[iippo]: 207.Human-People.15 Minutes Early

Fifteen Minutes Early

Swirling whiteness. Feels like sitting inside a cloud. The senses are clashing, it looks like it should feel soft and cozy, looks like it should have a pleasant sound, perhaps a low comfortable hum. I block out the unpleasant sensations and the facts I know about snow as I sit here waiting.

I don't know how long I've been here. Sillyly, I think I should have brought a book with me to read while I wait. It'd be too dark to read here, but I think it all the same. I think that one should go nowhere without a book, just in case one will have to wait for any reason. I have actually lived by that decree: I've read in airports and bus stops; in schools, hospitals, and homes; in a wrecked car waiting for rescue, waiting for something, waiting for anything. The thought makes me smile, makes me warm on the inside (though that is just a figure of speech).

But this time I don't have a book with me. What a shame. And with that thought I resign to my wait.

***

He arrives. He comes right up close before he greets me, and he moves slowly. I can see him coming miles away. Some kind of alarm in my brain or subconscious or somewhere has been switched off: I think mildly that I should run or fight or something. Instead I sit and wait and watch him come.

When he reaches me, he smiles gently with a quizzical look on his face.
-"Have I kept you waiting?" He asks with two parts amused, one part incredulous and a pinch of serious. I notice how attractive his eyes are.
-"Oh, not at all," I reply with a polite smile.
-"Have you been here long?"
I look at my wrist – I've never worn watches, not even the really nice, expensive one my mother gave me for graduation, that watch is still in the top drawer of my parents' home. I never told anyone that I'd only really want a Batman watch, like the kind you see children wear, or one of those Mickey Mouse watches where his arms are the hands of the clock. -"No, maybe fifteen minutes," I tell him. As far as I know it could have been fifteen days I've been here, but it doesn't matter. He is here now. -"I'm always fifteen minutes early for everything," I continue, "it's a family trait. If you tell my father that we're going at two, he'll be sat in the car with the engine running at quarter to two, thinking 'where is everyone?'" He laughs and sits down opposite me.

***

-"Not a lot of people realise how big a difference the choice of place makes. You've picked quite a nice spot," he says after a moment. I wonder if I should thank him, if that was a compliment – I can't decide so I say nothing. I sit back, wondering what happens next.

We sit in silence for a moment or two, and I let my thoughts wander. It is curious how the mind feels free when the body isn't constantly voicing its demands of "I'm hungry", "I'm cold", "I'm in pain". My thought-process leads me to a question, which I blurt out:
-"Do you reckon there are wolves here?"
He looks around as if checking for wolves. -"Yes, probably. Definitely bears, but they'll be hibernating at this time of year."
I care very little for the thought of bears, and think about wolves. I try to remember if wolves eat dead meat or whether they always kill their prey. I get an automated thought "if I had my laptop I could quickly check on Google..." before I catch myself, and sternly tell myself that if I had a laptop and internet access, I wouldn't be sat here with him, thinking about the habits of wolves. I come to a silent conclusion that there must be at least some scavenger animals in this forest. I like the thought, the natural circle of smaller animals eating the larger animal after its death; nothing gets wasted, everything is integrated again into the system, no leftovers, no remains.

-"Not a lot of people realise how much choice they have over this matter," he says, interrupting my thoughts. Piqued, I want to ask something to keep him talking, but I can't think of a question. I also feel that if I ask him to elaborate – to explain something I already understood, or made a reply that'd make his comment seem daft without further explanation – he's know and lose respect for me. -"You know I don't mean people just offing themselves or anything like that," he continues as if reading my mind, "I mean more subtle choices. Like how you ended up in here."

I mistake the end of his sentence for a question, and start to think of how I got here. Not just here, this fell itself, because quite simply I walked here: walked without rhyme or reason to do so, walked and walked until I couldn't walk no more, assured that there was something to this walk; but also how did I get to the point of deciding to walk here, to this fell; how did I even come to think of this fell in the first place? It is just another fell, or a hill, or a mountain, or an isolated area in the north. Particulars don't matter so much. Walking matters. And the fact that he happened to find me here... is slightly irrelevant. So my "choice of place" is really just a coincidence. Then again, I don't believe in coincidence, do I?

I can't explain this walking thing, though. I've just kind of learnt to accept that I have ideas and I think of things that other people wouldn't – and not only that, but those things and ideas are clear as days to me, while they make no sense to others. But that's just what I'm like: I am the kind of person who would walk out of her hotel room, down the road, off the road and down the path, off the path and up the fell, down the fell and up another fell again until-
"And therein lies the reward - or the punishment - that people don't seem to understand," he interrupts my thoughts again. "The only thing that is inevitable is the consequence of a choice."
I wonder if this is a rehearsed spiel he is giving me, because I feel like he is preaching to the choir. I get my legs into a more comfortable position and lean to my left, supporting my torso with my arm.

