Pink Skies

PART 01

 PART 01

            Sometimes I forget to breathe. And after a few more seconds of that, I come to find that there is a lack of oxygen being heaved into my lungs. Like right now, as I watch the sky fall down in little specks of white.

            The horrible thing about Oregon that nobody seems to understand is that yes, it is hella rainy, and yes, sometimes the temperature drops (barely) to something under freezing, but it is a truly rare occasion that these two factors actually coincide with each other.

            But, as it happens, I had woken up to find the neighbouring houses' roofs painted completely white and no cars on the slope covered in the same white. Seth appears next to me. Recently he had gone through a growth spurt and despite being younger than me by a year, he towers over me, my head just barely reaching his neck as we both press up against the glass, grinning like madmen. His breath fogs up the window.

            "Hell yes," he mutters, jiggling his elbow with mine until it gets so irritating that I jab my elbow into his side. Yelping, he curls into himself, informing me that I am, in fact, the worst sister ever. "I'm going sledding with George, wanna come with?"

            "Nah, that's okay, don't feel like third wheeling today," I smirk at him and Seth rolls his eyes.

            "I don't know why I even try."

            "Farewell, Loverboy."

            "Fuck you."

            "Uh-uh," I wag a finger in his face, which he swats away. "That's George's job, silly boy."

            "Ughaaaah."

                                                                  °°°

            Everybody has their spot, be it a café or room or within someone's arms. Mine, though, is in the forest behind our house. A path had been paved into the green floor from how many feet have walked through and a creek I can hear in the middle of the night from my bedroom runs beside it. In the spring, it's filled with gurgling water and in the fall it's covered in falling brown leaves and in the summer it is nothing more than a pit of marshy land, and in the winter, when it is cold enough, as it is now, it is cloaked in a sheet of ice. We hadn't had a White Christmas this - or last - year, but the first day of the new year's weather had presented the city with the best resolution of all: to be better.

            Across the creek lays a fallen tree trunk and when I cross over it there is a small circle of flat ground that is surrounded by sloped hills, and within the circle is a cherry tree and another, thicker trunk leaned up against one of the slopes. Somebody before had cut two slabs out of the wood, making it a seat. I would come here in the summer to draw, and though the temperature circumstances today hasn't been ideal, the aesthetics of the world has been. But, as I cross the trunk extra carefully as not to trip, I find somebody already occupying the trunk. Correction: my trunk. In all the years I have come here, since we first moved into the neighbourhood five years ago, nobody has ever been here but me.

            The boy is hunched over something in his lap, fiddling with it. I don't realize I am approaching him with no words ready in my mouth until it's too late and he's looking up and I have nothing to say. Under his red and white beanie, his hair as black as the charcoal I draw with falls into startlingly gray eyes. He blinks at me once before mumbling, "There's snow on you," and raising what I now have realized to be a camera to his eyes. In the next second a click goes off into the snow-capped trees and I am now the one blinking.

            "Are you really not one of those girls who hates getting her picture taken? You look like one. Not that I'm complaining." I don't know what to say.

            "I...

His eyebrows raise expectantly.

            "I, uh, I don't really, um. I don't know what to say?" he looks at me before exhaling a laugh and shaking his head, a tiny puff of white bursting out of his mouth like cigarette smoke.

            "I've never seen you here," he says, breathing into his cupped hands and rubbing them together. His nose is adorably pink while the rest of his face is as pale as the snow I stand on.

            "Same for you. Actually, I've never seen anyone here," I respond, bouncing from foot to foot to keep the blood in me from freezing, fingers curling around my sketchbook in my pocket.

            "Don't come here much," the boys shrugs, then steps off the trunk, motioning for me to take the spot he had warmed up for me. The black camera hangs from his neck. He tucks his hands into his coat's pockets and looks at me with furrowed brows, studying me, before doing that exhale laugh again. "But that might change because you look incredible and almost unreal right now. And I think my camera might have a crush on you. Happy New Year, by the way." Then, the boy tips an invisible hat in my direction, crooked grin on his lips, and I find that I've forgotten to breathe again.

// HAPPY NEW YEAR. bc it is officially 2015 (wtf how??) i decided to write a new story and also decided that it would take place today :D i've been wanting to write a winter-y story bc i just really like stories that take place in winter since winter is my favorite and so finally here it is sURPRISE and yes i am still working on candy hearts, don't worry. hopefully i'll finish this story up soon though. thanks for reading!

dedicated to noelle (@hepburnettes) since her work is heavenly. all of em. they're brilliant. 

vote? comment?

-nova. //