12 Days Of Fiction 2016 -4: Wings
From the first moment I saw her, I was dumbstruck. If I feel like an idiot saying it now, I don’t want to imagine what I felt like back then. But of course, it turned out I was right.
I was right.
I wish I hadn’t been. Life would have been easier that way. But no. It’s one of my traits: I always choose the hard path. Not necessarily the wrong one, mind you, but the difficult one. My specialty.
So. I was saying she was perfect. In every way. And I was like a foolish teenager. At my venerable age of thirty whatever. I tried to hide my feelings, but I’m afraid I failed. Utterly.
But you should have seen her! Those lips. Those hips. Some people would see a person they fancy and fixate on some feature or another, but with her… I didn’t know. I could spend hours just staring at her ears, her nose, or her toes.
But her eyes were the giveaway. I was staring at her eyes and noticed it. I realized that those black pits didn’t really belong. They had a depth that went beyond her years. Or the years she seemed to have. It was as if she had lived uncountable lives, and all of them had stayed in her eyes.
There was a power and a light and a fierceness and a fire in her eyes. And inevitably, she caught me staring. And for once, I didn’t look away. Not for lack of trying, but I just couldn’t. Her gaze glued me to my place, and all I could do was wait and see her approach.
Slowly. Like a panther about to pounce.
And everything changed then.
I had always wanted to take pictures of her, but that I didn’t dare. Many times I had my phone in my hand, and I just couldn’t. It didn’t feel right. But now… now I simply asked, and she agreed laughing. It would look weird otherwise.
I used my camera, my Nikon D700. I started taking photographs of her and just couldn’t stop. And she used to laugh and mock my lack of self-control. But then she’d smile and let me take another one.
When I thought she wasn’t looking, I kept snapping photos. She was a natural model. All she needed to do was live, just be there, and I’d get magnificent photographs. It was as if just pointing and shooting was enough. I even used wrong settings occasionally on purpose. Those pics looked as if I had used light effects or as if I had touched them up digitally later, but she? She looked splendid.
Until that one image. On the bridge.
We were walking and I had an idea; I had her sitting on the ground on the bridge, and I moved from one side to the other up and down, keeping her in focus, as I looked for the effect I wanted.
There. The bridge night lights made the perfect shape. I shot.
Wings. The lights made it appear as if she had wings. Angel wings.
But I saw her face in the image. I saw the way she was looking at me. The way her smile had gone.
And I knew. I knew with all certainty, as her gaze penetrated my soul, that once, a whole age ago, she had indeed had wings.
And she had lost them.
Forever.
And I wept. For her, and for me, because now that I knew, I couldn’t unknow. Before, I had hopes. Now?
Now I knew it was impossible.
