Memory in a photograph

How can you know a place you have never been?  How can you feel the wind, taste the air, and even know what you felt while you were there?  Onyx Redwood stared at the well-worn photograph.  Its edges were marred by age and the contents faded with too much exposure to the elements.  But what exposure? She looked about the musty basement, her eyes falling on her footsteps in the dust.  The darkness of this place was shrouded by the heavy rugs held over the few windows that would have allowed some warmth, if not at least light.  But there was no light was there?  Even now, there was no bulb in the socket, and yet she could see as though there were.  It was always that way.  Their home was always a dark fortress.  As a child, she became used to it.  Her parents treated it as a game to find where she was, but she could always see and they seemed to marvel at it.  Pleased by it, many a time.  Those were happy times.  Times that would not have been thought of as particularly happy until the sadness followed.  But she had no recollection of those times.  It was as though her life was interrupted and when she returned, everyone knew something was different.  Everyone, but her.  Her eyes returned to the photograph.  She knew.  She knew this photograph was the key to knowing what happened.  Why in the blink of a moment she was suddenly treated differently.  Why everyone would become cautious as though she were too fragile to anger or perhaps too strong in response?  It was unnerving, but no one would explain anything.  And now, though she wasn’t sure of the right question to ask, she is holding the answer.  Her heart began racing and she looked at the box from which this picture was found.  She needed to know more.  She needed answers, so she dove into the worn box and would not stop until every inch of dust in this darkness was upended.  

Harla Redwood stood in the kitchen, breathing hard over the sink.  She sent Onyx to find her father’s cravate.  It was more than just a simple piece of cloth.  It was her lineage.  It was how all of their kind knew who she was.  It would allow her to go home and no one would associate Onyx with her.  She focused on breathing after she felt her head get light.  The hyperventilation was something new in this plane, among other things associated with panic.  She had never known what it was to feel something so overwhelming until she found love.  But that is what love does.  It makes you feel things you never knew and want things you shouldn’t have.  But with all the obstacles, love finds a way.  They found a way and knew that it would shorten their time, but at best, it would give them the quality they needed.  And now the time is up.  She stared at the grave marker in the backyard through the window.  He isn’t there.  It isn’t the way of her people to mark a place, but it is of this world and she thought it kind.  As she stared at it, she is grateful she placed it where he died and went home to his Elysian fields.  She can look at it and remember how he felt when they held each other and stared into his eyes until the light faded and he turned into the wind. It was what they always knew would happen.  Now that he is gone, it is time for her to go too, but leaving Onyx was never something she wanted to think about.  Never something she could prepare for.  Never something she wanted to do.  But it must be done.  She stared at the marker and remembered.  Remembered how much they loved and focused on that until the panic faded.

Onyx sat on the bottom step with the small box clutched to her chest staring out into the basement.  She tried to focus on something other than going upstairs and asking her mother about the contents.  Her eyes landed on the bicycle she learned to ride.  Tears filled her vision as she remembered her father teaching her on a bright spring day.  Her mom stayed inside, unable to deal with the force of the sun’s light.  It was why she thought she could see so well in the dark.  Something passed to her from her mother.  But with sunglasses, she could be with her father in the sun.  He didn’t need them, but he wore them as she did.  It was their time.  The sun would always be their time.  She saw the bassinet near the bicycle and had no memory of being in it, but she could imagine her parents looking down on her with love and adoration.  It was how they always looked at her - until the moment they didn’t.  Oh their love for her was clear, but there was now a fear that wasn’t present before… Something had changed.  She refocused her efforts from the thoughts when she felt her breathing become erratic again.  The bookcases were lined with boxes of memories of her 25 years in this home.  But she knew it was longer for her parents.  Much longer, but they would never say.  Her eyes drifted into the box she held.  At the top was her father’s cloth that he wore about his neck during her childhood.  When did he stop wearing it?  Her brow furrowed together as she concentrated on bringing the memory from the edge.  It was on the precipice of falling into the abyss of forgotten, but she would not let it go.  She had to know and had to remember.  Too much had been lost to that abyss.  Too many answers that she needed now.  Now that her father was dead and her mother lost to her memories.  Gingerly she picked up the cravate, handling it more fragile than it was.  She looked at the patterns of purple and gold with swirls of pink and blue fading through the dyes.  She smiled as she remembered him.  She brought the cloth to her nose and inhaled the scent of her father.  Her tears washed into the cloth.  “I love you so much, Dad.  I miss you.  I wish you were still here.”  She snapped her face from the cloth as she felt it tingle.  Like tiny insects crawling through it, but there was nothing on it.  The gold seemed to shine that much brighter.  Increasingly more until she had to squint her eyes from the light when at that moment, she saw a light come from the cloth and flash to the ground. Her eyes opened to show a man kneeling in the same colors as her father’s cravate with sparks of light continuing to rain down on him from some unseen cloud.  She was speechless, but he was not.  He raised his head and smiled at her with her father’s mouth.  “Greetings, niece.  It is so good to see you, again.”  She tilted her head at him in confusion, “Again?”  

