Part One: Immortality | Χαρά Τριανταφυλλίδου

The sound of people hurrying to live echoed through the space between the road and my open window. A soft golden light was there with me to shutter the darkness of the night, which had slowly flooded the sky outside, only to be interrupted by the city lights. A few clicks later, the dull night in front of my screen turned into a beautiful concerto and I was ready to fight my greatest enemy.

She was sitting on the rooftop, gazing at the city that had just woken up to dissolve problems into alcohol and loud music. She probably had long, dark hair, and a pair of eyes that was made of the finest platinum, bright, and precious. As the stars were decorating her sky, she looked up to breathe in their beauty and capture it forever, as if her memory would never weaken, as if she was the queen of her universe. Lines of silver and sparkling dots of celestial dust were painting a majestic chaos on the dark purple canvas, only for it to light up and disappear into an orange mess along the skyline of the city.

The moon was missing that night. Her moon had been missing for a long time.

She let her fingers slip through her handbag and search for a pen. Without thinking, she let her lucid fantasies pour on the white surface. Who knows what she was creating. Maybe I wanted her to sketch out the beauty of darkness or write about her lost love, or compose the music of her bliss. Maybe I was tired of her platinum eyes and wanted them to turn into plain, pale balls of lovelessness and lunacy. Maybe she had no thought of her own; as a matter of fact, she was so attached to me, so grasped to my dress whenever I decided she should no longer live in my world. She would beg me for one last chance, one more recreation of her universe.

She had always been oblivious of her existence in that little space of stars, dreams, and the urban nightmare. She wanted to change the world, to have an immortal body and soul, to find the treasure of love, she believed in the heavens above. The lovely mayhem of her mind was spilled on everything, from her canvas to her pieces of paper that were burning through her ripped heart. Notes were mixed with colours in a delightful nebula of emotions, thoughts, and desires. For even nebulas may be destroyed in the horrific sublime of space, she made them part of the world, so that she would never die a bitter death. She watched the night pass by and the stars melt into the gloom of space.

The sun was missing that morning. Her sun had been missing for a long time.

Mumbling an elegy of death, I climbed up the rooftop, only to lose my breath and my hopes of killing Immortality. She was sitting peacefully behind her canvas, bringing the dark sky of no moon and no sun into life. Her eyes were neither platinum, nor pale. They were a dark mess of all colours of doom, a reflection of what was above her and in front of her. She never spoke a word. Immortality always liked to scream through her actions, through her need to survive, through me. Like the dead dreams of poets, authors, and painters, she was the sweetest piece of darkness found in the light of creation. She was a storm in my heart and I was oxygen in hers.

I could easily defeat her at the very click of my fingers. I could erase her from my world, so she would need to find another universe to unfold her darkness in. I had been creating her for years, building her body from little scraps of paper and fixing her soul into a mass of my madness. She was the beam sneaking through my windows every morning to brighten up the darkness that was herself, reminding me that there is no need to seek her. She was my light until I became her gloom. The more we were getting alike, the more I was reaching Immortality, the more she was dragging me in her obscurity.

The light was missing that day. Her light had been missing for a long time.

Upon getting close to her and pointing my blade at her unprotected face, she raised her hand, not to resist, but to offer. A line of soft golden light shone through her to shutter the darkness of the chaos, which had slowly flooded the soul inside. I let her fill me with bliss without a single interruption, without a single thought crossing my mind. I knew I would never reach her, for she was not a solid construction, a tangible reality, but only a product of my hopes. Like fire touching my tormented insides, she would hurt me in the liveliest manner, to remind me that pain leads me through my path of life. Like fire touching my tormented insides, I had to let fire touch my creations, for they had not brought me to her.

I threw her pieces in the fire and watched them wither as I was being born again to continue searching for her blessing. Immortality was no longer attached to me, she was no longer part of my universe and I was not her whole world. Her platinum eyes were a mass that had melted in my fireplace, only for the smoke to reach the rooftop, her home, my sky, her stars, my hopes. She would not live on a rooftop the next time on the next piece of paper. She would be stardust, debris in outer space, the gist of existence.

Immortality was missing that night. I created and destroyed her.

The light came back the next morning. Her light had been missing for a long time.

 The Girl In The Moon Painting by Stefan Kuhn