I Am Thinking of The Secret of Durable Pigments, The Refuge of Art

The world, as the newscasters and religious zealots shrieked at the tops of their withering voices, was ending. Nobody knew how, or why, but the leaves were wilting, the water salting, the bees had gone, and the collective sense of dread was palpable. The wind had begun to whisper to the trees. 

And in this world, in a little town that was quieter than the night itself, there lived a boy who was spending his last night on earth in an old playground with his best friend, to which the term had rubbed some people the wrong way since they’d only known each other for about a week. Still, he insisted that they were best friends with such conviction that they’d stopped bugging him about it. Of course, the world was ending so it didn’t matter much anymore. They were lying on their backs inside of a jungle gym.

He said, “How do you think it’ll happen?”

“Some people are saying that it’ll be the moon instead of the sun.”

“That’d be much prettier, having bits of moon flung at us. I wonder what it’ll look like up close.”

“Probably like huge bits of cheese.” 

They laughed at the idea, at the impossible thought of moon cheese as the last of the crickets could be heard chirping in the distance. 

“Some people are saying that the sky will fall.” said the first.

“I wonder if I'll live long enough to hold a piece of it in my hands.” returned the other.

“If it does happen that way, I can finally make good on my promise of bringing you the sky.”

The second snuck a shy glance at the first, “How do you think it would feel, the sky?”

The other had placed a hand to rest at their stomach, rising and falling with every breath that he took to which his friend studied very carefully. He knew that he was looking, and wondered if he knew that he knew.

“Light, I would hope” his friend giggled, a simple throwaway sound that he picked up and stored away in his memories, “light like leaves, or maybe like water. Glass water.”

“Glass water…” the friend echoed.

The boys fell silent for a while.

They thought of the night, of the impossible moon, of the inevitable fate of the entire human race. They thought of each other. The boy, the one who spoke first, thought of the other's eyes, their sunny mouth, their bold recklessness that pushed him to be the same, their seaside laughter that fell so easily whenever they were together. The other boy, the one who was spoken to, thought of the hot hollow of their throat, the brown-red lines in his hands, their voice that was like moss but would turn to flowering ferns and willow trees the moment it was used to address him, the way that lovely curving voice of his would share to him his secrets.

“Do you think it’ll be fast?” asked the reckless.

“I would like it to be, I do not wish for us to suffer.”

The willowed boy turned to look at his friend, “Alaiyo…” for that was his chosen term of endearment for him.

“Elias,” the other answered, his name deliberate and worshipping.

“Are you afraid?”

Alaiyo took his eyes from the beloved sky and gazed at him in the glowing darkness.

“Yes.” he returned the question with his eyes, Are you?

“Yes.”

“Why?” they asked at the same time, grinning at their timing.

A sigh, a limpid velvety sigh fell from Elias's secretive lips as they began to smile at him because he knew the answer and reveled in the fact that he knew to which Alaiyo returned, enjoying having his mind read. 

“I do not wish to be away from you.”

Elias laughed, a bright clear bell of a sound that brought more light to the death of the dark. The trees had begun to sway in the gentle wind, whispering, always whispering, but the sway of their leaves and the quiet harshness of the wind brought something alongside it and they knew what it meant and drew closer to each other. A street lamp in the distance flickered and went out. 

“You will never have to be away from me again,” Elias said as he brought his hand to rest against the others. Alaiyo turned his hand so that their palms could touch, aligning the lines in their delicate hands as another lamp flickered.

They lay there listening to the other breathe, studying the careful rhythm whilst holding a staring contest with the sky as they again thought of each other. Reminiscing on how they met, when they met, all they had seen and done in the week they had known each other. They adored the fate that brought them together but hated it in equal measure for having been cheated. For this was it, this was the person they had both been waiting for: The Star and The Sea. 

There was a marked, blessed drop of silence, of stillness, as the wind died. The crickets had faded. The trees had finally ceased their whispering for there was nothing left to say. The earth was dying and it wasn’t even putting up a fight.

The boys reached for each other in a rush as all the dread, the sorrow, the burning anger that they felt at the earth for not trying harder, for not being able to give them more than a week when they were promised centuries, and the fear, the inevitable fear of the end coiled tightly in the pits of their bellies and fought to make its way up their throats.

They clutched at each other with desperate hands as they aligned their heads and each reached up to hold the other's hollowed face with gentle hands as their foreheads pressed together, drinking in the eyes of the other, pushing closer and sighing, near weeping, for this was their ache. The pain of love, doomed love, the love of a stranger, pure and untempered by anything other than the here and the now with the person that was laid before you. 

One last shudder, a sigh, the last of the leaves fell and skittered past their heads as they kissed.

And all of the stars went out.