Author's Preface
With the lingering scent of lavender, she left a man waking up to a longing for the same bliss he had felt on a Monday. He received not a whiff of it, but the cold screen of a device that stared at him with not a hint of emotion. His fingers moved and his fingers stopped. She had warned him of coincidences; she had warned him, citing a previous incident. Back in the middle of their youth, both of them, naive and immature, had avoided certain death by a moment as thin as a strand of hair. Not one to repeat the same mistake, the man waited patiently for his beloved lover, with an ache that never left. Perhaps it was just the longing every person in love had or perhaps the man had sensed the threat.
A day passed by without her, and a month had passed for him. This month was filled with a wee thirst for lavender. Exhausted he was, yet he pushed on, not looking back twice or once. He gained knowledge; he believed when the year would end, he would be rewarded for his effortsβa cost that was necessary.
A day turned into two, the end of which was a year in his book, and his desire only ever grew. During this time, the man looked at the sky, sharing the same moon with the rest of the world, wondering about tales not thought of in the modern age. Life moved on, both happy and sad. "Sadness" was a strange word, and so was "happiness." Both were relative, and both changed almost every day. When the year ended, came not a letter as in the olden age but rather a message on a device that rotted the eyes. On this day, the man's definition of happiness and sadness changed.
The moon fell, and the world tilted, yet the man pushed on with a smile. It rained not a single day henceforth, for the man loved the rain. He searched and searched for the now dissipated lavender, but he was nothing but a vagrant on a hunt for something that he couldn't get. He doubted the world; he doubted if it was a ploy from someone related to her, and he doubted himself, but he couldn't doubt her. She had to have been threatened; yes, that is what it was. Perhaps all of it was a test. Perhaps his lover was in a mood to jest. Anything else was impossible, for he knew her and she knew him. But... perhaps... no... the man dismissed such doubts, or else he would dive into the rabbit hole. In the end, he believed in his patience, his extremely well-trained patience, which grew thinner by the day.
Patience, patience, patience. Cruel patience. Why would a cancer patient care about being patient? And what choice did a cancer patient have other than being patient?
Eventually, the man failed himself, and when he failed himself, he had done so with the relentlessness of his fingers tapping across the colder screen. When the taps ended, he saw eight times a dozen, and before he knew it, his mind wandered into the abyss, parched for the lavender; only hope caused it to return. Half a decade had passed before he knew it. Who was he kidding? Time had never moved so slow.
Whatever he was, most didn't notice the changes, as the man showed no change, and those who could see through it provided him nothing but empty wordsβthey could never imagine what he had imagined in these days. But there was a rare exception among these few who didn't provide words but provided him smoke and herbs along with a wider screen than ever before. The man obliged, one of the few times ever, hoping for even a month to move faster. But a month had turned into nothing but twenty-nine days, leaving him behind in total 3530 days to bask in nothing but perpetual loneliness.
When it all ended on a Monday, there came bliss with a kissβa taste of lavender.
He thought it would be eternal, but it turned out to be... ephemeral.
Everything always turned out to be.... ephemeral.
On a sunny day, a man fell onto the burning floor, his eyes never leaving lavender distorted ones. He felt no burning, and he felt no floor, yet he felt the pain, for the lavender watered the floor before she dissipated into murk.