[I'm giving you the name to lead you, to ensure your path and to give you shelter. But that's our secret, right Yulius?]~~ his mother words.
At the road of the village center, he stopped. He Pondered the elegance of the stalls which lined its sides. Pondered his village people, then walked while looking straight.
Far behind the road, far behind the village, far behind this continent, behind those mountains a red sun sank -like a mother trying not to wake her infant- the sun moved with care trying not let people notice its existence... Still, what about people who missed their mothers?
Would the sun be a replacement?
If the sun was like a mother...
Then who yearned for their mothers would never let the sun escape their eyes... Just like him, he feared to blink, if he blinked the sun might use that atomic particle of a second to disappear and might never return... Just like his mother.
when those thoughts crossed his mind, with no awareness of his surroundings he was already sitting on the ground, both of his sleepy eyes wide open, showing wide dark pupils, with enough concentration to break a mind. He gazed at his faraway mother as it sank under the mountains leaving only darkness around him...
*clink*
He heard finger-snapping from his side, turned his head, a flame was generated on the finger of a stall owner. The stall owner approached his finger to the torches on his stall upper corners, lit them... Then a little light was generated, the other stall owners followed the action and within few seconds of snapping, the road bloomed.
With enough awareness, he noticed his posture and stood, then continued on his way. Through the way, a voice inside him kept saying
(If arrogance and authority controlled the beings once, what would hold it from controlling twice?)
Also
(If history played with lives once, what would hold it from playing twice?)
Also
(if love overwhelmed the mind once, why wouldn't it overwhelm another time?)
The voice inside him grew eager as he remembered today's tale... until later when the voice clearly stated (It would be pleasant to live such experience.)... his thoughts were so honest.
When the boy thought about that, he slapped himself... then continued on his way, now with an empty mind to tag along.
....
........
A small bat flew above the village and reached its border. It couldn't see, it could only sense… And it sensed a boy, with hot blood, maybe alone… And had the tastiest scent…
The boy known as ruby reached his neighborhood. In front of him were many homes, all had the same design, half egg with one or more windows. His home was in the middle, on its yard sat an old lady with a bowl of porridge between her hands. When ruby entered the yard the old lady stood and said" seems like Mathias story was long today" while offering ruby the bowl of porridge.
"this is today's dinner, it's still hot. enjoy it." included a smile as warm as the porridge she offered...
Ruby took the bowl, bowed for her in respect and waved her goodbye as she went back to her home.
.....
......
behind his back, a night breeze shut his home door. Inside his house dark was elusive and elegant, a sole color painted the whole house leaving nothing to be identified by his human eyes. That was unnecessary though. Because his home had already been engraved into his mind. At his left side, a little kitchen, at his right two adjacent couches, few steps forward there would be a door, behind it a bedroom that had one twin bed, little toilet and a door to the back of the house.
Having nothing to do in the kitchen, he took a spoon from it and entered the bedroom, placed the bowl on the bedside table, climbed the bed, took two stones out of his pocket, knocked them at random places on the wall behind the bed.
*knock*
*knock*
*knock*
Then a candle on the wall flared up enlightening the whole room.
He sat on the bed, stretched his hand to the bedside table, yet did not take the bowl of porridge but pulled the piece of paper that was under it. He gazed at the paper, thought of each word on it and pondered their meaning, then touched the last sentence *I'm not worried about you at all, you are the smartest child I've ever seen, I guess because you are my son.*
Yes, it was a letter, from the sun who never returned... She left two months ago, with no words, just a letter and the memories they both shared. He returned the letter to its place and took the porridge bowl, ate it slowly...
Recently he started eating once a day. He forgot the feeling of hunger, or maybe he never felt hungry, maybe he only wanted to eat just because his mother wanted so. He enjoyed being beside her, feeling the bless of her warmth.
....
When he finished the bowl, looked at the window, lied on the bed, closed his eyes, fell asleep.
****************************
PART2... A DREAMING CHILD
In the village center, he walked with wide steps, with no voice coming out of any part of his body, so silent that he could listen to his own heartbeats. He looked at the ground, tried so hard to ignore the people gazes... Why were they gazing? maybe they wanted him to greet them, to say hi with a wide smile like a normal bright kid...
However, if he greeted them and got laughter as a response. Wouldn't he feel bad?
