Homecoming

As they walked in cold air on the beach, he absorbed the sunlight as if it belonged to him. Attention, commanded the square into his shoulders. With purpose, his footprints interrogated the sands as he walked. As if scouting for an unseen army hiding within the cliffs, the distance absorbed his eyes along with the solid vapor trail that announced his words. He spoke as if he’d been in intermittent consideration of what was before him. It had been in his imagination for quite some time; “I have never seen the ocean before, only in pictures. But, I have felt it in my bones all of my life.”

She glanced sideways at him. What was he looking at? His eyes were scanning something up ahead, but she wasn’t sure what. She could see nothing. But, she had a feeling that whatever ghost held him to those black cliffs, did so in possession. Already his intensity was making her feel uncomfortable. It was as if the fog was rolling in closer just to be near his presence, to grovel at his feet, nourish its existence on the gloom that lengthened his phrases. She had only spent an hour with him, but already his strong manner was making her feel a verification about something she wasn’t sure was there. To be fair, she knew she should call it a feeling. She shivered and clutched the arms of her hooded wool sweater. Density was worshiping their path, compulsively consuming the air, as if the mist that now gathered close to the shore was from an uncontrolled raging fire somewhere, instead of off of the ocean. Pulling its silver fingers back from the tides, the sun shied away and something dark swept over the water and entered her mind. She worried it would start to happen again. It was a midnight that wove itself into her head, while it pulled down a bright white screen to fill it with splotches of colors and sound. “Please, don’t let it happen now,” she thought. But, it had come for her and it now summoned. It summoned her breath to fade into; she didn’t know what...it could be different each time. It would summon her to pay attention and carve herself open so that she would be ready to receive. She squeezed her eyes briefly and worked hard to force her will into the space in that paused between accept and dispel.

He threaded his fingers through his hair and raked it back from his eyes as, she, again, opened hers. She watched her legs to swing out in front of her feet in a continual wheel that scooped through the sand. As it swerved to roll off on a tangent, it was as if she had stepped away from the beach. From a vantage point out on the water, she concentrated on him. He was over there; she followed him with her eyes. His slightly gaunt tan face was soaking up the mist. He appeared to be older than his years and he had a lean look. A starving look. It was the salivating craving that sloshed around the mouth before it dug its teeth into a piece of meat so that it could gnaw on the emptiness between just out of reach and the elusive grab.

“He looks predatory,” Form settled behind her eyes as it came to her. First it shaped itself as a cat. But, then the cat’s nose elongated and the ears rose up high on its head so as to hear better. To listen for all that swirled around him, crackling like a dust devil of dying leaves. Or, was it to feel? In that, to be able to sense the distant rumble of the thundering earth in its sneak through the pads of his feet. The wolf stared at her as it asked a question.

“Can you see it from here?” He prevailed upon the distance to reveal itself.

“See what from here?”

“The edge of the world?”

“Weird,” she thought, but, then, she answered him as it was polite to extend the most logical answer. “You mean Japan?” She answered the assumption as she created it. “Well...of course not. Line of sight is only fifteen degrees of the horizon before it disappears into the curvature of the earth. I would think you would know that, being as you are in college or, will be.”

“No...the edge of the world as it swallows the sun. I wonder, does it boil the sea?”

“Why would it?”

“He didn’t make sense. Had he no scientific knowledge?” As if to test his theory, she stared off across the ocean. She imagined the sun spreading its cape, sweeping up the breakers into it’s flaming rainbow so that it could be coaxed up from out of the sea and then she fell into her mind. Sounds rushed away in panic down a narrow corridor. A chase had developed and mercury boiled up and threaded through voices. Then, they were gone. The sea had boiled them away. All that remained were the skeletons that blew with the winds that scattered them across the deserts. She turned. As if to really try to understand the time warp that seemed to have brought him she asked, “Where is it you said you were from?”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh, I guess....I just thought....”

“Thought? There are many thoughts. You have only to look at the night sky.” He said as he prompted the gray sky that hovered over their heads as it waited upon recognition.

