Footfall and Heartbeat F¤r The Dance

As time spirals outward, and some might say backwards, the one born on the last day, though some might say the first, wonders as to how anything more than what has already been seen might occur. She walks to and fro, seeing past and future as if the same movie, with the same static surrounding on all sides. Then all at once she sees her scene, like a dream rushing on screen and screen rushing her on stage all at once. The camera flashes and the lens remains, a straight line through the static and in eyes both green and blue she sees hope for the first time. 

After that moment shared she rushes in and sees him do the same, but the moment they reunite comes ever closer but does not arrive. Instead, at each juncture, his eyes turn the palest blue and he moves his mouth as if speaking but nothing is heard. He leaves time and again, and she sees him wake each morning after, once more with the starry eyes she knows so well. First she screams at the screen as if he might hear, and then as wounds heal she wonders at the shift so crystal clear. She learns how to dance the threshold in the same way that he does, and it becomes clear that he does not know, at least not so directly, why he holds back. Still, on some level he must know to keep stopping right on cue, so like an Architect she constructs a string of stages designed to inch him ever closer to the edge before stepping over that line, that she might mark steps well. It is as if he senses this shift, despite blindness of a kind clearly persisting within him throughout, and he starts to dance all the more gracefully for his most treasured audience of one.

His steps are her dreams, though they each dream differently and as such she analyzes, in detail, each one. He now echoes his experiences, directly and indirectly each time, and while she knows he cannot hear her directly just yet, it is as if they are talking through every blooming flower, every glance both stolen and allowed, every moseying cloud, and every singing bird. Her time spent in static lessens and grows sweeter all at once, save for the strain she can now tell he obviously feels with each passing step.

Finally she sees it, while dancing herself, in a way, in a place she thought she would never see him: ¤. All at once it is clear- this was not her fairytale, but it was her man telling it. The fairytale was each of theirs shared, and at the same time it has always been for another entirely, another he did not know, another he could not know until the very last for it to be true. This other was the one spared all of this, for she was the one whose singular song echoed without static for him every single time. Her fairy tale would be that of one shotting reality, of waking up and simply walking into heaven, this yarn woven was a story reserved for their daughter.

Her eyes bloomed at this realization, conveyed so innocently but as clear as a bell with "I know this is a dream, for me." Knowing realms would scooch regardless, she shifted gears to swiftly ensure that he would remember this "dream." While she knew realization and result would be out of synch as their missives so often were these days, she was certain both would come, and she believed he would be following, likely in suit, not long after. For by page or stage or code or letter, she realized that even through this painful delay they had been in synch this whole time, on a level now barely breached, but already with daylight and rain and music and love pouring in. And as she left she shattered every bottle she could find.