Harla felt him enter the house and her eyes darted to the closed basement door.  It was too soon, but it was right on time.  She never imagined Onyx would know how to call her father’s kin.  She thought they would have a few meals and in time when Onyx was ready she would call them, but now there is no time.  The panic faded and left in its wake a bitter sorrow that left her quietly sobbing over the kitchen sink staring at the place where her world ended.  

Onyx, narrowed her eyes with suspicion.  “How did you get here?  Who are you?”  “May I rise, princess?”  Her eyebrows shot up, “What?”  He smiled and said it more slowly as though she was daft.  “May I please rise, princess of Deraset?”  She slowly nodded her head.  Speechless, but again he was not.  He slowly stood and looked around.  “Well, I am sure Alaerex knew what he was doing when he decided to stay here.  But it is a bit dark for our kind.”  Now it was Onyx’s time to stare at him as though he were daft.  “This is a basement.  We live above it.”  He opened his mouth in a silent ‘agh’, then closed it and waited.  They stared at each other for a few long moments, studying each other.  She wondered what he must think of her.  A so-called princess in a comfortable hoodie with the latest culture icon on the front and leggings with fuzzy slippers.  He was dressed more the part.  His face was covered with a beard and mustache so perfectly manicured that she wondered if he had servants tending to it daily.  His hair in a Cesar cut like her father's, but he was less closely trimmed.  The resemblance was remarkable, but they were no doubt brothers.  He stood with a posture her father tried to train her to assume and held a wooden staff out of place with his regal attire of the purple and gold cloth draped about his body.  The wood was worn, but it looked strong.  As though the age strengthened it and gave it something beyond its appearance.  She was about to say something when the basement door opened and her mother began to descend.  

The pain seemed too great to bear and yet she had to.  She gripped the sink as though it would anchor her from the Tsunami happening all around her.  But the sink could not offer the balance she so desperately sought.  That balance was gone. Taken from her by the sands of time that would not heed her request to stop.  She thought of when they met. An unlikely union.  As though the universe conspired to bring them together.  Two sides of a coin.  Kingdoms were so different that they remained at peace as none wanted what the other had.  But they never mingle.  Until then, it was clear why they could not.  The sacrifice was great but they were willing to take it.  Harla gathered the strength from the memory and spoke to the marker.  “Her time has come, Ala.”  She smiled and spoke again, “Alaerex.”  There was power in a name.  A name that held so much that they rarely spoke it fully out loud.  But now, there was no fear.  All they feared has come to pass and there was nothing now, but good-byes and sadness.  She straightened herself, adjusted her clothing, and took a deep breath, then headed to the basement door and opened it.

