Solitude. Long years during which you struggle with the wind, listen to the rain, gaze at the stars, cherish the warm days, and curse the cold. Where you don't care about momentary gossip. The moment has ceased to matter, because you've lived alone for so many years. You watch the world, the people passing by, and simply exist.
**
Autumn has passed, winter is passing. Soon the leaves will return to the temporarily dormant trees. As if they, too, were merely sleeping, curled up in the branches of all those old—for most people—but really young trees. Now everything is so monotonous. Beautiful and dormant. Bathed in white fluff.
The rays have finally broken through the veil of clouds, warming the frozen plants while simultaneously killing so many defenseless petals, which in your mind you've often called winter sakura.
She walked silently over the autumn leaves, now she walks without leaving any trace on the glistening snow, nor will anyone notice when she walks across the surface of the water. She walked thoughtfully, searching. She saw much on her journey, found things people search for years. And yet she continued walking. Sad because she couldn't find what was most important to her. Lonely because no one accompanied her.
She hid her eyes in the strands of her long hair. Not always, because very few were fortunate or unfortunate enough to see and recognize her. However, she preferred not to irritate those random onlookers with her gaze. With irises that changed color throughout the day and the year. Yet they always remained dark. Most often cold and sad, but not always.
She hung like a ghost over the city, yet stood among the people. She saw their worried faces. She looked at the streets full of jostling people, at the cats, no less lonely than she, at the sad old woman who had to take the long way home simply because she was afraid to cross the street, at the woman dying in a dark alley... The place where she stopped was unique, the very center of the city's pentagram, unconsciously composed of streets, yet quite consciously preserved by one of the greatest secrets of this country, hidden a few buildings from where she herself was. A secret that had lived for a long time, had seen much, and written. She wrote incomprehensible texts, yet she wrote for the people of the future, and with those of the present, she read what had been written by her ancestors in the language of that time, the world of that time.
However, she didn't stay to observe this city teeming with the sad illusion of life; she took another step, or as others claim, disappeared and reappeared in a completely different place. She ran across the lake, through the wilderness, and landed in the desert.
Somewhere on the horizon, a caravan was moving. Half the people there had already had their premonitions. They saw the city, they saw it as it truly was, a few hundred kilometers away. And from her, probably an eternity, maybe even more.
She walked across the sand, gazing at the stars, seeking warmth in their light. She didn't look back, because she knew perfectly well what she would find there. An emptiness from which a voice called. A voice she hated.
She left no traces, for which she sometimes cursed herself. She never knew if she wouldn't sometimes start walking in circles. She maintained her balance—her legs didn't ache from walking, she didn't fall, she didn't fall into the water unintentionally, and she didn't drown in the sand.
She had been sent, or rather, she had sent herself, to find what she loved, something she knew nothing about. It was such a difficult and impossible task that it took an eternity. But an eternity so varied by people, sometimes amusing, other times utterly painful.
She didn't get lost this time; she found herself in the forest. In her mind, she saw all the wars that had officially taken place here, as well as the assassinations. She preferred not to look at the ground, because even though it was covered in moss and other plants, she would have seen every person who had fallen there from exhaustion or from a blow. Lights reappeared on the horizon, but it wasn't the uniform light cast by a lightbulb or other electrical marvel. This was no longer the era she had been in. Now she saw candles flickering faintly in the windows, the quiet flames of campfires by forest tents. She saw good girls gossiping while sitting on a plank bench. In the summer, they sang together on that same bench. She saw a father shouting at his son, who couldn't understand the meaning of mathematical magic. She heard a gust of wind and an approaching storm.
She loved storms. Such an unpredictable phenomenon. Just like the people she saw along the way. She looked up at the sky, slowly covered by a blanket of darkness. She had hoped to see a beautiful spectacle with music wonderfully composed by nature. And she did. She saw it, but she didn't feel the torrents of rain falling on her... She closed her eyes to hear more.
