[ quotient (revisited) ]

An alternate take on the basis of a previous story, re-written for an English essay.

When the dreams break, his eyes open, seeing strips of pale, cold sunlight cut through the air from the East. It's strange, seeing the sunrise when he wakes up. His old window saw only the Western lights; the glory of sunset and the ashen dark that follows it. He prefers the sunset, for the most part. In the night, there is solace. When it finally rains and the droplets create tiny shimmering pictures against the velvet dark, he can let himself think. He can dream up all sorts of things to push real life away. Child-like. Sometimes the whole world speaks to him, and he doesn't understand, but there are many things he doesn't understand these days and he wants to go back to that beautiful lack of responsibility, the years where he wasn't expected to care about anything. Is this what growing up feels like? If it is, he doesn't like it at all. Not one bit.

He unintentionally focuses on the pounding feeling that nestles in the middle of his skull, beating the waking brain, trying to force it to surrender to the illusionary comfort of sleep once more. But he's given in three times throughout the night and early morning, and he is not prepared to do it again, so he rises, sighing in dismay at the cold that has clogged his nose and head, for it refuses to go. It is either the third or fourth day of the bug's torture - he can't remember, but he just wants it to go away and let him get better. Maybe it's the new house. Maybe it carries little pockets of bad air like Mother used to talk about, and he breathed it in and got sick.

When he slips past the metal rungs of the ladders that lead up to the attic, unnoticed, his eyes fall upon another bedroom door. Not his own, no, but his mother's. Immediately, he is reminded of a time where his father would sleep in there, too - but back then, the door was a deep, furnished brown. The room itself carried the scent of Zanzibar spices and, when Father had been drinking, the bustle of Bombay. He misses that. He hated it back then, but he misses it now.

For a long time he stares at the new bedroom door, a pale, melancholy blue colour with areas that are slightly chipped. The dull black doorknob is still broken. No-one's bothered to fix it after it loosened for the second time. What would the point be, really? It still functions fairly well. The door still opens and, more importantly, it still closes as well. If it didn't close, they'd have to get it fixed. Mother can't handle lack of solitude; she needs her space, time, her own thoughts. Yet at the same time, she becomes lonely; draws into herself, becomes a bland shadow of the vivid flamboyance that usually exudes from her wherever she treads. Lonely, and seeks solitude. Does Mother enjoy pain? She's always said she hates it. What is real, truthful, and what is not? The boy doesn't know - but then, lately he's started to think he doesn't know much of anything.

It's been one minute and seven seconds since he stopped to look at her own door, but he doesn't know that - he wasn't counting. Eventually he opens it, looking into the room that doesn't feel like his mother's right now, because Father isn't in there with her, and up until just a few weeks ago, he was always there with her until the alarm clock went off. But Mother is still there, curled into a fetal ball amongst the sickeningly bright red sheets. She looks lonely. The boy's delicate features crease into a saddened frown. She never looked that way whilst wrapped in Father's arms.

He shuts the door after him, quiet, little child-like foot-patter on the wooden floor. The old floor was carpeted. Nothing will make him like this new house - he wants the old one back, the one that holds his childhood memories, the one with happy Mother and happy Father despite the drunken arguements, the one with pregnant Mother and the family's excitement over a new baby. The house that they lived in before the miscarriage and before the divorce.

Softly, he clambers onto the bed and curls up beside the sleeping form, pulling her arms around himself and nestling his head underneath her chin. He feels her stir and tenses up, cinnamon eyes flicking open, but she doesn't mock him or push him away. She doesn't tell him he's getting too old for this. No, somehow, like a true mother, she knows that he needs her right now, and wraps two tanned arms around his slender frame, holding him tight. Her son sniffles.

The new house is blocked from his vision now, eyes tightly shut. He can't smell the unfamiliar bedroom; his nose is buried in Mother's shoulder, breathing in the comfort of the India she comes from. He never really saw Bombay, or anywhere else in India for that matter, but even now certain things still trigger young memories, and Father's stories used to paint pictures in his head. He would try to recreate them on paper, and the adults always clapped and said he was the best little artist they knew. Eventually, when he was a little older, he realised the lie.

His head spins briefly and aches, forcing him to pray that sleep will return to him, unjudging, forgiving him for banishing it earlier. With a pained sigh he wriggles closer to the comfort of Mother's nightgown, pushing his young mind past the boundaries of imagination and into the deep realm of dreams, where he chases the wind through the English fields, exuberant, relieved to be safe in Britain with his family, still alive. Though it is but an illusion, he is for once happy in the new, marriageless house, with no father and no baby sister.

The Endless Forest

and you wondered why you got

Made me smile. &hearts;