Harla descended the steps.  Her eyes squint at the bright dust falling around her beloved’s brother.  She lifted her head as she stood on the 3rd step to address him, “Greetings, Levian, Prince of Deraset.”  Even at this level, she was taller than her.  Their kind was tall.  Just like Alaerex.  Just like Onyx.  Levian looked over at her.  Harla’s skin paled from the lack of sun.  One would believe her dead if her eyes didn’t shine bright with blackness that consumed every part.  He bowed his head, then slowly kneeled as he spoke, “Greetings, Queen of Vatcho.  The loss of your Intimate profoundly saddens me.”  Harla smiled at him.  She always liked Levian.  She was glad he came above all the others.  “Rise, Levian.  You know I have given my sister the title.  I am no more Queen at Vatcho than I am here.”  Levian stood and she spoke to him with an expression that held back too many tears, “I too am profoundly saddened by the loss of your brother.” Levian came forward and took her hand.  He clasped it between the two of his and said, “As I said then, we knew this would come, but the joy of the life he has led brings comfort in these times.”  They nod at each other in quiet understanding, then they turn to face Onyx who is staring at them with wide eyes.  Her eyes are not as all-encompassing black as her mother’s but fills enough to know she is otherworldly.  Like her mother… and like her father.   Harla releases Levian’s hand who steps back.  A welcome gesture as her eyes were beginning to water from the bright proximity.  Alaerex learned to subdue his brightness around her and it became so natural for him to be dim outside of the sun that it was not a problem.  But Levian never had such needs.  She stepped down and sat on the step with her daughter.  Onyx smirked at her, “A queen, huh?”  

Onyx would like to say she felt as lighthearted as she spoke, but she didn’t.  Something was happening and while she should be excited, a sense of dread filled her.  Her mother smiled at her shyly.  Her mother was a beautiful petite woman.  Jet black hair and eyes to match against alabaster skin and lips so red, she never needed lipstick.  Her father would make her blush often to see the immense color light up her cheeks, almost like a China doll.  Sometimes he would call her that.  His little “China doll”.  But she was more like her father.  Skin darkened from the sun and eyes light like glacier ice.  Her hair was black like her mother’s instead of the sun brown of her father's, and her eyes were a mixture of his color and hers.  Eyes that looked at her with sadness.  Onyx looked down at their joined hands as she spoke.  It was easier not to see the despair as she told her what she knew.  “I have to leave, don’t I?  You aren’t going to be able to come with me.”  Harla spoke quietly, “No, Onyx.  I cannot.  My people would not accept or understand my union with your father and had to be assumed dead.  My sister took my place and is the only one who knows what happened.  My parents could not be trusted.  But your father’s family is more forgiving and accepts you as their own and part of their family.”  Onyx looked at their joined hands.  As different as the sun and moon.  “Is it because I look like them?”  Harla released her hand to grab her child’s chin, “You listen to me, Onyx Redwood, you are our child.  You look like the best of both of us.  We knew you would favor him and the Gods graced us with that despite what wasn’t meant to be.  That you look more like those who are accepting of you is not shameful.  It is a burden your parents have placed upon you that makes it easier when we cannot be there.”  Onyx looked at her mother.  “Will you stay here?  Can I come to visit?”  Harla smiled.  “I cannot go home and I cannot go with you, but the best memories of my life are here and it isn’t such a bad place to stay.”  “What if I don’t want to go now?”  

Harla stared at her daughter trying to remember her as she is now.  They have so many pictures through the years, but somehow in these last moments, she needed this memory.  A memory can be so much more than a photograph.  She stroked her daughter’s hair which felt so much like her own.  “Onyx, you must go.  You didn’t know it, but you summoned him here through your father’s cravate.  It was made with his aura and when you cry and call out for him, the family will come.  You have called them and Levian cannot return empty-handed.  You must go or others will come until you return with them and assume your place.”  “What place is that?  A princess?”  Harla could hear her daughter’s voice ascend with panic.  Yet another thing she likely inherited from her.  “Your choice is your own.  You were born into that station and you can either make it your own or choose another path.”  She smiled the added, “Your father and I did.”  Onyx looked at her mother then suddenly turned to her and held her tight.  The box and it contents fell to the floor.  Harla hugged her and as she looked down, her eyes fell to the picture that was taken a few years ago in the Red Sword fields of Derasat with her father and his family as she accepted the crown on her head.  She will return and she will remember.