Take It All In Part II

Outside rain was lazily falling; water carefully collided with the outside of the window, enough to be heard but not hard to be disturbing. With many sounds to its disposal the rain was singing a peaceful lullaby. Laurence’s eyes were closing but he wasn’t ready to drift off to sleep, no matter how hard it was beckoning. He was too occupied with trying to understand if the rain was communicating something to him, he knew it was saying many things, its tone forever changing depending on what was being said. But now Laurence wondered if there was a message for him, telling him what to do.

 

Twenty hours ago he had made his decision. Surprisingly it was the easiest decision he has ever made in his life, he awoke in the morning after the most blissful sleep and knew that he was going to stay here with Aimada in this strange world that was always here waiting for him and he was going to do whatever he could to help. This decision was so easy to reach because in truth there was little for him to go back to. He had a few close friends, but many people he said hello to, and Aimada told him he’d be able to see his friends and family whenever he wanted, he could even go back to his job if he wanted, of course he didn’t to but the option was there. She said there was no need for him to work anymore; he’d be provided for so he chose not to go back. Laurence wasn’t against work, paying his dues, working hard to achieve nothing but he didn’t enjoy his job, often dreaming about doing more exciting things, like becoming a wildlife photographer or the driver of the Trans Siberian Express trains. Doing what he agreed to do was more than the wildest of his dreams and he was still wrapping his mind around it all, debating whether it really happened if it was all real, but this was better than sitting all day in the office, putting in long hours, staying at the same place, never moving anywhere, never being happy.

 

The gravity of his decision hasn’t hit him yet, he was still in the dark about the importance it held. If before making it however, he thought about it more and didn’t let his instinct decide he would have run, run far. Responsibilities were not his forte; he tried keeping plants alive, green and leafy creations but despite all of his efforts they withered then died. Laurence wasn’t a person to look after life, to protect anything. His mum to this day was surprised at how he managed to stay alive, he forgot to feed himself sometimes or buy food. He simply forgot to do simple things like that from time to time; more interesting things occupied his mind. A wild life photographer was the best occupation for him; it gave a chance to be surrounded by life without being responsible for it.

 

His eyes were closing now; his body and mind needed sleep. Laurence was changing, no, the greatest part of him lay dormant for all of his life and was only now awakening and so his body was coming to terms with it. He was a blind man who years after being born was gifted with the miracle of sight.

 

 

How do the days of new beginnings start? Does the sun shine brighter; do birds sing a new tune signifying this new beginning? When Laurence woke up, his first morning since having made a crucial decision, he didn’t see he sun shining, neither were the birds tweeting differently, in fact it was grey outside and nearly afternoon. After getting dressed he made his way into the living room, then the kitchen, he was ravenous but didn’t yet feel comfortable going through cupboards belonging to someone else. His hostess was no where in sight, glancing wishfully at he fridge one last time, ignoring the rambling in his stomach, he went back into the hall and knocked on a door, not too loudly so not to wake Aimada if she was asleep.
“Come in.” A female voice bid him, the door opened at his barest touch, welcoming him to step into a different reality, a domain of the one who has been waiting for him for a long time. He realised how this whole flat was like that not only this room, removed from the world outside, a safe haven.

 

With his first step he was hit by smoke, smoke of incenses, a scent of the rain forest and lavender, with a pinch of cigarettes, an expensive tobacco and fairly unusual, of a sweet smell. Before him was a strange room, filled with bookcases, cupboards and two sofas separated by a coffee table. Various green plants stood in corners, unbothered by the sweet smoke, seemingly benefiting from it. On the floor, around the coffee table were scattered cushions, with her back to the sofa sat Aimada on a purple velvety cushion.

“Sit down, have some breakfast.” She gestured at the coffee table.

On the table stood two cups of coffee, a plate full of toast, marmite, jam and pâté. He eyed the food suspiciously, how did she know he’d wake up when he did, unless she prepared the breakfast a while ago. His hunger beating the suspicion, he made his way over to the cushions and sat across from Aimada, from where Aimada’s eyes were perfectly visible. Reaching for a cup of coffee he expected it to be cold, but to his surprise it was hot, so hot he nearly burned his mouth.