***

-"It's remarkable, I don't think we have ever even met before – not properly at least," he tells me with a surprised tone of voice. "Most people get quite acquainted with me before."
-"Do you know why that might be? I mean my case, not other people's," I add to my question as he opens his mouth to explain the bleeding obvious.
-"You tell me."
-"I have always kind of avoided... well, those kinds of situations... where we could have met. I think it's more the society, we are so removed from all that, it's all gone very quiet. Like, we pay someone else to deal with it." I struggle to explain.
-"That's one elaborate way of saying you're a coward."
My blood would have boiled over if I hadn't been sitting in snow for such a long time and therefore being mostly switched off by the cold. -"I am not afraid of you!"
-"No, but you've always been afraid of life. People blame everything on society, or government, or religion, or pretty much anything but themselves."
-"How dare you! I have never-! Don't you realise ow I have-!"
-"Shut up. I can say what I said because I know and you know that you haven't lived your life to the fullest. You have always shied away, you didn't take the risks you could have, you didn't experience the rush of excitement or the awkwardness of new things, you never let go-"
-"What I never let go of was the goal. You don't fool me. I know what life is for, and what is beyond it. I'm sick of 'living life to the max' and all this other nonsense, of people thinking that life is slipping right past them. Life did not slip past me. I know what I've done and I know in whom I've placed my trust. And believe you me, I have no regrets that I haven't dealt with appropriately, and I've done my part and I've laid up in store the needful things: my conscience is clear, and I am not afraid of you."

If he is displeased with my words, I can't tell, and I can't hold on to the heat of the moment either, so I allow my thoughts to be subdued.
-"Like I said earlier, you're a bit different," he states simply, and we fall into a silence again.
As previously, I can't tell if he was paying me a compliment. I had always struggled with that, different. Always different. Strange. Odd. Peculiar. No matter what the context or the social circle. Sometimes I'd taken pride in my uniqueness, at other times I'd wanted to belong, to blend in; at others still, pained to the core because of it. Outcast. Alone. Weird. And even now he calls me different. Tears burned their trails down my cheeks like acid, but I could only muster two – I wasn't one to cry at this time.
-"It's ok. In the end everyone is equal."
I scoff at the irony of his statement, and he shrugs nonchalantly.
-"You know what I mean. Of course I don't treat everyone the same. Sometimes there's no time. Sometimes they don't even see me."
-"So I'm so special that I have the honour?" I ask sarcastically. I'm growing tired of this conversation, of him, and also just tired in general. My eyelids are heavy and I struggle to keep my gaze focused. I yawn and lean a bit lower, now using my elbow as a support instead of my hand. I catch a glimpse of my hand, and quickly tuck it away at the sight.
-"Yes, sorry. This part is rarely pretty," he apologises, and I nodded slowly, accepting.
-"That's ok, I've had plenty of pretty times in my life."
He laughs, an explosive laugh. -"That you have."

***

We fall silent again. I have no idea how long we've been here. I look at the sky, pretending to be able to tell the time from the stars, but of course I can't. I was never countrysidey enough to have developed all those really useful wilderness skills, but I didn't have the city-slick skills either. I find myself in a downward spiral of thought: I also had no kitchen-skills, nor road-skills, nor bedroom-skills; I was terrible with kids, and with animals, and with men. The few things that I was good at I am suddenly unable to appreciate, and I find myself wondering a) how on earth had I got this far, and b) why on earth had so many people liked me.

He interjects my thoughts again. -"Well, I suppose I should be going. You are tired, and it is about time..."
-"Aren't you supposed to do something?" I ask with a meaningful gesture.
-"Oh. Well, that really depends on the person. Some want a big doo-dah with lights and trumps, some want aggression: blazing guns and fights. Some want a cuddle or a kiss," he must have seen me pull a face, for he laughs and adds "no, it's not very you at all, is it" and I shake my head with fierce fidelity. "Some want the symbolic thing, with you know, scythes and hour-glasses and candles and what-not. So it's really up to you."

I think for a moment, and for a while I reckon that maybe I should ask him to give me some kind of token – a lily or a coin perhaps – but then I realised that if I really was that kind of person, he would have done that, instead of just got up to leave. So I shrug and lay back down again.

-"How about... you lie down, and I wait and won't leave until you've fallen asleep?" He suggests with a soft voice. I smile; such a beautiful idea. It makes me think of all the children in the world who have such attention from their parents everynight. I lie down, and he takes a blanket and gently covers me with it. And true to his word, he doesn't leave my side until the snow-blanket created by the stinging blizzard in this forsaken forest hides my frozen corpse from view, and I slip into eternity.