Evan sits down under a tree and lets his back rest against the log. The grass is humid, it had rained the day before and the soil didn’t dry yet. The air is crispy and still very damp; perhaps it will rain later on. Again. It wasn’t like that where he comes from, he never felt the cold in his bones and they never hurt because of the humidity. Or so he remembers. Perhaps it’s not even the weather, perhaps it’s just because he spent too much time locked up in a hospital room and now the outside world doesn’t know how to greet him, his body doesn’t know how to react to it. Perhaps that pain is nothing but his body that is starting to live again after a long time.
It could be pleasant if only…
Evan leans back with his head and deeply breathes in. The cold air burns his throat and makes his stomach feel a little funny, like it’s about to churn – he might have run a bit too much – but it’s okay. It’s the first time in months that he feels in control of himself, of his body and mind. At last he’s starting to feel again. It’s been so long he almost forgot how fragile and rough the grass is. He forgot how cold the dew could be sometimes. If he focuses long enough he can feel the stream of life throb underneath his fingers, underneath the earth and spreading for miles and miles in all directions. He feels like he belongs to that stream. He feels like that stream belongs to him.
He laughs a little, quietly, and then opens his eyes and lets the sunlight caress his sweaty face. It’s not warm but it’s not cold either, it’s not as bright as it is supposed to be at that time of the day and that’s when Evan discovers he’s not alone anymore. His smile dies on his lips and his body tenses up, ready to fight or fly.
The stranger is standing in front of him and he’s handing him something wrapped up in pink paper. It’s small, like a thimble. Evan can’t see it properly because the light is projecting weird shadows that are playing with the shape of that tiny object, confusing him. He’s fairly sure that he’s hallucinating. And he’s ready to bolt when his eyes meet a bunch of untamed red curls that reminds him of something. Of someone.
His mind needs a minute to associate that detail to the shape he usually see in the alley at night, before he goes to sleep, the one that he can see from the window of his room. Once it clicks, he finds himself alert and bracing for whatever is about to come his way, but he can’t anticipate. He doesn’t even know if that person standing in front of him actually is that shadow, if it’s real or just one of the ghosts that are following him everywhere, all the time.
The boy in his room told him this person won’t try to kill him but his parents on the other hand taught him that he shouldn’t take candies from the strangers, so he pushes himself up the log and looks for a way out. Cautious, he tries to put as much space between the two bodies as he can. The stranger laughs loudly at that for reasons that go beyond Evan’s understanding.
«Candy? It’s strawberry flavoured.»
His voice is almost mocking, as if that guy read his thoughts and acted accordingly. The spark in his eyes is cheeky but also bright and very much alive; it almost looks like the light is coming from the amber of his iris, like he’s absorbing all the light the Sun is emanating and then releasing it around him. That’s why the day is so pale. Because of the stranger. He stole all the light in the world.
Evan thinks of him as someone he met in the past already, someone whose memory warms his heart.
Weird.
«I hate strawberries.»
The first clear words Evan pronounces after weeks of silence are a big, fat lie. He loves strawberries, he could make a living out of them, he could survive eating them. Strawberries for breakfast, for lunch, for snack time, for dinner. There’s a lot of junk food in his house, courtesy of Yvonne that keeps on buying all the kind of snacks Evan used to love, hoping to fix him. Evan on the other side leaves them there and doesn’t care if they go off, because he’s sure that his unconditional love for strawberries and all the other goods now belongs to the past so there’s no way he’s going to accept that damned candy the stranger is tempting him with.
«Lie,» that guy says. He turns his head on one side and then the other, then gets a grip on the candy and pulls with a swift gesture of his fingers, unwrapping the foil. His muscles tense a little and Evan has to blink a couple of times because it’s unreal.
«I beg your pardon?» Evan should stop the conversation right there and then. He should stand up and leave without turning back to check if the stranger is following him, but he stays instead. He notices how his voice is now scratchy and flat, emptied of any kind of emotion. It doesn’t feel like his voice at all. He notices how his throat burns at every word he’s pronouncing and how fast it’s drying. Evan takes notice of how weird he sounds, how out of place the voice is to him; he used it a lot, back when he was at the hospital, before he shut himself into silence. It was all talks and expressing how one felt, so there has never been the chance to rest it until he left. He’s tired of speaking, he doesn’t have any more words left and that’s why he prefers to keep quiet. Whatever he has to say, it’s not important. It stopped being important long ago.
«I said it’s a lie. You love strawberries. You always did.» And after that, the stranger shrugs and takes the candy in his hand. He turns it in his fingers and Evan notices his nails are dirty. It takes all his goodwill to not curl his lips up in disgust. He’s so focussed on keeping a straight face that he doesn’t realise the stranger is kneeling down and getting closer to him, not until his breath caresses Evan’s hot skins.
Evan lifts his chin and his eyes get caught in a long lost place, far away from where they are now. It’s magical. It’s like the guy can stop the time, hold the moment there just for them to live it a little longer, no matter if it’s days or weeks or months. The fingers of the strangers are pressing on his lips; his mouths parts without his permission and then it starts to move. Evan has barely the time to realise he’s chewing something before the taste of strawberries explodes on his tongue. It’s so strange that Evan is not sure he likes it anymore.
He makes a face, blinks and gets back to earth. To the present moment. He moves away swiftly, scared. He looks at the stranger in the eyes and doesn’t bother to conceal his fear. Evan tries to speak, swallows the candy without really wanting it and pales.
«What did you do?» Evan asks him, in a choked murmur.
«I gave you a strawberry flavoured candy, one of your favourites,» the stranger replies, calmly. «And I did it because you need to hurry up and remember. Find me, because I’ve been waiting for you, and next time I will have forgotten. It will start again and we will need to break this loop once and for all. We will have to win this war, because I have no intention whatsoever of losing you again.» A pause. «And this time, I’ll take you with me to the circus.»
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