Until Sundown

It was the type of sculpture that trapped Thalia in her room for days. Dried bits of clay were wedged beneath her fingernails and lightly speckled across her skin and overalls. She circled the sculpture meticulously smoothening its limbs, rounding the wrinkles in its clothes, and perfecting the curls on its head.

She took a thumb, swept it across its bottom lip, and slowly stepped away from the sculpture until her calves brushed the edge of her bed. She didn’t know if it was the step back, the final smoothening of a feature, or her piercing gaze onto its face that suddenly awoke the clay figure.

As she stared at her work, she watched something of a soul enter his eyes. Thalia’s face was the first thing he saw as life was breathed into him. He squirmed in place, settling himself into his body. His eyebrows furrowed above squinted eyes as he slowly lifted his hands to feel his face.

“What am I?” escaped from his freshly formed lips.

“You’re a sculpture that I’ve created. You’ve been brought to life.”

She waited patiently as he took a moment to ponder his newfound consciousness. 

“My name is Thalia” 

“Hmm,” he muttered. “Do I have a name?”

“Yes. Your name is Alfie.”

“Alfie…,” he repeated to himself in a whisper.

His eyes suddenly flickered to the whisking propellers of the overhead fan and he gently lifted his head with his mouth agape. 

“What’s that?”

Thalia smirked as she looked up with him. “A ceiling fan.”

“Oh. For what?”

“Air circulation. I enjoy the breeze and it’s sometimes stuffy in here.”

His eyes left the rotating blades and carried themselves along the edges of the ceiling and down the dark walls. 

“Where am I?” 

“My bedroom.”

 Shelves lined the perimeter of the room of mainly blocks of clay and sculpted works such as himself. Countless clay animals and objects of various sizes and shapes crowded the room.

“Are they alive like me?”

“They were, once. My sculptures only come to life for a small amount of time.”

“How long do I have?”

“Until sundown. A few hours.”

Alfie took his first steps around the room. He caressed the wings of a sparrow sitting firmly on a shelf that he imagined once flew with the propellers. Also drawing his attention was a small leafy plant that must have used its vines as arms for hugging and legs for running during its hours under the sun.

He found himself in front of a full-body mirror and stared intently. Thalia had sculpted a t-shirt and pants onto his clay body. His hair traced around his ears and down to the start of his neck. 

“Am I your first human-resembling sculpture?”

“No, although my most successful so far.”

“How many before me?”

“Many.”

He continued making his way around the room brushing his hand across every object within reach. As his fingers swept across the full-length drapes, a sliver of sunlight flickered into the room before they fell back into place. Although it only lasted a second, it was long enough to catch Alfie’s eye and launch him back towards the window. Thalia winced at the brightness of the light as Alfie dragged the curtains open as far as they could go. 

“Wow,” he sighed.

“What?” Thalia joined him by the window. They looked onto the grassy fields and trees that crowded her front yard and the park across the way, all beneath a clear blue sky. She turned to him to find his eyes were gleaming at what she’d considered an ordinary day.

“I want to go there. Can we go there?”

“Outside?” she asked.

He nodded with his eyes glued to the window.

Thalia retreated towards her bed and sat down. “I don’t know…” she mumbled. “I haven’t left this room in days, let alone this house. I don’t think I have it in me…” 

Alfie turned to her longingly.

“If I only have a few hours to live, you must let me see what lies beyond this room,” he pleaded.

It was the type of request that was impossible to reject. Like a child asking their hungry parent for the last bite of their meal and getting it without question, or a dog panting with its tongue out and tail wagging waiting as its owner uses the last bit of their energy to throw it a bone.

Thalia swallowed her unease and took to her feet.

“C’mon,” she said as she led Alfie into the hallway and to the front door. 

“Wow,” he exhaled as they stepped off the tiled floor and out onto the pavement. He followed her down a gravel path encircled by trees triple their heights. With every second, he trailed further behind, distracting himself with the branches that hung over onto the pathway. 

She walked him to the side of a grassy hill and they watched the people in the park. Some walked the paths, fewer ran, even fewer biked. Several dogs were being walked and played with. Children played on the playsets and ran around in the fields. 

“I’m ready to go back inside whenever you are,” Thalia said. A sentence she wanted to say since they left, but thought she’d wait until they reached the park. She figured he’d seen enough, but he didn’t seem to agree.

He instead took note of the many people seated on the grass and followed their lead.

“Oh,” Thalia uttered, as she watched Alfie position himself on the ground with his legs extended before him. She sighed as she sat next to him cross-legged.

“You wish to leave?” Alfie asked.

“I do.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“If I were human, I would go everywhere and see everything. Why would you want to stay inside?”

“Well—” She paused. “Well, I’ve been sad for some time. And I couldn’t find the strength to leave.”

“Why have you been sad?”

She took a deep breath. “I had love and it was taken away from me.”

“Oh.” 

Thalia reclined onto her back as though the energy to sit up left with her words. Alfie, looking puzzled at first, quickly lay beside her on the grassy bed. As she stared up, the vast blue encompassed the entirety of her vision with hints of pinks and oranges seeping into her periphery. 

“He shared your name. Alfie. I was in love with him.”

“Really?”

“I spent many hours each day trying to recreate him with clay, but it was never the same.”

He turned to her earnestly.

“Are we in love?”

“No,” she laughed. “Love takes time. We just met.”

“Oh,” he grinned, mimicking her energy. “Will I ever be in love?”

“Probably not,” she sighed, dropping her expression. 

“Well then you are lucky.”

The grin that remained on his face was enough to bring one to Thalia’s.

Blue so quickly became yellow, orange, and pink as the sun approached the horizon. 

“Are you afraid?” Thalia turned her head to Alfie who returned a confused expression. “...of leaving?” she continued.

“No,” he stared up again. “You told me when I would go from the start. So, I tried to make the most of my time here — although, you have more reason to.”

“How so?” she asked.

“I know which sun will set on me, you don’t. I suppose that makes me lucky.”

She watched him close his eyes on the half circle of a sun.

Thalia felt embraced, sinking herself deeper into the bed of grass. As a cool breeze rushed by, the blades of grass kissed her face. Branches rustled in the wind behind distant sounds of talking and laughing and sparrows singing into the evening. 

“Maybe this is love.”

“What?” he asked. 

“All of this.”

Alfie smiled brighter than he ever had. He ran his fingers through the grass and took a deep breath. “I think I feel love.”

His voice faded into the breeze and before she knew it, the sun was no longer with her, leaving a vibrant sky in its wake. 

“For the first time in a while, I think I feel love too,” she said softly to the sky. And she lay there until sunrise the next morning.