He didn't think any further, he wanted to hide from those gazes. For him, it felt like what surrounded him was darkness, and throughout this darkness, all kind of eyes appeared.
He held his chest.
His mother told him if this feeling appeared, he needed to relax...
He straightened his back.
Closed his eyes.
Inhaled.
Exhaled.
Opened his eyes.
Ran.
....
In his neighborhood his home was in the middle of houses, he stepped in the yard, knocked on the door twice then entered. Through the kitchen window, sunrays crossed and gave the home decent light. Squeaks sounded from a door. Knowing who was the guest a woman came out of the bedroom leaving a half-opened door behind her. Sun rays reflected on her skin uncovering its milky color. A slightly cool breeze passed through the window and moved the woman's hair to the side, so it could pridefully show its length and jade-green color.
The woman approached him, leaned on her knees, looked at his face. Then held his cheeks with both hands, kissed his forehead, slid her hands to his back and gave him a warm hug.
The currents of warmth her body emitted comforted him.
*Sniff* *sniff*
Was she smelling him? the boy wondered.
when the woman finished her hug, she said these words"thank god you aren't injured anywhere."
then stood and took his hand pulling him toward the table. The woman opened his grip, took the knife off the table.
He observed how the tip of the knife approached his palm. The metallic touch chilled his palm for moments, then the warmth of his own blood overwhelmed the chill… it was small cut but still, he still felt a sting.
The woman returned the knife to its place while leaning on her knees. She approached the palm to her face then smelled the cut for moments.
Salty tears filled up the woman's eyes, flew down her cheeks then fell on his cut and he felt a burn. Still, he stayed silent even though he didn't understand what kind of rituals his mother was doing.
The woman let his hand, at the same moment slipped her arms under his armpits and hugged him, this time with faint whines escaping her lips. Behind her back, he easily saw his cut dripped blood. he thought, what reason could have made his mother cry every time she smelled him?
He brought his palm closer to his nose... and smelled it... strange, where had he smelled this before? It felt so familiar.
He didn't want to think any deeper, his legs were already tired of walking through the village. Nevertheless, the heat her hug gave him, her sweet odor. And mostly, her broke-pitched voice that tenderheartedly uttered words of apology "I'm sorry, I'm sorry". All of these gave him nothing but sleepiness.
He closed his eyes entering a dream world, or maybe...
Exiting it
..........
He didn't want to wake up. He wanted to stay by her side, to feel her love, to touch her kindness.
However,
her voice became the sound of wind through bores of an old house. Her warmth became the coolness of winter. She was really not around, it was really a dream…
His eyes shook twice and opened during the third time. The cracked ceiling appeared to him. He looked at the bedside table, checked his mother letter then left the bed and stretched.
(Shall I take a shower?)
He went and opened the back door, looked outside, snow had already filled the backyard and the village as a whole. He looked beside the door, the firewood sank under a gigantic amount of snow. He dug in, took a pile of wood and moved it to the toilet, returned and did the same until he finished. Later he went to the kitchen, noticed the knife and remembered the dream...
He clearly noticed that the dream was a memory he forgot... However, how did he find that smell familiar... If he recalled correctly, in reality, he didn't feel familiar with that smell, but in the dream of that exact memory, he felt...
That meant he had smelled it sometime after the actual memory, however, he remembered nothing about that.
*Knock* *Knock*
Someone was behind the door, he went and opened it. As he opened the door a breeze went inside chilling his body and a girl's voice entered after "are you fine? You look chilled" a girl asked.
Her hair was as long as her body, actually, some hairs hit the ground. She looked at him with dark-bluish eyes as she added "You look tired"
In fact, he always looked that way, from the day he was born his eyes were swollen, his look was sleepy. From the day he was born he looked like a passive observer who would never participate with anything.
However, (Who is this girl?) he thought.
When the girl noticed that the boy did nothing, she got that he didn't know her so she gave a brief introduction.
"I'm Carolina, the granddaughter of the old woman who gave you dinner last night. I have just finished boiling some eggs for breakfast and thought of sharing some with you" said Carolina offering two eggs on a small plate.
The boy still did nothing.
He thought why he didn't know her, they lived in the same neighborhood in small village consisted of only 300 families. But that wasn't what had to be in his mind right now. Right now he had to thank her, had to say Thank You properly... Still, he couldn't... What if she laughed? He would hate her. He didn't want to feel that way toward her.
