Reflection

This story is by Rebecca Nemorin and was part of our 2018 Summer Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

She looked up. Against the silvery sky the buildings were firmly erecting their walls of Scottish rocky sandstones. It was as if they wanted to guard her against the world. Behind, people were flocking, minding their own business, carefully ignoring her. She sighed, and her sigh felt like a powerful blast that blasted the before. But the passers-by were unaware of it. Utterly deaf to her life. –

She did not know what to do anymore: she had not been this far, this free, for such a long time. –

A panic sewed into her heart threads of fears. But, at the same time, she felt happy. Unusually happy. The kind of happy that hurts. The kind that seizes one’s insides and makes one feel sick, because these kinds of happy mean “beginnings”. And she felt happy. –

She stopped. Just there: her, trapped into the glass of the antique shop, her figure blurred by the traces of gold-like dust the sunbeams delicately mirrored. The reflected sun was timidly making its way through the cumulus. The same kind of sun was there the day they kissed. –

The wood framing the window reminded her of her childhood home’s stately front door. The one that had always been so hard to close. She remembered feeling so safe when it finally closed. She remembered feeling so proud the day she closed it for the first time… So lonely the day she closed it for the last. –

She paused: an intricate interlock of grass and leaves was somehow creating a ship. It reminded her of the boat she took to come here. “The Atonement” it was called. Seemed like an irony from the Heavens. She smiled, and her smile had the shadowy glare of the redeemed ones. –

She looked up again. Surprisingly, she felt protected under the cushion-like clouds carpeting the sky. They were fluffy reminders of these cold days spent hidden in the folds of her duvet. She would listen to the rain outside knocking at her window like a jealous husband. She would open it and get its wet blessing and then, faithlessly get sick. –

The seagulls were dancing with the sky. They quietly formed a strange and fierce ballet of black shadows. She gazed back at her in the glass. She felt so estranged. She had wanted to live. She had wanted to leave. And, one day she had left. And this day she had closed the door and left everything behind: her family, her friends, her settled life, her heart, herself. She looked back at the reflection standing in front of her like an old enemy. And then, she saw her. She recognized her thin gracile hands, she smelled her enchanting lilac fragrance. She could nearly feel her hips touching hers… Mercilessly, the shivers seized her. She gasped for breath. –

She remembered the day her perfume dimed away. She remembered how she looked the day she chose to make it dime away. She remembered the day she had not chosen her when she should have chosen her perfume, her eyes, her hands, her lips, her neck, her laugh, her hair. She remembered how hurt she was to see how hurt her eyes looked. She remembered how her eyes stopped seeing her. And, also, how she became a mere shadow of herself. –

She could hear the songs of the waves, hopefully crashing against the bow. She could hear her heart stopping beating because she had sealed it with the wrong words. And she could hear her silence because she had been weak. Again, she saw the new faces she had met after: the ones of those who did not know anything about her, who did not care about her. Who gave her a chance to start from scratch and saved, no, redeemed her for she had committed the sin of being herself, of loving another “her” somewhere herself and loving “her” was not allowed. –

The breeze softly caressed her neck. Like her thin gracile fingers used to. And, at this moment, it felt like she was here with her. And she wanted to find her peace back in her arms. She was dying to hear her crystal-like voice, and to taste her lips against hers one more time. Her heart wrenched. She felt it painfully beating, pumping the blood and she suddenly realized that she was feeling the pain of breathing an air they did not share. She had given up a life and trade it for something new. She wanted to stop thinking about it though. But it was too late. She wanted the wound to heal. The beginning to happen. –

She looked up. The seagulls were dancing away from her, leaving her to the glass and her reflection. She could not smell her perfume: it had fade away in the shadows of the memories. She sighed. The sun timidly, made its way through the clouds. Up there, the seagulls were crying for Freedom. –

She took a deep breath and then, walked away. It was too late and yet, early enough. –

Within the frame of the antique shop, the golden dust was reflecting the disappearance of a girl who had grown into a woman. –