“I didn’t know what you like for breakfast but you looked like a coffee man.” Smirking behind her cup she was practically gloating, his shock at finding breakfast two minutes after he woke up freshly made was clear.
He took a bite out of a plain toast, too hungry to spread it with anything, he chose not to ask Aimada how she knew when he was going to wake up, one day he’ll ask her but not when she was bursting to tell him how she knew.

 

Laurence was ravenous, this sort of hunger he has never experienced before but he tried very hard not to stuff his face and ate his toast, drunk his coffee at a polite measured pace, resisting the urge to dunk his toast in the coffee as he went.

“How are the flowers thriving in the smoke?” He wanted to converse, he needed thought for food too.

Aimada glanced around the room at the blooming flowers, breathing in the comfortable scent of tobacco and incense smoke. “They are probably used to it by now.” She smiled, taking another sip of coffee.

She has been smoking for long now, it has done no damage to her health yet, if stinging bullets didn’t kill her, a few cigarettes are likely to do her no harm.

“Is it normal?” He asked, chewing some of the remaining food. “For me to be sleeping so much and to be so hungry? I’ve slept more than a day away.”

Aimada looked into the dark depths of her hot dark liquid heaven, momentary lost by the movement of the tiny waves, coming back to the question she looked up. “I believe so. It’s like you are growing, developing, so you need to rest and gain a lot of energy, to get used to all of this.” Those dark waves beckoned her again. “No, I don’t think there is any need to worry.”

 

 

 

 

Days passed and Aimada began to ease Laurence off her magical tea, soon the barrier protecting him from the assault of pain others felt will fade, leaving him alone with all of the suffering. He needed to learn how to cope with it all, without being driven mad and then learn how to help those whose pain he took on. Aimada thoughts of ways to help him but she knew little apart from how to seek him out, wait for years to trickle down. Now they had to discover everything for themselves, in the dark with hands outstretched so not to bump one’s head on a  sharp corner. So days passed, only Laurence didn’t know how many, he slept, he ate, watched obscure movies that his heart desired and always appeared quickly in the mailing box after the initial desire, he simply took it easy.

 

On one fine evening they ended up sitting not far from where they have met, on a similar concrete block left over from construction, or this was the very spot where they have met, the ferocity of that night was so strong that details such as these, like how Laurence got there in first place, were clouded. No, Andora was sure this was the place, all the tiny details still stood out in her mind, it was the night when at long last she woke up from slumbering wait. She finally decided to take him out of the flat tonight, away from the wards she has set to protect his sanity, and into the world with people. It was late, not many souls were about, perfect conditions for a simple walk, without his senses becoming overwhelmed. He was still drinking the tea, only someone with close proximity, so far there was no one, would have any effect on him.  

They sat crossed legged across from each other, a meditative pose.

“I was thinking” It was something he has been doing very often lately, “do I also try to help bad people however I can too? However I’m going to do it, I can’t turn my back on them.” He stopped in mid sentence, seeing this stiffness come over Aimada’s features. “Can I? If I’m to shoulder the weight of the pain everyone experiences, I can’t pick and choose.”

“Some people deserve to hurt.” Aimada said a bit too harshly. “If someone brings pain upon others they deserve to get it back.”

“But some don’t know any better. All they have ever experienced in life is pain; they have been treated badly so they do the same upon others. Those people lack the knowledge of how to treat others.”

“Some people are just evil; there is no other way to explain the things I have seen. There is a difference between good and evil; most people know the difference, those who don’t, well.” She rolled her shoulders, her almost grey hair falling down to her back. “Many have the same upbringing, the same difficulties, and the same uncaring parents but then some people despite all of the difficulties become decent human beings.” Aimada looked deep into Laurence’s innocent eyes, to make her point stronger; she pierced him to the core. “Everyone should be responsible for their actions, those parents who turn their children into monsters…”

Aimada didn’t get the chance to finish her line of thought and later she forgot what she was going to say. A man, half drunk, half high, but completely off his basket, out of his mind, off his face and whatever else suggesting his intoxicated state, stumbled instead of really walking and halted two arms lengths away from them. He blinked, his eyes wide with disbelief, he rubbed at his young boyish face, trying to decide whether what he was seeing was real or not.

