The Morning After [Mood]

[vesta]

How long since he was found on the road to nowhere? Hours, probably. Or it could be days. After being found by Sera, after normality started re-establishing itself, he came home. Countless questions, all condensed down into a single “what now?” were left to one side as he slept. What was her name, Natalee? She’d given him a lift home, bike stashed in the back of her pickup, and stayed with him. Stayed, because Sera was worried – he’d been ready to throw himself off the precipice, and it was the mix of blind luck wrecking his ankle (not all bad, then) and her pulling him back that saved him. He wasn’t at that stage any more, though. Overwhelmed by everything, but exhausted too. Exhausted enough to sleep. So after pointing out where things (kitchen, bathroom, smoke on the balcony if you need to), he crashed out on the couch.

Time passed in that strange way it has while you sleep. Hours can pass, yet it only feels like moments ago that you drifted off. There may have been dreams, but they were the usual dreams of the unconscious mind sorting out its filing. The ones that fade away as soon as your eyes open. No storms. No voices. Alexander opens his eyes and sees Dan (Dan? From the club? Yeah, that was him.) asleep in the armchair. He must have taken over from Natalee at some point. A laptop sits on his lap, headphones on, and the screensaver throws multicoloured light across his face. The man’s chest rises and falls slowly as he sleeps.

The lights in the room are off, but the faint light of sunrise is slowly creeping into the room. Dim, flat light lies across the surfaces. At some point while he’s been sleeping, someone has put a blanket over him. He sits up and pulls it around him. Stands, fetches a glass of water from the kitchen, and then moves out onto the balcony. He slides the door closed behind him, keeping the heat inside.

It’s cold. The sun isn’t high enough yet to let much warmth to the world, and yesterday’s heat has long since radiated away into the night. He sits back in a chair, wrapping the blanket tighter around him. Feet go up onto the railing. So, the world has changed. Only it hasn’t, has it? He’s the one that’s changed. Awakened, she said. Seeing things with his eyes wide open, rather than half closed to the real potential out there. Or in him. Such an easy mistake to make – thinking that it’s the world that’s been turned upside down.

So who is he? Has he ever really had an answer to that. Life has never had much of a direction. School was alright – plenty to get involved with, but nothing to really give any kind of purpose. A run of dead-end, low-paid jobs: instantly forgettable experiences as a faceless wage slave, someone of no interest to anyone. Joining the police was a start to finding direction. It felt good to help people, when there was the chance to. To serve. When there wasn’t grief for the uniform, or mountains of administration and paperwork. Getting criminals off the street. Trying to give what support he could to the victims. It all felt right.

Is that something he could build on? He settles back and watches the shadows vanish from the mountains as the sun continues its rise into the sky. While he’s watching, there’s a flutter of wings on the edge of the balcony. The owl has landed. There’s a look of recognition between two of them, just as the owl settles down and starts preening a wing.

Inside, Alexander’s phone buzzes. A message from Sera, suggesting they meet in the park later in the day.