“The night sky? Oceans and suns and mists? What was he going on about?” She thought. As if, he didn’t understand the question that she was sure she clearly had delivered she asked again, “The part of the country you are from.”

“Where do you think?” Now he moved the sand with the toe of his shoe, prodding into giving its attention. Assured that it heard, he abandoned in its wondering and looked for her eyes again.

He watched her blink away something as if it was stuck in her eye, and, then, again as she raised her finger to her lips and tapped on them as if they kept the secret. One that would be revealed as it galloped out through her assumption. Uncertainty hung on, stalling her speech, as if, this would be her only guess, so she had better not make a mistake. The opportunity of another chance to be offered at it was dim and, he felt that she knew this and, that it could be snatch away in the same instance it was given. Something he might choose to do in the moment as a way to make her think beyond consequence.

“The southwest, I guess.” It spurted out of her as if the air in a balloon had been released.

“Why?” Not yet willing to confirm the accuracy of her guess, he followed with another question. It was to assess her observational skills and determine the level of detail she could interpret.

“You’re tanned and it’s March. Way too cold here for that.” She looked at him and flushed another reason out of the bushes, so that it could be captured to end the hunt. “Leather jewelry, silver pendant.”

“Very astute.” He nodded his head once as if in approval.

“This will be a drastic change, weather wise.” The tone in her voice sounded apologetic.

“I’ll adapt, I always do.” His voice was assured and firm. He had such command for someone not that much older than she.

“Another feature like a wolf,” Thinking aloud, she wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

“You find me a threat?” Again, he directed his question to another element of nature as if she hadn’t been standing there.

She watched him as he stared past her, out across the pounding surf, toward the direction of Japan. But, she sensed that his eyes were far beyond even that geographically. They now drifted on, from where their feet stood sinking into the wet sand, to farther west than ever seen. She sensed that they were courted by something that attained no form in physical existence. Something from the past, but, then, of the future as well. Since she didn’t confirm or deny his assumption what he followed with next was even more unreassuring, “Don’t worry, I won’t take anything that doesn’t belong to me.”

She pondered what could have been implied as they walked further down the beach, and as they did, they paused every now and then to examine the treasures the ocean dismissed from its chests.

“What’s this?” He dug his fingers into the sand and clutched something that caught his eye. He asked holding up a pebble. “A rock to see through?”

“It’s called sea glass. The ocean pulls broken bottles under and sort of puts them through a natural rock polisher, then spits them back up. I think that they are more beautiful than the agates. Go ahead; take as many as you want. They’re free,” she shared, then hesitated too long, enough to garner additional information about their availability, “not protected by law or anything, I mean.”

“What colors!” Astonishment blazed through his eyes.

They were the bits of puzzles that enticed one to complete the creation so that the identity of its secret form could be discovered.

“Yeah. Green and amber are the most common.” She continued, feeling more comfortable in an officious tour guide roll. “But, sometimes I can find blue or even lavender. I have a lavender one, would you like to see it? I have it in my room.” Cousin or not, she suddenly realized how that sounded.

“Yes.” He said it crisply and clearly, as if to make it stand as a pivot point.

“Besides, it goes more with the walls in your room, than it does with mine.” She rattled on, almost as if she hadn’t heard his eagerness. “You know, mother chose that color for the walls in your room, I didn’t have any input on that idea whatsoever.” She sighed. Through all the tension she that she had felt descend upon her, she yet tried to be tender within understanding, “I hope you’ll find it restorative here. I mean, it’s not home or anything, I know nothing will replace that. You can talk about it if you want to.”

“My parents were very good for me. They worked hard to provide for my needs.” He said it as if a textbook were opened up under his nose or, it had been a prepared declaration.

“How cold,” she thought. “Maybe he still hurts.” Out of sympathy, she reached over to touch his hand. “He is still my cousin," she thought further, "even if I didn’t know that until recently, that he or his family had ever existed.”

