"Your soul is haunting me and telling me that everything is fine, but I wish I was dead"
- Lana Del Rey
The blue sky was above Taehyung, and he watched the white flowers overhead through lidded eyes. Many of the adults in his life would find it strange that he would just lie on his back in the middle of a meadow and stare at the sky for hours. He had used to be so energetic. But things were different now, he thought that day in the grassy clearing in the woods. Things had been different since the incident in town. And maybe even before that, maybe since his mother died.
Since the incident, a kind of lethargy had filled him. He felt like he was sleepwalking through life. And no matter how many cups of coffee he drank, or how many speeding drives in the truck with all the windows open he took, he couldn't seem to wake up. His head felt like it had some sort of fog in it. When words came out of his mouth, he didn't realize that he was speaking. Somebody was, sure, he could hear it. But he wasn't controlling it, it didn't seem.
Suddenly, there's a faint voice over the sound of the breeze causing tree leaves and branches to crash into each other.
You - Taehyung sat up and looked around. It was a very bright day, even in the forest where bright shafts of light were able to make their way to the pine needle-covered dirt. To him, it felt like a facade. It felt like he needed someone to scream in his face to tell him to wake up.
Taehyung was dreaming, and he couldn't wake up.
You keep hearing someone.
He had thought it was his sister the first time. But then when he went to answer her, she'd looked at him like he was crazy. So it wasn't her voice that was haunting him, but it did sound a lot like her. And yes, he knew it was a voice. Which he also knew was crazy, because there was no one in the area. But it was too specific to be the wind calling through the trees. He knew that sound well enough to know the difference. He had lived with nature his entire life, and he knew her voice. Whatever this voice calling was, it wasn't nature.
"Taehyung-ie," the voice called, and he jumped when the realization of who the voice belonged to hit him like an icy blast.
It was his mother. She was calling to him.
But how? He wondered. She was dead. She was dead, gone, and far, far away from him. Away from him, away from Taeyeon, away from their father and her husband.
"Taehyung," the voice called again.
"Mama?" he cried out, feeling like a child again. "Mama, izzat - is that you?"
"Come on, Taehyung," she said. "I've got something to show you."
He scrambled to his feet and looked around, trying to find her, or at least her shadow in the forest. "Ah - I can't see you."
"You don't have to. Follow the wind."
He sniffled and gasped at the feeling of tears in his eyes. Suddenly, the gaping hole in his heart that had become numb with time seared with pain. He had really, really missed his mother. He hadn't realized how much. But now that she was here somehow, was with him somehow - he savored the loud aching pain his heart held. He wanted to start following her immediately but found he couldn't. Not yet, his feet wouldn't allow him to move. Into the dark forest, Taehyung sobbed loudly. Startled, he tried to cover it up with his hand. She didn't need to hear him cry. She didn't need to know how much her son really needed her.
But he knew when he felt a strong, familiar, comfortable warmth surround him like a blanketed hug, he knew that she had heard. And she wasn't angry.
YOU ARE READING
Butterfly
Fanfiction"Invisible and inevitable, like a butterfly that beats its wings in one corner of the globe and with that single action changes the weather halfway across the world." ― Alice Hoffman ~~ Chou Tsushima is an investigative reporter with excellent train...
