Yearning

What I wrote up for the "yearning" assignment. I was sitting at my computer wondering when how to start when this song played... and it kind of spiraled from there. Heavily influenced by the game Narcissu. Warning: sad ahead.

Gray skies again. She looks, skyward – as if her eyes could penetrate the clouds, pierce the canvas of dull gray that stretched from horizon to horizon, force the clouds to part to reveal that dazzling shade of blue. She waits, a forlorn figure in the desolate wastelands of this world, amidst endless gray in gray.

But it wasn’t always this way. Those radiant days…

And then, the heavens open and rain pours down. Unending rain, she thinks to herself, the colorless tears of a world without life. And so she turns to her sole possession, the tiny notebook that is her only measure of time. Srik. And there were 121.

He was smiling at me. With such beautiful blue eyes…

121 marks. 121 days since the world lost all color. 121 days since the world ended, and only she was forgotten and left behind as the rest of the world moved on, passed from this painful reality. A solitary girl in a desolate wasteland barren of life, color… everything and anything precious to her. 121 days since she died and left only a physical shell on this barren land, denied life, denied companionship.

Those beautiful days, when I thought I wanted nothing ever anymore…

She thinks back to the smiles, to the loving arms that once embraced her, those brilliant ocean-blue eyes she could lose herself in for hours, days. She thinks of those sky-blue dahlias she once raised, the bright splotch of blue amidst her garden, the flowers she had tended to with the utmost care, for they were her precious children. She thinks back to azure skies, the infinite canvas of brilliant blue that painted the heavens, the lush smells of well-kept grass and flowers, the sound of wind whistling and birds chirping. She thinks back to days full of life and color, and dreams of endless blue and birdsong.

Now, all I want is to have those days back, those days full of life and color…

And in this world of rusted gray, of mercurial skies and monochrome fragments of a reality shattered, she yearns for the life that was, the azure shades of the now forever-gone sky, replaced by a gray imitation that is cruel in its falsity. She yearns for blue, for color, for sound, for companionship, for life, for the past that once was.

Is this life worth living…?

121 marks. She looks at the notebook, and then gently sets it down on a rusted metal table. It shouldn’t have taken her this long to reach this conclusion, to reach this resolution, but it did. This purposeless existence cannot continue, she thinks. She now has but a singular purpose – something to do before she finally departs this world, a purpose that overcomes her cowardice, her fear, her hesitance. So she braves herself, hands clutching at her dirtied scarf, once vibrant blue but now reduced to tattered gray and steps into the rain.

It burns. It burns so much. Pain. It’s so painful…

She walks away from the sheltered caves of rusted steel, the wrecked junkyard of broken steel and dreams, into the rain. Her tattered garments do little to protect her from the killing rain, the burning liquid that splashes upon her skin, blossoms of searing pain that almost drives her to her knees in agony.

It hurts so much. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

But she walks on anyways, through the rusted world of groaning steel and shattered stone, empty of color and life. There is no protection from the rain on her chosen route, nothing to shield her, nothing to hide her, nothing to protect her. Her vision blurs as rain falls into her bang-covered eyes, and the monochrome world becomes nothing more than gradients of black and white.

But… I want to see…it…one more time…

She walks for what seems like an eternity, an eternity filled of nothing but pain and pain and pain, seeing nothing but black and gray and white. But she drives herself forward, propels her legs with nothing but force of will, because her mind and heart have long moved on, driven away by pain, and it’s all she has left. She doesn’t know when her legs finally give out, her indomitable will finally conquered by unrelenting pain, but she’s just so tired. Her eyes droop, and it takes Herculean effort to open them one last time, to fulfill that final dream.

Such…beautiful…blue…flowers…

Yes, I made myself very sad. T.T