He pulled away, and, then after a second’s hesitation he turned and clutched hard onto her hand as if it were a link. Dirty blond eyebrows rose up on wings above the brown streaks that had been dashed through his green eyes. The intensity he had invested into the distance he, now, turned onto her, to penetrate through her slate eyes into her very core. His mouth opened very slightly, his lower lip stretched away from its continued pout into a slight smile. When the bond tied her hand in with his it felt to her like it was what caused them to shift out of space, what caused them to slam through an aberration in a ascending wave. He said it with conviction, “Flesh on flesh, that is what matters now.”

“Excuse me?” She felt a frightening shock rip through her underneath her skin.

“Your family has taken me in. I am theirs and they are mine.”

“Ok,” she calmed her uneasiness by ferreting into her mind on a search for rational logic. “Family, he’s saying we are family, which we are.” But then, there it was again, his eyes. They examined her as if she were the fascinating complex object that he just had to keep turning to unlock the secret that was cloaked within its form. So, she averted hers from the closeness he pressed into her space. A gust of wind came up behind him and slapped his hair across her face. She felt as if she were drowning. The tide wrapped itself around her feet and knocked her off balance. She crashed into the water and got soaked.

With quick reflexes he grabbed her arm just above the elbow and yanked, “What happened?” As he said it, it was more as if he was questioning the surf for disappointing him.

“As the tide comes in, every third or fourth wave can be longer that the others.” Explanation rambled into her voice to rationalize her perplexed embarrassment. “ Sometimes it can be a surprise.” Bits of sand stuck to her face. She trembled, “Oh great, now I’m freezing.”

“Here,” he offered. He yanked off his fisherman’s cable knit sweater “Put this on.” He said it gently as if he was concluding it with someone else, someone she couldn’t see.

She looked sideways at him as she put it on. As she pulled it down over her nose, she noticed remnants of a slightly exotic fragrance. Although he was left wearing only a tank undershirt, he didn’t seem to mind the chilly air.

“I think that I’d like to head back.” She said, thinking out loud again. The wind whipped up again, laced its fingers into her dark brown hair and tangled it.

The wet fabric stiffened her limbs and carried a numbing bite that chewed deeply into her.

“Tide pools another day, then?” He sighed in a relenting way that confirmed his disappointment.

“Yeah, I hope you don’t mind?” Politeness yet tethered up her voice but the sound was flat.

Climbing up the narrow dried wooden steps clinging precariously to the side of the cliff, he commented to her further on what he saw was only in relation to him, her family.

“From what I’ve seen, you have everything you could want here. A nice home, a beach, a copse for meditation.”

His eyes lodged the phrase somewhere into the depth of the trees crowding the edge of the property, begging not to be thrown over and into the sea.

“Meditation?”

“Yes, it is very good for lining up the thoughts. You should try it sometime. You may get in touch with places you never knew about before. I can teach you if you are interested.”

It was a friendly offer but it felt strange. So, she complimented his attempt with an explanation that removed her from the discomfort of him becoming familiar to her before she was ready to feel him as family.

“Thanks, but, I sort of do something like that through music. Sometimes it brings on unusual ideas that I write about.”

“Music? Yes, I feel good about it.” His unusual way of nodding ended the statement.

“Such strange phrases,” She thought again about what he said about the stars. “What planet is he from?” But, instead, she asked, “Good about it?”

“It is the voice of the soul. A way to acceptably express the shades of permissible/ forbidden. What kind do you like?”

“Express the permissible/forbidden?” she thought .An echo tapped on the back of her head, then was gone. Again, she merely answered, “I play classical. But, what I like is alternative.”

“So...you are the one who plays the piano?”

“Uh huh.”

“What do you play?”

“Right now, I’m practicing a piece by Chopin.”

“Ever play, Liszt?”

“Some, but, it’s difficult.”

“Now, Liszt is food for a permissible/forbidden soul, and some say, even more disturbing than the current music.” Now he was trying to sway the air into his point of view. “It’s exciting because it is intelligent. It was well advanced for its time. Since you have studied the composers, were you aware that Liszt was the father-in-law to the close to him in age, Wagner?”

As she heard the word, “time”, she glanced over at him in her concerted climb. Behind him a sort of vertigo brought the bottom of cliffs closer and then it all shifted to another set of stairs that she’d only just glimpsed from a far away vantage point once in a dream.

