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This is girl speaking. This jumbled piece of text, is a result of a promise once made. It is the only thing I have worked on today. Finally, it is completed. I am no longer in any debt. 

Now, I should have something to eat. 

"A woman and a man, sheltering in a cabin once lived in, far up the mountain, at the fingertip of the world. They have kept each other company for quite some time now, but rarely utter a word to each other. After all, speaking is unheard of in a place which has turned to silence. And it is not like they had much choice but to travel upwards in fellowship. Naturally neither one of them wanted to go alone. And… everyone else was…

Ever since the sky split and the stars started falling. Their family pictures were the first to turn to ashes. They both used to have someone to hold onto, dragged hands of corpses with them, desperately latching on to parts they had torn apart. Their hearts so full that they had very little left for one another.

Still, despite all of that… 

It all started one autumn morning. The man had been out scouting, just like the day before. He needed it, a routine, something ordinary to distract himself from the extraordinary. The woman had made him aware of the danger of standing still. On their way to the top, she had looked even further up and said: “For each day passing by, there is a piece of the earth giving in, dismantling and rising to glue together the broken above.” He had turned to look back, and to his horrors, she was correct. The landscape was… changing… no… not just changing… it was being erased. His heart pounding. His mind clouded. They had to keep moving. It was the only thing which made any sense. One step after the other. Escaping death, but not the ticking clock. There would come a time with nowhere to go, no ups or downs, no forwards or backwards. The hands which had perfected the cabin decaying along with its walls. They were doomed to the same fate as everyone else, to become an animal running around the post it is tied to. This revelation was unbearable, but his legs remained unaware of it, as they kept carrying him all the way to…

He had stepped in mud, that autumn morning. For a brief instant, all that had mattered was the frustration of having dirtied his boots. Where the rain had fallen from, was not a concern of his. He cursed the soil to the only entity he still remembered. Then, he kept moving to the cliffside, checked how far down he could look, and was relieved to find that it was still quite far. He readied himself to head back, to the woman of painful reminders, but was stopped by an impossibility waiting to be found. In a world obliterating, a flower growing through cracks. One not of this earth, petals shaped like snowflakes. The man was struck by its beauty, so much so that he snapped it from its home and then lifted it up now that it could no longer grow on its own.

Upon his return, the woman had prepared soup from whatever leftovers she could find. The smell from something burnt reeked in his nostrils. Images of children melted together, shrieking in pain, appeared before him so he had rushed to the kitchen. There she stood, staring at the boiling water, hands held over the steam, pondering how long it would take to leave a lasting mark. The man had looked at her, mildly concerned, unsure if he should call for her attention or not. Unable to explain why, perhaps for no other reason than to express helplessness, he had put the flower in her hands. He expected her to drop it or to push him away. But no. Instead, she turned to him, eyes softened, tears breaking out. An act of kindness. It was all she could dream of, all which could give meaning to non-existence. And, like when he had stepped in mud, only one thing seemed to suddenly matter. He had felt this sudden urge to embrace her, keep her from harm’s ways. And his heart, it ached from making room for her. 

Then they looked the other way and went on with their duties. 

The woman never thanked him for that day, but she wrote, a whole lot. Poems. With the help of a pen, old papers and her lacking education, she immortalized the blooming on a rotting earth. Instead of escaping the inevitable, she touched what were yet to succumb to it, remembered all that will be forgotten, and by doing that, altered fate to mean more than just one’s doom. And the man, he became her muse, the one she turned her passion to. His lean figure and unkempt hair, it all became the motif of things she never knew how to say out loud. Sometimes she would show him pieces of her work but turn red and leave if he asked her where she got all her ideas from. He was so amazed by what she could create with the little she got, and he longed for something so simple… to understand her, to know her mind like the dust on his own hands, but he never got to her, never knew how. 

The woman kept on working in her chamber, day in and day out, her body turning to bones. A pile of smeared ink and crumbled papers beside her. Nothing could satisfy her hunger. Sometimes the man would check in on her, but she would cut him short. It worried him a great deal. At night he would listen to her restless movements, neglecting his sleep. She got no joy out of this condition, shrinking herself when she could be running towards the horizon, knowing it one day will near in on her. One may call it a self-induced imprisonment, but it was not like she had any choice. Her mind was set. She had to create. She could not stop. To do so, would be the same as betraying humanity, artists who turned mindless and had their works die before them. As long as the man was standing, she would have purpose.

