The autumn rushes in
The autumn rushes in, twisting dry leaves off the trees; they twinkle, twinkle, and rustle in the air before they lay wordlessly on the ground.
I sit under a birch tree, looking up. Gold crown of shivering papersheets, slender silver limbs, burnt, and scarred, and beautiful. I breathe softly, so as not to disturb the quiet whispers, silent nods, unsaid goodbyes: See you in the spring, my friend.
Creeping needles prick my arms; it is getting cold.
Bortor looks up in time to see Nike appearing in the thinning undergrowth. Red and yellow maple leaves spin around him as the wind gusts, and Bortor wants to write it, to catch it. Instead he puts the notebook away, and smiles, and waves. His hand aches for the pen.
The hoophead smiles back. “There you are. I was worried where you'd run off to.” He moves to sit next to Bortor.
“You followed my trail.” Nike nods. “Good job. I was trying to be evasive. How did you know where to cross the creek?”
But Nike is staring into the golden crown of the birch, wide eyed, and amazed, and lovely. By the time he breaks off to react (“I'm sorry, what?”) Bortor is hypnotised.
“Nothing,” he breathes, and he wants to reach out and touch Nike's cheek. Instead he fumbles with the notebook. The hoophead notices.
“What's that?” he gestures. Two brown fingers stand out on his hand, two water sausages in the sun's rays, a startling intertwine that Bortor can't get used to. He clears his throat.
“It's… a notebook.” Starting with the obvious. “Where I write down… whatever comes in my head.”
Understanding, Nike shakes a nod. “It's poetry, then.”
Bortor twitches and looks away. The crowd boos, cheers, parts for the words, devouring them with such thirst Bortor didn't think it possible. Secrets are broken and seep into the pavement, colourless, the colour of tears both spilled and unspilled, the colour of dead children.
Nike plucks a blade of grass and twirls it around his finger like a green ring, and when Bortor doesn't reply he says: “Usually I don't write my poems down. They just come and go.”
The crowd disappears, instead there's a cold room of grey stone, a dull ache, and a deep soothing voice that calls him.
It's the only thing he remembers before he truly woke up. Alone. With nothing to grasp on.
“Do you want to read it?”
He almost clamps his hand over his mouth, a jar, an escaping bird, a song no one hears.
Nike looks at him with surprise. “I'd be honoured.”
Bortor makes it a personal test of courage to hand the notebook over. He not-watches Nike as he finds a written-on page and begins to read. His grey eyes flicker: slowly left, snapping right, slowly left, snapping right. The trees rustle as the wind combs them.
Blinking the hoophead turns a few pages until he finds the last one. He reads it, and his eyes flick to Bortor, sizing him up and down before he unties a sweatshirt from around his shoulders and places it into Bortor's lap. It is getting cold.
“Can you pass me a pen?” Nike asks. Curious, Bortor does so. The hoophead places the nib to the paper of his private notebook, and begins writing. In a sense, it's like deflowering, soft and tentative and passionate. Fond.
Beneath my foot the ground gives, the twigs crack, the earth shifts. It's screaming: I am going to die soon.
Nike hesitates. He puts the pen to paper. He lifts it, leaving a dark dot of ink. He gives a bashful smile as he passes the pen back to Bortor. The Brokehoodian doesn't hesitate – he snatches the notebook from Nike's knees and scribbles furiously.
The darkening hour sits still on the wings on moths, through the pale moon. I await the call in the cold, in the death, in the still night. Withdrawn so deep underground that the world is a slur, a blur, a cacophony of ground grinding against ground.
Bugs crawl and sit, and wait, and pray.
It tingles.
It tickles the breath.
The breath of new home awaits in the distance, a promise of new buds, as every year.
As every year.
Bortor takes a while to stare at that last sentence, a bare repetition of his last words, a quiet agreement. He wipes his eyes and changes the subject.
The maple tree has stood tall longer than I have lived. It will stand tall when I die and disappear from this world. Under that tree, a single person will be waiting forever.
His eyes keep getting wet. He didn't mean it to be dark. He glares at his words angrily before Nike pulls the notebook away and takes the pen out of his hand.
I am here now.
Bortor doesn't know how Nike catches his eyes. He can't take that hopeful, achingly tender expression. He fumbles for the notebook, and writes with shaky hand:
like the Moon loves the Sun
before the pen and paper fall out of his hands and he's scrambling mindlessly, and Nike's broad arms gather him up effortlessly.
Like the golden birch trees he keeps shaking. “I've… I've never let anyone read that,” he stutters. His teeth chatter and it has nothing to do with the cold.
“Neither have I,” Nike breathes onto the skin of his head, and the gush of air warms him, down to the marrow of his bones. “On the Neverhood it's very special if you let someone read your poems.” He holds on tighter, and Bortor takes care not to let his chest spikes stab anything. “I'm glad it was with you.”
Startlingly Bortor bursts into tears, sobbing loudly. He gropes for the notebook and his handwriting is a childlike scrawl, quivering curves and running lines,
I'M HAPPY
because he has to make some counterpoint to how violently he's wailing now, and holding on, and realising that right now and right here, under the golden birch tree, he has found him. The one Ceola called… Well. “Your special piece of klay”.
