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Joelle Stone replied to the topic Audio Cinema in the forum Fantasy Writers 4 years, 9 months ago

@obrian-of-the-surface-world,

Thanks for the reminders! Here’s a piece of micro-fiction I wrote for a contest that I decided to use as a guinea pig. There’s a few bloopers, but let me know what you think (and if I did the link right).

Seen – Duration: 4:45

Text:

You aren’t supposed to see me, but there you are. Smiling directly into my eyes.

My heart skips a beat as I stare into those blue depths. Why–how–what–Questions race through my mind like the many dust devils skittering down the path in the sweeping, swirling train of my raiment.

“Hello,” you whisper, hesitantly lifting a finger.

I can only blink as all my flurrying questions settle into one clear word.

Who?

Then your finger, just starting to lose its baby-chubbiness, brushes my forehead. I freeze.

“Pretty wind,” you breathe, your other hand coming up as you trail your fingers down my face and tangle them in my hair. All stills. The dust devils peter out. My hair cascades to the ground instead of whipping away from my face. Your eyes laugh.

As your fingers explore first my hair, then my streaming garment, then finally find my hands, I realize I can inhale and exhale again. I do so carefully, not wishing to blast you away with a gust of breath.

“Hello,” you say again, and giggle.

I can’t help it. I swirl myself around you, lifting you up off the ground in a spinning current of air. I hold you close to my body, finding myself both alarmed and thrilled with the ability to not just touch a child, but hold one. Normally my tentative brushes only skid past one’s face, blowing their hair out behind them. They tend to either glare, ignore me, or laugh and stretch their arms wide as if to catch me. But I always divide myself around them and move on, my subconscious the only part of me registering the pain of being invisible in their eyes.

Why?

You gasp and point at something far below us. I hadn’t realized I had carried you so high, and begin to descend. I will not let you come to harm. “Looky!” you squeal.

I have no tongue with which to reply. The ache in my heart I thought I had buried millennia ago flutters to the surface and threatens to burst forth like a gale if I don’t keep it in check. I long to put you down and leave before I can be hurt by your presence even as I yearn to soar with you, listening to your bubbly laugh and watching your chubby cheeks scrunch up and feeling your soft, tangible hair graze my face.

How?

“Cow-cow,” you say, twisting in my arms to smile at me as you wave a finger towards the creatures. I want to kiss the appendage, but the best I can do is brush it with the gentlest of breezes.

Friend. The word flits through my mind. I have caught glimpses of the concept enough to understand what it looks like, but I have no clue how to act as a friend. I have been around since the Breath of Life was blown into the Firstborn’s nostrils and a tendril of the puff had split away and grown until it was gusting air roaming back and forth across the earth. I have seen the Life Breather commune with his Breathed, seen the Breathed interact with his children, seen the children grow and fill the world. I have witnessed many, many relationships and, every time I come across one, the splinter that is my longing for a touch wiggles just a little deeper into my soul.

What?

Your brilliant blue eyes, the color of a late-afternoon sky hovering above distant peaks, sparkle as they stare straight into mine yet again. You stick a finger on my nose and bring it down to brush my lips and chin. A shivery feeling shudders its way across my skin as you do so. I pull you closer. How can I let you go? This feeling swelling in my heart is like a powerful, unpredictable storm in the open sea, complete with dark clouds and booming thunder and radiant lightning, unable to be contained or controlled. My arms long to squeeze you as tight as I can and never let go.

Is this love? I have heard of it before.

You sigh as your bare toes brush the grass. To anyone strolling by it would seem that you had spun up into the air with the autumn leaves dancing around you to some unheard music. To those with normal sight, anyway.

One thing I know as I force my arms to set you gently on the ground and slowly back away. One thing I realize as you giggle and stroke my hair and a tear the size of a bucket splashes onto the ground by your feet, splattering you with salty water. One thing I rejoice in as you grab my hands and spin around with your wispy hair blowing in the breeze, then let my hands go, wave goodbye, and prance away towards the blue door of a small home.

I have been loved and hated, blessed and cursed, guided and thwarted, freed and harnessed, played with and contended with, but now I am something I’ve never been before.

I am seen.

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