“Hello.” Aimada waved at him.

“Have you seen my moose?” The man asked, seeing the head shake no and a blank expressions on the two people who kept wavering from side to side, he understood their answer. “No? Okay.” He said rubbing at his eyes now sleepily, he looked at the distance. “We’re fucked then.” With nothing else to say, he left.

“Well, that was weird.” Aimada laughed.

“Weird yes.” Laurence straightened. “Do you think that was about us? That last comment.”

“Yes Laurence, some guy on magic mushrooms was able to guess your very nature, when you don’t know it yourself. But if we do see a moose we should cross the road.”

He laughed nervously. “You are right.” He placed his right hand on his knee to stop it from shaking, he was unsettled. “What’s in your nature?”

This was a question he wanted to ask for a while now, but never found the right words or the opportunity. “I mean I really don’t know much about you. I know you are very strong, very kind and helpful, protective but nothing about where you came from, how you came to the point where you have been waiting for someone like me.”

Aimada let out a sharp breath, all air escaped her body, and an invisible hand punched her ever so slightly in the stomach, penetrating her flesh. She knew this question was coming, who was she, where did she come from all of those were natural questions she wanted to avoid for as long as possible.

“I was born in France around two hundred years ago.” It was a simple answer; slightly blank not betraying the anguish she felt inside expecting disbelief and outrage to pour out of Laurence. She expected anger and to be called a liar, but those reactions didn’t come.

True, Laurence’s mouth hung open, but somewhere deep inside of his head it made sense. She didn’t feel like she was from this age and time, so removed from the bustle of modern life, unmindful of staying still, and whenever she looked at him there in her eyes he saw too much.

“And all of this time you waited? Alone?” His heart was breaking, for reasons he didn’t truly understand yet.

“Not always alone. But it was hard to keep friends when I’d leave for years because I felt the pull and the presence of a possible lead, only to find those friends aged or dead on my return, while I remained the same, having spend years hanging around in Romania because of this feeling that finally brought me somewhere.”

“There were others?” He realised this was a stupid question, he wasn’t that special, his role was the special thing about him and he was only filling it in for now.

“There were others but none of them made it as far as you. They were born to take on this role but something along the way didn’t go quite right. For whatever reason they weren’t ready or they didn’t have it in them to make the decision you have made, to have the ability to say yes or no to the question asked of them. Whatever it was it didn’t happen. Subconsciously they were probably aware of me being close by, that something was out there but seeing what it was out there wasn’t for them. Some simply didn’t reach me.”

“Why? What happened to them?”

“They died before reaching me.” Her face turned darker, old wounds reopened. “I doubt there was much I could do for them but I felt their spark of life go out, so I started the search again. One I saw die in front of me.” Her eyes were hooded; Laurence didn’t press her, wanting for her to continue at her own pace. “He was a boy, a German soldier, in occupied France. He died in my arms in fact, bullets flying over us, his fellow soldiers screaming at me in broken French to get away.” But she didn’t, she couldn’t let go of this boy who lay in her arms, his life blood flowing out of him, he was so frightened of facing the possibility of oblivion after a short life, taken away from him so quickly. She couldn’t let this child, who cried each time he fired a shot, die alone.

“You see he was but a boy, who lied about his age to get into the army, so he’d have enough money to feed his mother and younger siblings. This I grasped from his dying breath. Then I crawled away to lick my wounds and started again.”

Her life was full of waiting, it involved mostly that and seeking, constantly searching, she never halted unless she needed to heal. When she left the bloody field of her homeland, with not only one young boy slain upon it, she crawled to an abandoned house, bullets were lodged in her flesh and bones, but they began to force their way out and fell out of her. It was an excruciating; she lost her consciousness often, waking up to find the bullets on the floor in pools of blood besides her. Those scars never disappeared, together with many others; they still haunted her, wailing.

“How did you find out what lay ahead of you?” His mind was whirling and he was trying to grasp the right question, not wanting to offend but needing to know more. How was this humanly possible to live for so long, showing nothing of the age? This can be the only chance to ask her questions and for her to answer them so openly.

“I woke up one morning and had the need to walk, in this one specific direction so I did. Didn’t get far though, I had no food, no spare clothing, no money. I went back home, my parents were so distraught, thinking me missing, dead even.”

