Part One.

Last Christmas, a miracle bloomed inside the empty house of an empty person. The arrival of Christmas brightened the darkened home and found light from the outside world for the first time in the year. The girl who looked withered before her time, opened the heavy curtains wide and made the home ready for the most wonderful time of the year. 

And there it was, the world taking on a new face, full of lights, glimmers, love and hope. She did not care that it was all fake and temporary, that it existed before her eyes comforted her enough to bear the reality of time. Crouching on the floor near the wide window, with a hot tea in her hand, she took in the happiness of the strangers on the street and forgot her inability to feel one from within. 

Who knew, who knew, who knew! All that was to happen, to start, to bloom, that christmas. I would know, as I live a little higher, the change of air that Christmas did seem very inviting of a new arrival in our suburban town.

I am the neighbour upstairs, who had a first class seat to this new Christmas tale and more than obliged to share all that I saw, heard and most of all, felt in my romantic heart. Gather around this tale with your head as well as your heart as this story requires both to understand not only the love granted to few but the pain hidden in many. 

Not far from the town, on a main road, drove a young man in desperate need of help to find his way home. When he finds an old man walking on the side road, he stops with a relieved face for having hopefully finally found someone who knew the direction he needed. But neither he nor the car knew the path directed by the old man who carried a mischievous smile and strangely looked like a meddlesome woman, was not one he had in mind but a new one, ready to receive him and once entered, never forgotten. And he rode off, towards the opposite direction from where he intended to go to somewhere he would never have gone if fate had not intervened. 

The boy was from the city with fresh cut hair, proud grin and snobby eyes. Almost 20, he found it important to let people know that he was an adult and found every enjoyment by the others after his declaration the most annoying which his innocent core could not hide. It was his first trip from home, a new step he would say to growth and more. He was the type that relished every second of life and very eager to make the best of it and saw only the positives of life while diminishing the negative side for being no advantageous for anything. Life had been kind to him and taught him only to be earnest and hardworking but the coming month, life was going to teach him that light does not always whisper in the night, that for some it is always silent and dark without any fault of their own. 

Miracles bloom at Christmas and new beginnings are granted in January.

One day. She only had one day left on this earth. Christmas was ending and the new year was nearing. And between the end of 1994 and the beginning of 1995 she would embark on a new journey, where she hoped for a normal life or whatever that meant because what she knew to be normal her whole life, could not be farther away from the definition. So she moved her feet and landed between ‘the normal people.’            

The yelling of the market people selling more because of their loud voice than the quality of their product, laughter of little children playing with their friends, gossip shared between middle aged women whose eyes always seemed to follow the subject, all those daily stuff that most humans seemed to be blind to, one girl on that sunny day barely surviving in the busy crowd, felt.. exhilarated being pushed around, yelled upon, stared at and finally, belong. 

While her eyes wandered around the busy crowd, one hand on a long arm, longer apparently than his body as the rest of the body was submerged in the crowd. She could not see the face but she knew a hand in need when she saw one and that hand was in desperate need for help and mostly, AIR. 

So she dives in, happily, and sets off to save that arm from drowning any further. 

But there he was, the boy she met last month. The boy that changed everything for her, the reason she was out today and the reason she would go tomorrow. She smiled in tears and hugged the crouching, fearful cityboy. And he kept his arms up, not anymore in terror but in a strange sense of warmth. 

She finally lets go of him against her heart’s wish and looks at him now right in his curious eyes with the biggest smile, full of love and hope. It was Christmas and nothing was fake anymore. Miracles happen in December and new beginnings are granted in January. She looked up to the sky and smiled as if she knew this meeting was not a mere coincidence, it was a gift of someone who felt very sad for her and a gift she would forever remember. So she hugged him once again and strangely the boy let down his arm and hugged her back.

Amidst the busy crowd was one happy girl and one confused boy with his arms down and his heartrate up. Someone who lived a little higher, let out a tear, for the boy and the girl whose story would end before it even properly started. The romantic heart found it hard to accept that even she stood powerless before the cruelty of one’s fate and nothing she could do could create a twist in this tragic tale. 

Clock strikes 00:01. 

Red turns white. 

The girl who was dead, lived again.

The girl follows the light that seems to lead to a higher floor. Above, she  finds a white door and knocks. When the door opens, before going in, she instinctively looks back and finds the lady who lived higher up also in white and in tears, and smiles.

‘Thank you for the gift.’

A new day erupted with a blazing sun unusual for a winter season that morning. It was new year. And the boy finds someone whose help and direction could be trusted but before leaving that town where he met a strange girl who awoke in him strange feelings, he looked back and when he was about to strike off, he stopped. 

He remembered that girl.