Or at least, that was what she thought, until one morning. 

The man had knocked on her door. She told him to come in. He carefully stepped in and walked over bowls still full. His eyes, full of fear, but the woman could not make out what had struck him, if it was just her pitiful figure or pale skin dried of its pink. Though, as he opened his mouth, she realized he had not even been looking at her: 

“Today… when I stood at the cliffside… there is nothing down there. There is no down anymore.”

The woman stared at him, too stunned to speak, her pen dropped to the ground.

“The end is close.”

The woman never wrote again after that.

Now, they are sitting together, in front of the fireplace, neither of them finding much beauty by the sight of moving flames. They have shared a meal together, the woman eating far more than the man. And they have exchanged a few words here and there, about the weather, what music they used to listen to and their take on sour candy. They say nothing about the approaching end. They don’t have to. It is dark outside, or maybe… it is just nothingness. Maybe the night ceased before they did. The woman clenches her fists, dreading what she is about to say, but knowing she has to:

“I am dying.”

The man looks at her, startled and instinctively reaching for her hand: “Whatever do you mean? Are you sick?”

“No.”

“Oh, you must still be starving. I can find you some more food.”

“No, it is not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I can feel my soul dying, although my body hasn’t. So, I just know… that it is time for me to go.”

The man struggles to understand, like he so often does: “How can you say that? We barely have any time left already. Why would you shorten it now?”

“That is exactly why. Time is running out and I need to see the little of what’s left. I cannot bear standing here. I just need to go, even if that means going beyond the horizon. Who knows… maybe it won’t even be the end.”

The man is shaking his head in confusion. He refuses to accept what he is hearing. How can any of this be fair, that he will lose his woman before ever embracing her, before learning what it means to miss her touch. To forever have her be a mystery and to never know what it was about that flower which made her cry that day. He moves in closer, wants to run his fingers through her hair, at least once, but she gets up and leaves the room before he gets the chance. 

The woman returns, carrying a bag full of paper. Then she turns it around, and watches as her work is being spread out all over the floor, falling out of order, with nothing to connect the words. The man grasps after the sheets and is struck by a horrible vision of her trying to burn it all. He jumps in front of the fireplace, protecting the pieces of her which she is handling so recklessly. 

“I won’t let you hurt yourself like that!” he exclaims, and the woman looks at him confused.

“Hurt myself?”

“Yes, hurt yourself, by burning down all your hard work.”

The woman’s eyes shut open, offended and hurt all at the same time: “How could you say something like that? Of course, I would never burn you!” 

“Burn me?” The man tilts his head, and looks down at his hands, not sure if they are full of ashes or ink.

“Yes, you! All I ever did, was write for you, make you matter beyond just my heart, turn you into words which could never die. It was all for you! But now… I do not want to do that anymore. I do not know how. Ever since you told me the end is near, writing just made me bitter, resentful… knowing that in our tiny world, there is somehow so many pieces of you and so little of me. I started thinking so many awful things about you. So, I had to stop. If I hadn’t, I would just have tarnished your image with my cruel nature.”

And suddenly, the man who had been begging for conversation with her, has nothing to say. He does not know if he feels anger towards himself for being a fool, or towards her for letting the sun set and still not say anything. All this time, she expressed affection which went ignored, and so did his fondness of her. And now, she thinks the world would be the same without her, but the man knows that could not be further from the truth. For every poem she wrote, he learned to love her a little more, to piece together her fragile heart. She might have been writing for him, but through her words, it will always be her soul speaking. She will always exist in them. If he only knew how to tell her this. 

He takes too long to reply, his sudden cautiousness getting the best of him. She stares at him, eyes he can never forget, and whispers:

“But, at least now, I will have a face you can remember. And… I want to be alive, even after I am gone.”

Then she walks out the door.

The man does not run after her, nor does he beg for her to stay. He remains in the same position she left him, hands clutching onto her scraps. And just like that, he is back to when they first met. Heart pounding. Mind clouded. Unable to utter a word. 

It takes the morning sun to rise, for him to finally get up, to see any reason to. He stumbles towards her chamber, dehydrated and head aching like a bad hangover. Out of habit, he knocks on her door, and waits for her to let him in. He can still hear her voice, beyond just his head. He opens up, and falls in front of her desk, heavily breathing into all which was left unfinished. The flower is still there, laying in a half-empty glass, slowly dying. He should have never picked it up.

Then he sits down, picks up her pen, and starts to draw the features of a woman he never knew. "