Leaves in the Wind

Here on the edge of the mountain, the sun sets among wheat fields that are just a golden line on the horizon. Vibrant pinks and purples and fading blues a painted mess around the sun. The city rising up behind the trees, obscuring the little houses behind it. Glittering like misplaced starlight.

We don't speak, but when I look at you, you're looking at me and I see the sunset in your eyes. I don't know what to say, what to feel, but before I can decide you smile and take my hand. Soft hands, strong hands, pianists hands. An anchor in this world that I don't understand.

You turn away, back to the sunset, and so do I. Watching the last rays of light vanish, swallowed up by the emerging stars. I imagine the sun in each and every one them. Not gone, just disguised as something else. Something beautiful and lost among the dark satin of the night. I ache thinking about it, somewhere in my chest. And even in the beauty left in the wake of the parting sun, I long once more for the day. Brilliant, glorious daylight, where no one is lost.

"It's too late to turn back." You say, voice low. It's strange that I do not startle at the suddenness of it. Perhaps I have grown too used to you. "We'll get lost in the trees."

A breeze stirs the leaves behind us, leaving something uncertain and precarious. Something deeper than the danger of the edge before us. There's something here, something frightful but I do not understand it. I cannot even find it. I do not know if it has been following us, or if I brought it within me and my lost memories but I feel it rising slowly. Responding to the call of my fear and doubt. Whispering tendrils gathering where we cannot see.

I look away, wordless. You don't say anything else, and I wonder if you feel it too. But I don't ask. I simply stand there against the shadows, longing for the light. My only comfort your hand and your breath and the certainty of tomorrows daylight.

A Pretty Picture I Found Shortly After Posting