Prologue

                The one who taught me happiness was not happy. I had no way to know - he radiated joy - but his shining face will follow me for the rest of my life. His eyes will always watch. His footsteps will be always present in my dreams, his voice in mine. His dreams will forever be in my words.

                He was a true artist; he lived and breathed in color. Paint flowed from his fingertips like music, wrapping around an ancient tree, a mirrored lake, a dragon of unbelievable hues over blank canvas. He was the one who taught me to form fantastic adventures from black ink.

                His skin was fair and smooth, like aged porcelain, and his hair was burnt corn, bleached by the sun, curling around his face. His eyes were not light, not the expected blue at all. They were a soft, deep, suffocating velvet. Endlessly black. Dark. Darker against his pale skin and hair than the lines I slashed and spiraled across the white paper.

                He spoke in poetry. His voice was music. He was a child of the clouds and the spring. Whenever I heard him, I strove to grasp the beauty, the rarity of the sound – an inescapable desire to capture the flowing notes led me to empty pages of glaring lines. It was he who led me to pick up the pen. His voice guided me to write.

                Though his life was a violent storm, he possessed a placid heart. He who was content to sit in a field, the color of his wild locks, for hours on end was the one who taught me to love the rain. He who drowned his sorrows in the colors of the world was the one who showed me how to find happiness in the wind. He who faced his monsters every day gave me the power to vanquish mine, and he is why I love the rain and bear the sun a grudge.

Author guidance for This story

For situations involving IM-ing, I tried to reproduce the grammatically incorrect way in which it is actually preformed. I hope it does not detract.

updated Oct 14 '09 by Lyre