“Do you have any in your repertoire that you could play for me?”

“I think, Consolation, maybe.”

“Actually, that is my favorite. When can you play?”

“What? You mean, soon?” Reacting to the feeling of being pushed through a door she did open, she swerved away from her manners, “It won’t be anytime soon, I have to practice it first. It’s far too long since I played it last.”

“That does not matter.” He turned from his consultation with the air and drove his look into her again, to convince her that a reward could be found within a sound. “I want to hear your signature on it.”

“Mistakes and all?”

It occurred to her that, that at this point, he had addressed most of the elements of nature with the exception of fire. Was there one lurking near by that she didn't know about? Would it launch flames high into the entreating dark smoke that hovered just above longing for release into the air, if he just shot his hand over his head?

“That does not matter. What does, is how you think and feel the piece.”

“Feel the piece? The only way I way I could feel a piece would be through an electric guitar. I’ve always wanted one, but father says, no.”

“Why would you want one of those?”

“Well....it’s so stirring. I want to become part of the reverberation of metal, Feel the strings bite through my fingers so I can coax the sound of that from my soul.”

“Hmmm, I too like alternative, do you have any?”

“Up in my room.” As difficult as it was, she turned her eyes to the side in hopes of directing his away from hers and onto something else. The closest thing in view happened to be the house, it was just coming up over top as it set back from the cliff. “I have to listen through ear buds, though. Father says he doesn’t like the sound of discordant devil worshiper noise.”

“I would like to listen with you sometime.”

“Well...I don’t have another set of ear buds, though.” Once, again she soothed away the unsettling feeling with reason.

“So, you’re father introduced you to classical, then?”

“Yeah, he calls, all else, noise.”

“Your father is a strict man.”

“Yeah, and don’t ever take advantage of his time table.” As she said it a memory from a childhood piano lesson flooded in behind her eyes, she rolled them.

“Punctuality is a trait of mine.” As, he said it; he splayed his fingers across his chest as if he’d puff it out into them.

“Don’t be too perfect,” She warned away what sounded like his over zealous attempt to fit in between tracks on a CD. “Father will hate that too.”

“Your mother is a lot younger?” He prompted her to confirm more of his assessments.

“Uh huh.”

“Light years apart?” Now his eyes were questioning the winding path that led back to the ostentatious house sheltered partially within the long feathery arms of the copse.

“Sort of.”

“Lost. Caught between fast forward and rewind, looking out.”

“You mean like, finding herself? That sounds lame.” As she said it she patted her mouth, as if she’d forgotten her manners.

“People back up to find the lost self, to find maybe more.” He announced as he gripped the polished brass doorknob firmly. It was as if he was arriving on something that he knew would already be there. Something that had been set aside just, so that it would be required to wait. Something, to be sure and, he would not disappoint.

“What are you, some philosopher from another century?”

“Just an observer. Now, please, show me to my room. I feel a chill.”

At the top of the stairs, two halls branched off in opposite directions.

“Which way?” He stared first down one darkened hall and then the other as if heard them answer his question.

“The one on the left. It’s mother and father’s hall, your room is next to theirs. Be quiet though mother is in her study, writing.”

Before he turned he caught up her hand, “Come, with me then, you need to explain.”

She looked at him flexing his muscles against the shiver under his tank shirt, and then she felt the icy dampness glazing her skin through her clothes. Suddenly she felt as if she had to hold his hand close. Fear washed away as she thought of the puppy she once rescued and cradled next to her after she had fished it from the tides. She remembered how she waded in, against the force when she heard it’s yelping. It had been tossed in along with several other puppies that rose up like driftwood on the crests only to be plunged into the troughs. Tossed and dead. She returned his grasp. She was determined to help him no matter how she had felt down on the beach. He had lost his family. He had lost is home. The discovery of the accident had been a horror to her family. No matter what, he and she were related, so, she had to at least try. But, in all the awareness she was capable of possessing, she was unaware that a shadowed spot existed within an angle of it. What she didn’t know as she turned up the dark hallway to guide him back to stability, to a life, to continuance up from grief, was that she was clasped within was the hand that would keep her down.