The Beacon

Today

In this place, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks always combined so beautifully with the words we'd managed to say to each other all this time. We liked to sit on an old log by the cliff, against the backdrop of an abandoned and unsightly beacon. Someday this place will grow grass and we will be gone, but today our laughter, our passionate conversations, and our revelations bring joy to this lonely beacon every night.

         "What's that cut on your arm? Did you have it yesterday?"

         "Nothing to worry about, it's fine."

         She looked at her carefully, trying to figure out what was wrong, then took her palm and touched the band-aid, "Does it hurt?"

         "A little."

         Next to the log they were sitting on was a dried branch. Taking it, she wrote on the ground, "Alma is hurted."

         "Hey, just a little bit," Alma said with a friendly nudge of her shoulder.

         They both laughed.

         "Look, that's Thomas's boat coming back from fishing, I think it's time for us to go home."

         "Let's sit a little longer, it's so nice here," Alma said looking at her friend

         "You know Tom is always back by 9 o'clock, do I have to tell you what time we have to be home?"

Alma took a branch and wrote "ten minutes" on the ground; she looked at her friend. The corners of her mouth strained with great difficulty to make a plastic and unnatural smile.

         She looked into Alma's eyes, then moved closer, resting her head on her shoulder: "Okay, no problem, let's sit a little longer."

         Indeed, evening was coming, and old fisherman Thomas could see the two girls, with long hair as dark as oil and as white as snow, sitting together on a log, hugging on the edge of the cliff.

***

         "So.. Did you say goodbye?" mother said, putting things in a box.

         Alma, looking at all these boxes, signed with different words, as if they were coffins. Coffins in which her previous life was buried.

         "Couldn't do it again? Alma, you do realize that tomorrow is the last day," she said, breaking away from the packing.

         Alma stood in the middle of the hallway and was silent. For a second the room was as quiet as a cemetery.

         At that quiet moment, she looked at the already lifeless house. The shelves that held the pictures were now just beginning to welcome the first colonial group of dust that was actively arriving at the empty spaces. The bare walls, without paintings, exposed the soul and vulnerabilities of this house. The whole thing was like a small town that had been visited by a plague: dozens of signed boxes filled the entire space in the house like fresh coffins, silence and emptiness acting as the pile of residents who were destined to survive the plague.

         After standing in this silence for about a minute, Mom quickly stuck her hands into the first box she could find and began to go through the things in it loudly, but she felt warm and small hands embrace her.

         "Well, isn't there any way to undo this?" Alma said as she plunged her face into mother's back.

         She took her hands out of the box and placed them on the little baby hands, "You understand, my dear, that it is not up to me."

         "Talk to him again," Alma said hugging her mom harder.

         "Honey, you know I tried."

Footsteps were heard upstairs. Mom turned around and looked into her eyes. She stroked her hands into Alma's hair which were as blond as her soul.

         "I know it won't be easy, but you have to say goodbye to Lisa."

         "I don't have the strength to do it, Mom, I can't."

         Letting her mother out of her embrace, she took a deep and shuddering breath for the hardest words:

"I have no other friends besides her."

         Turning around, Alma walked up to the second floor in silence, stepping over boxes.

         "Jesus will always be your friend," mother said, but her words dissolved into the dead silence of the empty room.

         Walking into her room, Alma looked at the boxes of stuff next to her parents' room. Away from them, separately, on a table, was a box signed "religious things".

Tomorrow

         The old beacon, which had lost its true colour, had a chance to shine again in bright reds and oranges colours in the sunset. Today was not a good day for it. It had rained all day and it was only toward evening that the sun peeked out. The waves washed over the ledge on which he stood. It looked like they were about to get to him.

         "Is today some kind of reverse day?" Lisa said, throwing a yesterday’s branch off a cliff

         "Why?"

That question, for the first time here, sounded like a false note in this endless song of waves crashing over rocks and phrases they were saying.

"Your bracelet. Where is it? You never take it off, do you?"

Lisa sought to meet Alma's eyes, which stared into the abyss.

"Alma..."

Their gazes met. They met, like desert and lake. And soon this desert will be turning into the wettest lake in this world.

"What happened? Tell me."

They sat on the log, and Lisa moved closer to her friend, hugging her even tighter she repeated: "Alma, tell me, is there anything I can help?"

Two wet drops fell to the ground next to the log. They were tears.

Alma fell into Lisa's arms, sinking her face into her shoulder.

"I'm leaving."

