seasons

14: aurora

Song: Truly Madly Deeply by Savage Garden

In a small town called Crescent Peak near Canada, Sicily and I made our tempory home after she woke up.

It wasn't much, just a stone cottage-like structure with a backdrop of trees and a narrow road leading to the inner workings of town. 

It didn't feel like home to me.

Home was Bridgeport.

But it really wasn't.

Home was the person Sicily used to be.

I had already accepted that she would be different but her memory lapses still hurt from time to time.

It was like a small pinch on the back of my arm, reminding me that life was still a bit messy.

Sicily's snowy hair pirouetted in the wind like a ballerina on stage as she rode her pastel orange bike alongside my own. 

Our two bodies moved in unison, alongside one another in a picturesque scene of ethereal trees enveloped in leaves of rose and gold. 

The sky was a melted pastel painting of three colors fighting for dominance; lavender conquering both the delicate pink and dandelion yellow but failing to triumph under the rule of a coral master. 

The sun was slipping down the sky lazily; time was slow and peaceful. 

Birds sang sweet melodies and the breeze hugged us tenderly as we moved.

"I want to remember," she calls out, her voice airy yet dark.

I captured a sorrowful gaze from hazel, doe-like eyes that brimmed with iridescent moisture my vision failed to notice at first glance.

I sighed, low and deep, feeling the air tingling my ribs but catching when I saw the distressed look on her face, furrowing her eyebrows and dampening her onyx lashes.

"Sic," I paused and moved my tan hand absent-mindedly through my dark, curly hair, "it's okay, why do you want to remember so badly? Nothing is going to change."

"Em, you don't understand," she snapped, tears still glittering across her face like the stars in the night sky.

"Then make me understand,"I ground out in a frustrated voice, my hands jammed into my paint splattered denim pants, "explain to me how this can hurt you so much. You forgot me. I'm still here. You forgot Cameron, he's still your friend and my brother. You aren't perfect but you never were, and now you're just a little more imperfect. I still love you. I always will."

I shuffled my worn tennis shoe clad feet a fraction deeper into the sea of autumn leaves, losing sight of my feet in the golden red waves. 

A deep breath and then a few moments of silence.

"You know it's frus-," I began, but she cut me off hurriedly, almost afraid to speak.

It seemed like a rather sick game of cat and mouse. Why was she scared of me?

The new Sicily, the one that didn't remember us, resembled a butterfly just breaking out of its cocoon, unsure of the world and intensely mesmerizing to the natural eye. 

She was exhilarating the way fire is; passionate and contagious. 

But she was so, so fragile like a newborn fawn, legs still damp and pathetic. 

She was like a flower in a thunderstorm, rain helped her grow, her petals blooming more beautifully with each drop but failing to hold steady with her tremulous stem in the cruel winds.