As if Janus

Zoe tells of meeting Ceru for the first time.

On the day prior to Karaoke, Von and Zoe spend the entire day together. Below is the first of what I hope are many snippets of that conversation:

Von: Tell me how you met my son?

Zoe: (with a tear filled smile she searched Von's face as if to judge his capacity for what she was about to say) I was walking one rainy morning to the center. The streets were crowded, gray with mindlessness. I watched an old female hynerian slip and fall. I started to move toward her when the utter heartlessness of the crowd, like a river flowing pass a boulder, bypassed her. She looked up, rain in her face, hair white, wet, sticking to her languid cheeks. I watched her hand rise, fingers outstretched; and I watched in shock as leg after leg brushed her hand aside. I was too far to see the look on her face. I was too frozen to move, my mind racing, wondering, is this what we have come to. (Zoe paused)

Von: (sitting patiently, his eyes nova intense, his mind Tao focused) Please continue.

Zoe: She was dressed in a gray overcoat and wore a black cap. Then as if the sea swallowed her whole, she disappeared within the calloused wave of indifference. I dropped my bags and started running, bouncing off of irritated faces as if spume off implacable breakers. When I reached the spot where she had fallen, she was gone.

Von: (lifts chin, eyes rolling along the bottom of his quivering rims)

Zoe: I looked left and right. Nothing. Then I heard a voice, his voice. I couldn't make out the words, but the tone was unmistakable and I watched in awe as the sea of grey parted before his words as if he were Janus himself, and the faces of indifference stood stuck like broken clocks. And from that parting I saw him, jaw set, arms held as a lift, and cradled to his chest was that old hynerian, her arms wrapped around his neck, her eyes looking up in supplication, apparently as in shock as I was. I knew right then, in that dying world, there was hope. And, as strange as this is going to sound, I knew, there walked the father of my child.

Von: (looked down as if her words were a sacred blessings)

Zoe: So I followed him and I watched from a distance. As he succored the one in his arms, my heart beat as such to ache, as if the vision was but a dream and I felt a fear, a fear that if I blinked, all before me would disappear. And then--

Von: What?

Zoe: And then he turned, saw me standing as if my feet were nailed to the floor and called out. You know what he said?

Von: (shook head)

Zoe: He said, "Hey, I could use some help over here." And you know what, he was looking right at me. I'll never forgot that look of love in his eyes as he knelt over the one before him. And you know what else?

Von: Tell me.

Zoe: (with tears in her eyes) I see that same look right now.

Reviews

[AutumnStorm]

Oh gosh. How will I ever hope to tell you how this consumed me..A direct line to the heart. Had one never read of these characters, were they merely named strangers, the touch would be as deep. Caught behind Zoe's eyes watching the elderly Hynerian, passers-by filled with despair, so rained upon by their troubles it fills their vision and there is that same frantic hope that it cannot yet be true, that someone will stop and then someone does, and the pride and love and flood of a hundred heat-giving emotions that Von must feel at hearing what he knew without the detail (now being given, ie how he knew his son would go on, live) is felt so strongly, it is as though through the writing you bestow into our own the two hearts that share the love. 'The world entire' you reach the heights of in this deeply affecting piece of writing. Beautifully laid out, perceptible (with words you paint a world that is lived within) and so very, very poignant. You made me cry for the best of reasons.