A Dance of Lies and Sandpaper Hands

by redrogue

Summary:

In times of crisis like this, you restate other facts about yourself. It’s a necessary habit that keeps you sane. Calm.

Your name is John.

You are a millennium old.

You can turn into wind and rest in clouds.

You do not remember many things.

You do, however, remember your father.

 Striking azure meets striking azure; the sky, you notice, mirrors your eyes. Winds caress your body as you drift off from the ground, shooting several feet up in the air. It is rich and cool on your skin, you think, like stored birthday cake on a quaint spring day. Or the windows of a long forgotten, abandoned home- yours.

 Your slender, four-foot hood whips and tails behind you so fluidly, so right, because you no longer remember when it wasn’t practically a part of you. Dew settles in your hair. It cakes your mouth. You twist and turn among the clouds. ‘Dance’, they almost seem to whisper in your ears.

 Dance.

 Dance, little god, dance.

 So you do. (In your mind, a haunting piano refrain introduces you to an audience of none.)

 Leading a partner made of lies, you reminisce. Reminisce about a time when you were not a god of the sky, when you were called simply a boy and not the “Heir of Breath”, when you wore a plain shirt and shorts and not a cyan hood that billowed proudly behind you like a revolutionary flag. When you danced on earth with your father and winds, fine and tender as silk did not claim your skin as their own.

 Oh, how you long for the times when flesh stayed flesh and you could not dissipate into breeze.

 You abruptly end your mockery of a performance. Even as you float still and dumbly, the air is still cool and flawless and nothing like your father’s hands were- a simple fact that taunts you everyday. It plagues your heart and turns it black and void and pitiful as a starless night.

 In times of crisis like this, you restate other facts about yourself. It’s a necessary habit that keeps you sane. Calm.

 Your name is John.

 You are a millennium old (ohhowyouWISHyouwerethirteen againoh how oh HOW-)

 You can turn into wind and rest in clouds.

 You were human once.

 You do not remember many things, including how you became something dubbed as the “Heir of Breath”. “It doesn’t matter,” you reason. “I wouldn’t want to remember such a dreadful thing anyway.”

 You do, however, remember your father, the ashen smell of his pipe,  his sandpaper hands, and how they danced on a piano like you now dance in the sky. How they crafted cake so lovingly for the sole purpose of it melting in your mouth.  

 How, despite all your human imperfections (so stupid sostupidyou are such a stupid FAILURE-) they snagged you from an open, inviting window that led to nothing except a several-foot fall and into his safe arms. They were warm, warm, warm.

 He never stopped telling you he was proud of you after that.

 Or, to be a bit more concise, he never stopped telling you he loved you.

 

Notes:

I wrote this for an English assignment regarding sensory detail and thought a boy who could turn into the breeze would be a good subject.