Like Chrome
short story
Like Chrome
Iris
Breathtaking was the course of waves to shower up and out from the sea, borne of collision, force, wafting to wind and across the grasslands coming to its rocky shore.
Kitavo wasn’t enjoying the view. He didn’t feel much like anything at all.
Everything had become soured. It left in the haze of windswept loss. There was felt to be no purpose in his life apart from distraction, and grasping forward, slipping towards some crown felt in heart of spirit. He hadn’t missed it. Kitavo knew what it was deep down.
There felt some penance in his life. He believed himself apart of something wicked. His possession was first understood as a specter upon him defeated. Then subsumed. Before becoming by intent then lost to understanding of surface. Doing something so soul churning, as he had, within the haze but brightest still, would have been his key to hold some hearth again of warmest sparks.
His seeking had brought Kitavo to Wales. Something about the people there was enchanting. Their townships felt of correctness to his American mind. Still, he had been chasing someone. It wasn’t right. There would be no chance to earn her forgiveness. His hope had been held the longest to do just this.
Kitavo was proud of his woman to be. He always wanted to make it back in his secret place which would hold as anchor beneath his mighty seabed of layers known and unknown, modules and nodes of self were bubbling. Effervescent was his nature. He became a reflection of those around him, and beyond himself.
Last it had been, that once, when he felt before. Fera was an enchanting woman who had found a place. She had seemed to have built it herself from the inside out. Every gift she had given the world was first to him and next to everyone else. Apart from her heart, that child he could have helped her save from a cruelest fate. Kitavo knew she would never forgive him for letting her lose her daughter. So, he planned to wait on that day he might return as a man.
He had been insulted most by how she called him what he was.
She had long believe Kitavo a human of balance and flexibility, of grace between the masculine and feminine. Fera simply knew Kitavo was all and more and whatever that was simply had to be a friend for how her heart would sing the loudest through time.
It didn’t work that way to Kitavo. He accepted place amongst people with whom Fera wouldn’t be accepted. That took him to depths of disregard beyond anything recognizable to another. It split his layers in two, mushed them up, and he had lost the thread.
One day he had been on the brink of suicide. Finally left by his abusive beast at last, when they had drained every last drop from his life they wanted while giving the least. And he missed Fera more than anyone ever would. Instead of finding balance, he had broken the man time demanded he become. Nothing felt more correct.
He knew it from something she had written. Fera would never forgive the man for not letting her heal with who he was before. It would make the chance impossible to feal in her heart. So, he ran. He ran and hid while the world had taken her from her daughter. Kitavo hid with monsters who would not have accepted his wholeness.
Kitavo was a giver by hands and heart to only those he deemed worthy.
One greatest mistake of life; he judged everyone upside-down.
When he made it to the roadway, getting back to his bike, something in him held for hope. Fera would forgive him still. He could make her feel his heart.
She had a beautiful place surrounded by trees. It was so large and holy. Something about it felt innately designed, picked out, for his own sensibilities.
The knock was the worst. To wait, a little less. When it opened proved for relieving his fears before unrealized.
That woman revealed was a kindest sort. She looked surprised but happy. Fera’s wife couldn’t have been believed for her readiness to lead Kitavo to Fera.
“She’s been painting something today,” Wendy told Kitavo without looking too closely. She knew, there was a history which had been written about and propagated widely through the world about the two of them and how it went.
“It’s starting to get so good.”
She left him at the door. Wendy didn’t tell Kitavo. He simply picked it from her aura; that woman loved Fera like he did, but with less of the heat, and was only excited for her wife to know him again.
“I’m gonna get some food going. Do you eat meat?”
Kitavo laughed. “Yes, I do.”
Turning back to that final passage was a heartache and some stress. His life had felt if leading for this moment. When his hand hit the knob it was shaking. Kitavo heard the music first as the door creaked open. Then her humming. His whole heart was sick, and he wanted to leave at that.
Still, he knew it that bad because of himself. Fera had only ever wanted to see him once more after he broke her heart so long ago.
When Kitavo rounded the corner he was stunned at her elegance. She was flowing. Her hair was finally getting help. The dress she wore was some perfect fit. That painting she had been working on was nearly complete but made him sick. He knew the place.
She was painting a cabin on a lake.
Kitavo cried for a first time in some time then. It wasn’t new but different. He was crying for his heart and not his mind.
When she turned it hit — the why — he had felt it forward.
She was already gone.