At dawn, the sky was clear, birds, delighted by the peace, sang in the parks. People ran to the closing doors of buses or disappeared through the doors of tenement houses and skyscrapers. Children slowly emerged into the street, some joyful, others with expressions of despair and fear. She stood again between the streets of the big city. On the roof of a skyscraper. She wasn't afraid to fall; she would have stopped before the sidewalk. She jumped onto the lower buildings. On the tenement houses. She climbed from the roof into one. She came upon a group of people joking and happy. One of them saw her. He was speechless. He never finished telling his joke afterward. He always ended with the same word, which was also the first word and contributed nothing beyond—if such a word existed—the very meaning of the joke. He remembered her figure, her strange robe, and the glow that enveloped her. The darkness he saw in her eyes terrified him even many years later...
Moments later, she found herself among the trees again, but this time it wasn't a peaceful forest. It was a forest on fire. The sky was completely dark with billowing smoke and clouds of birds fleeing their fate. She saw tongues of furious flames engulfing tree after tree, branches so defenseless. The force of the element didn't frighten her. She had seen worse cataclysms. She wasn't afraid of the flames approaching her body. The flames didn't shatter anything from her tears either. And no wonder. Fire was a force here, and she was an inconvenient obstacle, an obstacle indestructible, only to be avoided.
The forest burned... A village was built there. Many years later, one of the most beautiful cities grew there. It survived for a while, then perished. It died a death no less tragic than the forest. Yet before death came to the city, it could walk on it. Or perhaps it had to?
She passed metallically gleaming sidewalks. She passed groups of people dressed in dark clothes. She saw exhaustion and routine in their eyes. So clearly it was unreal. Every second person was talking, discussing, whether on a cell phone or in a communication notebook. She looked at children accustomed to this world. To a world where love dies a natural death. Where adult life begins in childhood and becomes childish in old age.
She closed her eyes, unable to bear the sight. Time sped up again. She didn't know which way... Whether she would see the sun sinking again or emerging from behind the sea of land. As time slowed, she still didn't open her eyes. Suddenly, she felt a lack of time around her. It neither sped up nor slowed down. It simply vanished. Dissolved. Time didn't exist, nor did life. She knew that if only someone were there, they would see her. They would see everything she was destined to see. But there was no one.
Fields of crosses. Branches, broken into pieces, driven into the ground. A terrifying sight stretching to the horizon. A dark dome of clear sky, devoid of even the faintest star. The absence of the moon was strangely obvious. Darkness. Yet so distinct that every detail, every twig, was visible. The ground was still covered with remnants of grass. It wasn't withered, much less lush and green. She looked as if overwhelmed by the sight of the large, battered branches towering over her.
Signs and symbols were carved into the branches. Some were lightly etched, others as if they had been repeatedly touched. She walked without her feet touching the grass. She stopped at one of the crosses. She couldn't find a single mark on the branch. Instead, a ruined candle stood on the ground. There was no wax left, and the flame, though it had no reason to exist, continued to burn. Quietly, restlessly, providing a momentary fading light.
The death of the world that existed... The last illusion of living existence... Life is a sad illusion. Someone once said so.
She... Alone, lost. She existed even though she had no right to exist. She lived even though there was no life. She ruled time even though time didn't exist. Was she the last one... Or the last one, endowed with delusions so realistic... Or did she live a simple living illusion, when in truth, time never existed, nor did destiny. If it didn't exist, she always had to be here. Here to exist and know it. And that wasn't the case either.
Now she would stay here. Without time, she wouldn't disappear, without destiny, she would have to shape her life with loneliness. She knew so many secrets, wandering in the darkness, catching branches. Always and still she existed.
Her wings hidden in the darkness of her invisible shadow. Her gaze concealed a secret she couldn't reach on her own. For how could she look directly into her own eyes? The world of darkness was beautiful, just as the world of living illusion was beautiful. Just as beautiful were the thoughts of life and existence.
***
The world was looking for victims, now it's looking for the guilty. In this tragic world, there will be no respect... There is the illusion of existence... There are dying thoughts... Love, hate... and loneliness.
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