He took the plate and bowed slightly expressing his gratitude then straightened his spine again.
Carolina Knew that Ruby had no ability to speak well, and knew why he wasn't brave enough for that, actually she felt regret when she remembered the reason. She laughed at him once, when he tried to say "Can I play along?"... She guessed the meaning and the other children guessed it as well. But what to do? they didn't hear this sentence they heard an un-understandable language, he was like saying blablabla and they couldn't hold the laugh...
"Okay then, I'm returning. Come to my home later, we can play together" However, the boy replied with nothing.
Her shoulders went slightly down as she returned...
...........
...........
On the sofa, he was having his breakfast... He cut the eggs to 4 halves with the knife. then 8 then 16... He splattered little salt upon them and ate one by one.
Five minutes passed, the empty plate and the knife rested on the sofa beside him. He had nothing to do, the outside was freezing. Thus, he stayed at home, just gazing...
gazed
gazed
gazed
He gazed at the atoms of dust floating on the air of his house... tracked the dust particles wherever they went until they hit the wall of mud in front of his sofa... Exactly at a crack in the wall, a crack so fine as if it was pierced by a knife ...
(What is that?)
He stood with the knife in his hand, went to the crack and touched it...
He tried to insert the knife... And it fitted perfectly...
Out of a sudden, he had a thought ( I made this crack, I'm sure... But how?)
He made a crack in the wall... A crack in which their knife could fit perfectly...
Then, when he glimpsed a dusted memory...
his head spun, his body lightened... And he fell on the ground.
***********************
As snow dropped on the kitchen's window, the guestroom was enlighted with few candles.
the situation didn't differentiate to him though. he had already been blindfolded and not even a red-Candlish color entered his range of vision.
his vision could be briefly described as elusive and dark.
He was sitting on her lap... his mother hands were hugging his chest and pulling him close to hers.
he was silent... he only listened to her words...
she said:
"beloved Yuli listen to mammy with care... what do you see?"
"dakh."= dark
"that's so fine! never get confused you are right... it should be darky there." she said, took a deep breath then included" Yuli try to imagine our kitchen knife, and make it soooo sharp! make its tip so thin that it could cut a wall! and its grip of wood... on the wood let few nails exist..."
he listened with care, embodied each word she said in his darkness multiple times till he reached the best result...
then as if she already knew that he had finished... she said: "now imagine this knife to be fired with all your might... not by your hand, just imagine it being released with your most powerful ima..."
she stopped talking when he heard a sound of a blade diving through their wall...
he tried to remove the blindfold but she held his hands... then said,
"Yuli good job..." and included "how about taking a nap for now?"
he gave up resisting her hug, he accepted the currents of warmth coming from her skin to his and fell asleep.
***********************
He woke up in the darkness around him. It seemed the night had already fallen and he missed the old man's tale... unfortunately...
(I remember)... he thought.
(I cut the wall...)
He closed his eyes, embodied his mom's words in details... however when he opened his eyes, there was nothing... nothing happened... his memory didn't repeat itself.
(.... Nah.... )he thought.
He stood, stretched his arms upward then approached the window. Eyeing the snowdrops skating on a poor nearly broken glass had his body chilled.
He remembered to take a hot bath. He walked out and observed the weather, it was cold outside, it also had some breezes. But thankfully that wouldn't prevent a fire from being set.
He returned and checked the firewood...
(Inflammable) he thought.
He took the first pile and moved it outside. Beside the door, a huge bowel that could hold a person within lied upside down. He moved snow away and arranged the firewood in a circle. Then on them, he placed the huge bowel... He entered the house and when he returned a bottle of oil was in his hand.
After moistening the woods with oil he knocked the two stones near them.. once, twice, thrice and ba!! a spark flew to the woods and the woods began firing.
With both hands, he moved snow into the bowel. When he filled the bowel he waited...
..............
after 15 minutes he undressed, grabbed the edges of the bowel with both hands and jumped,
*TRUP*
The water rippled and he felt its heat moving into his boy, he stretched his legs forward and straightened his spine as if he was a back-swimmer.
Minutes passed and his eyelids swiped. He entered his dark world. he took his brushes and drew what crossed his mind... Yes, what crossed it was feelings, warm feelings just like the water he was in.
