Purple

A funny thing about life: we only uncover what we're searching for when we are eventually resigned to never finding it.

He had never been more certain of anything in his entire life. He, who couldn’t decide whether to wear tartan or plaid socks in the morning. He, who wasn’t sure if his favourite colour was dusky purple or eggshell white, who couldn’t properly decipher what she had needed to be happy with him. So, she had left him, taking with her their whole life amid a flourish of her deep violet skirts. Her whole wardrobe had consisted of shades ranging from lavender to mauve to eggplant purple, the colour that most flattered her beautiful skin. For the time being then, his favourite colour was eggshell white.

 He, who had never had a drop of certainty or decisiveness colour his life thus far, was absolutely positive of his verdict for the first time in all his years. He knew it in the pit of his stomach, in the way that he felt a deep affirmation echoing in his bones, straight down to the marrow. He was in fact positive of many things at once, which collectively led to his final inference. He determined that all of the bestselling authors were gravely mistaken in their generic descriptions of human hearts feeling like they had skipped a beat during moments of truth; he felt rather that his heart had simply evaporated straight out of his thorax, into thin air. His hands gripped the newspaper he was reading what felt like only a fraction tighter than seconds before, yet it still protested by crinkling loudly. In the quiet of the university library, it sounded like a gunshot. Several studious heads craned around to fix him with accusatory glares, before bending dutifully back down to their work.

He smiled apologetically and slid down several inches in his hard plastic chair, to better conceal himself behind the paper. He didn’t particularly enjoy being noticed more than was strictly necessary. When he was certain that he was no longer being eyed by any thesis-crazed students, he warily folded down the top right corner to make certain she was still there. She was, and he breathed a quiet sigh of relief, fervently grateful that his noisy newspaper antics hadn’t caused her to leave, in search of a less distracting place of study. He had never much enjoyed when people left.

She wasn’t beautiful, that much was apparent. Ugly couldn’t describe her either; rather, she could be depicted as nothing more or less than plain. Mousy brown hair was pulled back carelessly from her thin face, which was partially hidden behind thick glasses. Her small mouth was pursed in concentration, and there were creases of stern concentration in her forehead as she examined the scattered papers and books laid out before her. She clearly wasn’t experienced in the way of dressing herself, either. She wore a lumpy, mud-coloured sweater which clung to her scrawny shoulders in a manner that was not particularly appealing.

No, it had nothing to do with her appearance, he thought. He methodically scanned his thoughts, trying to select the appropriate information, a skill he had developed naturally as a consequence of his field of study. She was seated no more than 10 feet away, and yet he focused on her hands as she scribbled notes and flipped pages; they were beautiful, even if she was not. Delicate and long-boned, white as the pages they painstakingly searched through, with a nondescript ring around her index finger.  Her skin resembled porcelain coloured silk, stretched tightly over bone, he mused. He could almost trace the blue of her veins, converging down to the ulnar artery in the middle of the underside of her delicate wrist. A quick glance at her neck revealed that she was translucent-skinned there too; he could swear he saw the movement her pulsating carotid artery as well, transporting blood in the timely and systematic fashion that the body had of going about its business.

As he continued his scrutiny, she raised her pencil to chew delicately on the eraser, a gesture mirrored countless times by his own students. And yet, there was something about this specific young woman nibbling on her pencil eraser that unnerved him. He realized something of incredible magnitude as he watched her.

He knew her.

         No, of course he didn’t. How daft of him. He had never seen this girl in his entire life, and he had been credited often for his outstanding memory. He was much too young to be of age for the onset of Alzheimer’s, of this he was assured. Yet everything she did, from the way she absently rubbed her hand across her mouth in consternation to the way she occasionally reached up and smoothed an eyelid with her index finger, momentarily displacing her glasses, seemed eerily familiar, as if he had indeed known her before, and known her well. Every slight gesture or motion she made only hardened his resolve. He didn’t see how it was possible, as every fibre and neuron embedded in his brain screamed in opposition, protested against the conclusion that he was inevitably hurtling towards.

         Arriving to this conclusion, he contemplated, was not difficult nor altogether unpleasant. It was both as natural and dangerous as standing at the edge of a precarious cliff and letting himself fall forward. The relaxation of the rigidity of his muscles, his gradual disregard for the outcome of his choice, and gravity towing him forward enticingly were all a part of a larger purpose. Logic and reason begged him to take a step back, to rethink, to reassess. He paid them no heed.

           As she removed her glasses to clean them, she at once confirmed what he had unconsciously known all along. The chances were astronomical, of course. So astronomical, in fact, that any other man of science would scoff at the likelihood of such an event taking place. However slim the chances were, it was possible. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, having not moved in the slightest since he had peeked around the corner of his paper. The funny thing about science, he thought, was that every now and again, you could be proved wrong. As rigid and unyielding it may seem, you were proved that exceptions to rules existed. They could be dangerous, upsetting the balance of all you thought you knew. They could be striking.

         And without her glasses obscuring her features, he saw she was. She wasn’t a fan of making good physical impressions, clearly, but she possessed an altered version of the same quiet beauty that had entranced him only once before. The comeliness that had once lured him away from his work, with the same large chocolate brown eyes, gently sloping nose, porcelain skin, and fragile yet elegant hands, with the ring the he now recognized as easily as if he had seen it yesterday. Her mouth was different, yet startlingly similar to the mouth he saw in the mirror each day. Small, with a much fuller lower lip. She put her glasses back on and pushed them up her nose, and he did the same with his. Was her vision the same as his, as well?

         At last, he folded his newspaper, not caring if it sounded like an army of battle tanks firing their rounds. He proceeded to get up shakily from his chair. He had only been observing her for a little over five minutes, his watch informed him, and yet no amount of controlled evidence could have told him what he didn’t already know. At the noise of the folding newspaper, she had glanced at him fleetingly with her wonderful eyes, but had promptly returned to her work, unperturbed. Some students glared at him again, and he cheerfully found that he just didn’t give a damn. He placed her at about 25 years of age, which corresponded perfectly with the amount of time that had passed since his world had last been devastated so profoundly. Since she had left him, her violet skirts swishing about her ankles. Astronomical. But, as always, possible.

         He took one step, another, and hesitated only for a moment. What could he possibly say to her? She would never believe him. He smiled suddenly, realizing another important similarity. She was attending medical school, after all. He could see from where she inherited her physical attributes. Her academic interests however...The same person from whom she had gotten her mouth and poor vision, he thought ruefully.

         He squared his shoulders and started toward her, with the intention of first asking her if she needed any assistance with her work. A good, solid conversation starter. All he needed was an opening, and God willing, he would figure it out from there.

         He was also one hundred percent sure that, rather than a brown sweater, she would look radiant in a deep violet blouse.

His favourite colour.

Author's Note

My first stab at writing in a long time...forgive how messy it is. I put 'technical' to rest for a bit and went with a feeling. It felt nice to write this.