Free Dead Awake: The Last Crossing by hades Page A

overcome. We did not have
to work at it very hard. We just enjoyed each other; therefore we
did not have the little upsets that one so often has with a mate.
Nothing in our characters was unrewarding, dull, or insulting to
one another. Nothing was too much to handle. It was the sort of
thing I’d been missing all these years! If only things had been a
little different, I could have asked this girl to marry me right
then, and lived happily ever after. That is how I wanted it to
be... and perhaps things would become different soon, I thought. I
sure longed for that... We both did.
    During this early time of
our courtship, I would sometimes find other notes, or poems,
attached to my door. They came regularly, almost predictably, but I
hardly had any mind to pay much attention to them; except, of
course, to thank them for how eloquently they put into words the
emotions and events I was living through. I would often find a poem
placed on my door on the day when a major event happened; so I
learned to predict when I’d most likely find one. My forecasts were
so accurate that I almost became accustomed or dependent sometimes,
to finding those happy poems.
    Still, as happy as I was,
there was an uneasy place left in my mind for nostalgia. Not that I
missed home so much, to me the island was home now. But it was as
if I had already gone back to the States and was missing Natial.
Never before had I experienced a sense of nostalgia before it
happened. It was as if I was having a premonition of the feeling
itself. Even spending all my time with Noelia didn’t cure this
dread of having to go back. The weight of it remained up until one
night when she took me to the top of some hill where we sat
together, under a tree, speaking of devotion and things that ease
the soul.
    Our conversation made my
heart feel light, and my bad feelings went away. There, on top of
that hill, we pledged our eternal love for one another, saying that
our devotions would endure all tests-until the end of time. We
spoke of how we’d watch the stars, under that same sky, for the
rest of forever and never be apart from one another. That was our
promise to each other.
    In recollection, I recognize
the size of it. Indeed my love for her was genuine and eternal. If
only there could really be a way to be together for the rest of
time... Ah what a thought! Noelia was the answer that I’d been
looking for all these years. She was what I had longed for, to fill
my empty void and comfort me. We had to be united!
    * * *
    Thus it went until one night
when I decided to take a walk alone. I’m not sure why I didn’t
spend that evening with Noelia, since being apart from her seemed
almost inconceivable. I made my way from the village and rested on
a little log near a road of sand. There were maybe three or four
palm trees and a tiny house at an arrow’s distance. The stars that
came out were twinkling on me, as if they were telling me to watch
for something – and then it came, a majestic flight of some unknown
comet on wings.
    It was a bird, but of fire.
I could see its beak and feathers as it flew overhead. I could not
help but see it, for if I had not looked up, the noise of its
flight would have pulled my attention anyway.
    The bird had come from the
east, soaring as high as the most prominent mountain, but so unique
in its features that I could still see them clearly from the
ground. To describe the bird, I could only say that if fire was
used as ink, then fire had painted a bird. So indescribable and
unique was this creature that I could scarcely convince myself that
I wasn’t just imagining it, but actually seeing it before my very
eyes. It was as if lightning itself had cracked its whip when it
approached, for as fast as it had come, the winds of light had
taken it from sight.
    It had come and gone so
quickly that there was no sure way of knowing exactly what it was
I’d seen, except that it was real and alive, a bird of pure fire –
alive, and not screaming