Yes, these were the memories she hasn’t thought of for a while, the strangeness she felt at being a young woman wandering alone, in a world that frowned upon such independence. But she craftily avoided all unnecessarily attention, passed under the radar of those who might have sought to do her harm. She walked and waited amongst shadows.

“Soon after I left for good, I couldn’t sleep, eat, do anything and my parents of courses wanted to marry me off, children and a husband would have gotten in the way of me searching.”
Aimada paused then, no more willingness to talk, it was a moment for reflection. This was an open ocean, Laurence only began to wade within it, he’ll have to trod carefully, testing the ground, there was so much he didn’t know about Aimada, she must have many stories to tell, so much to teach him, there was so much for him to learn about himself too, this was the most frightening part of it all. He lived with himself for the last twenty seven years and was only beginning to get to know who he was.

 

A distraction came over Laurence, stealing all of his attention, although he so badly wanted to ask Aimada various pressing questions, he couldn’t concentrate on a single thought. She felt this distraction too, something trickled through his shield, he felt someone, and he felt something coming from someone.
Rising simultaneously they walked towards one of the tower blocks; it stood among others just like it. A row among rows of spires, thrust in the ground, growing towards the moon. They walked towards the rear of the building; one of the emergencies exits rather than the entrance. On the steps, under thin, rusty, tiny blankets lay a person; a hat covered head sticking out slightly.
They froze, halting their steps, not able to move, breath. Here in front of their eyes was the stark reality of injustice and unfairness. The magical tea eased off, letting Laurence to feel the pain of this almost broken person, who was still somehow alive. He felt no evil emit from this woman, nothing but awfully bad luck, of being born in a faraway land where she was prosecuted for trying to live her life and change it for the better, then after her attempts began to slightly succeed, came the torture, even more pain than what she has faced before. But there were miracles in life still, she escaped, her family got together enough money and she fled to London. Only this miracle didn’t last long, she was quickly refused asylum. She was faced with a choice, go back home to an almost certain death or stay in a country she wasn’t wanted in, just like the place she has fled, a strange place where she faced unknown dangers, with no place to call her own, no four walls surrounding her at night, no bed, no security, no food. And the pain was still here, a flood of tears, there were rapes and humiliation, no matter what happened she had no one to turn to. She was alone, in a foreign land, forever cold, forever hungry, and forever frightened. There was no light at the end of the tunnel yet she still forced out each breath, still fought on.

All of this and more Laurence felt in a heartbeat, he opened himself, burning the shield in order to feel. He was close to tears, what could he do to help this woman? To take her away from all of this suffering, how to give her a normal life? He had no answers. Aimada was too distressed, through this link she felt what he was feeling, something to ponder at a later time. This was not the first forgotten human being she has seen, most likely not the last. Aimada went into her bag, taking out her purse, she emptied it out of money, slipping off her jacket, and she put the money into its inner pocket. Seeing the feet sticking out from under the small blanket, she judged them to be of the same size as hers, she proceeded to take off her shoes. Laurence followed suit by removing his jacket, he wrapped everything in it, attempting to make the bundle small and insignificant, so no one took any notice of it, nor wanted to steal it. Aimada prayed to all of the natural forces in the world please bless this woman, let no more harm come to her. Laurence emptied his pockets too; they both wished they had more money with them to leave for this woman, enough money for all people in the world who needed it.
Leaving the bundle between the woman and the wall of the building she should be in, they left. Laurence wanted to walk slightly away, for the woman to wake up when they were out of sight, so she could better hide the things. She did wake up they went far enough. Disbelief wasn’t enough of a word to describe what she was feeling. She felt no pity behind the gesture, only support and kindness. Tears began to stream down her weathered face and she clutched the gifts close to her heart. She will be warmer this winter.

Aimada’s bare feet avoided a puddle; at least she was wearing socks.

“Here, get on my back, let me carry you.” Laurence offered.

She shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t be silly.”

Aimada let herself be persuaded by that tiny argument; she had no strength to say otherwise. She got on Laurence’s back, clasping her hands around his neck, they set off home.

Author's Note

The second part of 'Take It All In'.