He remembered when his mother and him bathed together, he used to only stay quiet. He remembered his mother words at that time "I love how quiet and smart you are, but I wish to see you lively for once, you look like an unmotivated old man... Even your father wasn't as lazy as you" he couldn't believe that -at that time- he had giggled to her sentence, he even had hugged her with a big smile on his face... It was one of his many happy moments with his mother.
A sudden sound broke the memory and got his eyes opened. He found a little girl in front of him, The little girl Carolina left a small bowl of porridge on his floating legs "sorry that I disturbed your time, but I was worried when no one opened the front door. Here is your dinner, hope you enjoy it. In case you forgot about me. my name is Carolina your Neighbor".
Throughout her speech, her cheeks reddened and her head steadily moved downward.
But that was only until her speech finished. In fact, afterward her pupils followed his pupils directly, and she noticed a hair slipped in front of ruby's eye. She said, "you did not go to the old man today right?"
He replied with a positive gesture.
"Actually, the old man spent the night knocking people's doors asking about kids that are irrelevant to them... actually, kids who no one knows."
the bathing kid did nothing, and the girl continued.
"but he called your name, and your name was the only one familiar to people. I heard my mom saying that the old man reached his mind limits and was slowly becoming senile... that's sad what do you think?"
The boy shrugged his shoulders with zero responses.
Afterward, the atmosphere got filled with silence and the two kids only gazed at one another, only stared. For a brief amount of time. Until Carolina decided to end the topic with numerous goodbyes and walked back home leaving the boy by himself again.
The boy spent the time eyeing the porridge bowl on his legs...
As always no spoon came with it, he needed to go to the kitchen, take a spoon out and come back.. He eyed his own palm, he saw lots of wrinkles piled up due to spending much time bathing.
(I guess I've finished.)
he placed the porridge bowl on the edge of the bathing bowl, used both grips to jump out of it. And when he got out a breeze passed and chilled him out...
Before putting on his clothes he had foreseen a breezy night... The moon seemed blurry due to cloud traffic and somehow he could feel a bad vibe... At times like this, he wished to find his mother by his side, telling him to go home and prepare the tableware for a warm family dinner. Now, he had to go prepare them for one person...
When he became fully dressed, he walked to the bowel and took the porridge.
...............
...............
AT THAT MOMENT
...............
...............
...............
(at that moment, I might have regretted taking a bath... maybe I regretted even going outside. at that spark of time I wished all of this was part of a dream.... wished all of my life was a dream... at that moment)... A severe hit of wind overthrew him along the bathing bowel and porridge. After tumbling multi times and having bruises all over his back and body, he stood...
With nonchalant to what had happened, he ran toward the wind direction... Both of his eyes wide opened, he could only see a few trees shades. His sight was no more a way to find his path, his nose was what led him ...
why?
The stormy wind didn't just tumble him but also brought up a familiar smell... brought up the smell he had smelled from his cut in that memorial dream.
He tracked the smell, grabbed every branch in his way and walked as hard as he could... the smell was getting stronger!
And he reached the source. The smell came from a pile of snow accumulated in the border of the forest. It was buried under the snow... He dug with his bruised hands, the bruises burnt as if the snow was salt... But he didn't stop...
He felt something within him... he felt that if he knew what the odor was... Lots of things would change... He felt curious!
And he touched the source...
The sensation was disturbing, like touching a pile of semisolid yet filled with liquid material. only the touch got him a headache...
It was strange
It was disturbing
It was disgusting
It had liquid
It had a semisolid-like sensation
It even crumbled with on his palms
It was an animal rotten corpse!
Ruby lunged backward and hit a trunk, headache and nausea exploded within his belly and he threw up his gastral fluids.
(It's the same.) he thought
The scent was the same as the blood's scent from that dream... A smell of rotten flesh. He stood and ran. He tripped by a branch and fell tumbling into the cold snow, with more bruises getting into his body and more blood gushing out... He then could never deny the truth, could never falsify his memory... The clearest proof entered his nostrils... His blood odor was as disturbing as a rotten flesh for sure.
He remained on the snow, was about to faint. Closed his eyes for minutes... Remembered his mother face, Her smile... Her warm hug... her love. Then slowly regained his composure and stood, walked with one hand covering the wound of the other arm's shoulder... He reached his home, entered and fell on the bed.
this time without having his dinner and without reading the letter he fell asleep.