She looked calm, as though my words didn't affect her. Did I say it?

"You're not going," I said, the wind carried my voice. "It's alright. Next treatment, you're going to be alright. It'll stop."

"Seagulls," was all she said, turning the subject away. "They're flying away."

Stop.

Rewind.

Rewind...