Moments later, the ground beside them began to get wet, the drops masquerading with tears on their faces, they hit bare spots, crept under her sweater, trying to cool her screaming soul.

Lisa could feel her shoulder gradually getting wet. Her breath caught and she opened her mouth, but she couldn't say anything.

The desert turned into a lake.

Alma felt tears and drops dripping down her neck. She took her head away from Lisa's shoulder and said:

"I won't be there anymore, Lisa. Never again."

Drowning in tears, Lisa could only say one word through her despair: "Never..."

The sun hid behind clouds, trying not to see this sadness. The silence in which they remained was diluted by the cold drizzle.

Old Fisherman Thomas, walking back to shore on his boat, saw the two girls, mixed in a black and white mass of hair and hugs, sinking under the rain. He took a long, heavy breath, then, after smoking a cigarette, he turned toward the sea. Toward the unknown.

Day after tomorrow

Alma sat in the back seat of the car, holding her bracelet in her hand, studying it as if for the first time. In the back she could hear her father's heavy breathing as he loaded the last of the boxes into the trunk.

She shifted her gaze to the window. The long street was going somewhere into the unknown. An unknown that would always remain so for her.

"All set?"

A rough voice was heard approaching the driver's seat.

"Yes, we haven't forgotten anything. Oh God Lord, I hope we didn't forget anything," mother said, nervously gasping for air and walking to the car door.

Alma looked with a sunken look of sadness at her mother. Their gazes met for a moment.

"Look, Alma. Who's standing there?" said Mom, looking somewhere down the street.

         Alma quickly turned her head toward the opposite side of the street.

A silhouette, fast approaching their car, but still so far away.

"Alma, is that your frien-"

"Lisa!" shouted Alma and ran out of the car.

A heavy and rude displeasure was heard from behind. Alma didn't even hear it. She ran toward a silhouette with dark hair. It really was Lisa.

Without a word, barely able to slow down, they drowned in an endless hugs, in a million feelings, in friendly love, and in a thousand emotions.

The weight of unfreedom in choice, in the unfairness of this world, in the limitations of action and in the endless longing for each other. All of this nightmare stumbled ridiculously from behind and fell on the pavement, giving them a moment in a few carefree minutes.

One last time to enjoy what they had.

Can it ever be fully enjoyed?

         "Alma, I made it, it's a good thing I got to see you one more time today," Lisa said, not letting go of her friend's embrace.

"I love you so much!" Alma said, still holding her bracelet.

They stood among lonely and morning street in the middle of a very ordinary weekday.

"Lisa, this is for you."

"But...but it's yours..." she said completely confused.

Her eyes went from a small oasis to a waterfall of tears in one second.

"I know, and yet I want to give it to you," Alma said in a trembling voice, trying to make a smile.

"Thank you so much... I don't even know what to say. I'm so grateful to you."

Alma took her hands and said: "No, Lisa, thank you. For everything."

         Taking an envelope out of her pocket, Lisa handed it to her friend, "I was afraid I wouldn't have time to give you this. Take it as a memory about me, there will be something inside for you."

         "Thanks, it means a lot for me!" Alma said and hugged her friend again.

         They looked into each other's eyes. One last time.

         "Will I ever see you again?" Lisa said, holding her breath.

         "Alma!" heard her mother shout from somewhere in the distance.

         "I don't know, Lisa. I honestly don't know."

         She lowered her head, completely drowning in sadness, but a warm hand took her hands. Alma lifted her head and looked at Lisa.

         "I'll definitely see you again. I promise you."

         She hugged her one last time.

         "Now run. Run and don't look back, because I'll be watching you until the very last moment." Lisa said, giving those words the warmth of her smile.

         "Okay, I promise. I won't."

         Alma ran back. She only turned around at the last moment, as she sat in the leaving car. It was true, Lisa watched until the last moment. Until the moment their car disappeared from view.

         After a few minutes on the road, Alma pulled out an envelope and read the inscription, "Time is fleeting, but memories are eternal. Lisa xx."

         She opened the envelope and looked inside, a smile beginning to appear on her face, growing into a childish and innocent laugh.

         "What's in there?" Mom said, not turning around from the front seat.

         "Oh, never mind," Alma replied, smiling.

         Their lives would cross someday. Or maybe not. Who knows? This evening, sitting on the same log next to the old and happy beacon, which, smiling drowned in the red sunset, Lisa looked at her bracelet and into the distance. Into the unknown.

Who knows what awaits her ahead?

Who knows what awaits you ahead?

Who knows?