The sunbeams danced off the tree trunks, creating crisp patterns of golden-yellow stripes across the grass. From the edge of the tree skirts, glistening, Tranquil paths of deep blue water trace down the grassland and flood into the waterfall at the end. You can hear the rush of water as it descends on an effortless journey down the stream’s edge. Soft pats of bliss carry around the treetops. To the side of the pond, a newly built dock perches above the water, awaiting company to watch over the water’s ripples. The dock holds two boats. One a deep rose colour, elegantly bopping beside its companion. The other slowly sways away from the dock, following a sparkling reflection in the water ahead. One by one, the boats become seats for the local birds who sit tall and proud, aiming their heads down, beaks dipped slightly towards the prey below. The songs of happiness, written with notes of bird whistles and riffs of the wind’s small presence, engulfed the air with a sweet aroma.
Fire. A strong barrier blocking the exit. The screams too loud to make out. They walk with intention, intention to destroy. As they draw closer to the river, you can hear the tears of the water as they bash into the roughs blocking their way. The smell of dead skin lurks around, choking the treetops with a poisonous hand.
‘’what should we do?’’ her voice cracking with fear; she stumbles to the end of the grassland, their decaying hands nipping at her ankles.
‘’But that wouldn’t help both of us! We both must make it out!’’
The rose boat wonders close to the deck, alone and lost. The golden rays begin to disappear as night slowly pushes its way through the day. The sky glistens, a hue of happiness. A flood of brightness. A sea of delight. It’s an art masterpiece, painted by the clouds and glossed with the still summer-bright sun. Its reflection dispatched on the river below. She hurdles close towards the dock, her oars still in perfect shape. Paradise had never existed until this moment, a beautiful scene hung in a photograph of effortlessness. It was a grey photo, aged as that hope lay long before the present day.
Her hand is gloved with sweat. She’s frightened, frightened of the menacing trees as they sweep through her aching limbs. Lungs struggling. Heart pounding. Her eyes, desperate to reunite with their lost companion. They were still grabbing her ankles, nails digging in, leaving small lines of pain imprinted into her calves. For that small second, she gave up. For that little moment, she let herself slowly sway away from the sense, her eyes following the blinding reflection in the sky ahead. For that small second, she accepts that this may be the last time she sits comfortably beside her companion. A companion she can no longer find. A companion lost to the flood that was them—a companion who had given up as well. The temptation to join her lover is hidden within her need to survive. No. She can’t give up. She won’t.
“Where are you?! You can’t be gone; we must get back to our house.”
The photograph falls from the walls. Thud. It lands on the porch, hitting the rose pot before settling on the welcome mat directly in her view and forcing her attention to it. The flowers in her hands, earlier picked from the bushes, newly protecting the cleansed lagoon, drop as she returns the picture to its spot. The flowers fall onto the planks, the bag securing them gaining splatters of still-wet paint from the dock. She’d been raising them all spring, and they were finally ready to move into their new home, along with the letters she’d been writing since the incident: one of the many habits she had picked up to help herself ‘move on.’
For months now, she had been re-painting the wood, polishing the stones and cleaning the river, erasing any traces of them that were left behind, interlocked in the rocks, tangled in the vines. The one place, however, that she hadn’t got around to, the grave: his grave, the final reminder of the outbreak. She decided to have the grave at the end of the dock, accompanied by the model boats and the occasional sorrows when the nights hung particularly low, an attempt at comfort instead a mocking gesture to remind her that her companion was becoming like a drifting boat, floating away from her memory in the sea of stars above. That thought was comforting because he’d always adored ships and the ocean; he dreamt of staying connected to them forever.
In a way, he got what he wanted.
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