what falling in love feels like

From the moment she woke up, she knew that something was off.

It didn’t make sense to Ella. She woke up from her uncomfortably-large bed, only to find that she had taken both pillows and were tightly hugging them to her body. Her whole body tensing up, she gently untangled herself from the pillows, taking care to make it as unnoticeable as possible for the camera staring at her from across the spacious bedroom. Her deft hands inconspicuously prodding at one of the pillows, she breathed a sigh of relief when she found that her laser pointer was still there. In case she ever mustered the courage to point it at the cameras to disable them, wiggle the loose pane out of her window and escape into her garden.

But what would she do then? She didn’t know anything about being an adult, from finding a real job to paying taxes. Besides, it was only a matter of time before her parents tracked her down, and if she went to the police then they would surely alert her mother, the most powerful prosecutor in the city. Feeling more tired than she did when she woke up, she slid out of bed and stumbled to her walk-in closet, picking out a comfortable black tank top and some jean shorts that let her legs breathe. Being able to choose her clothes was a small luxury of choice she had, and one of the only she could experience.

When she sat down at her desktop, she started to go over the data her father’s researchers had emailed her to process and transfer to a database, her fingers tensing at the sight of jargon she couldn’t be bothered to understand and obscure symbols that made her want to toss the monitor out of the window. For a moment, Ella’s heart whispered to her, asking if she really thought that she couldn’t escape if she just explored what was outside the window. Maybe, just maybe, she could find…

With a start, Ella realized that she had pulled up the calendar application on her computer, one of the few functions that weren’t primed to alert her parents and shut off her computer for a week. What was so significant about today? What was she missing? Sighing, she rose from her chair, and drifted to the grand piano sitting in the center of the room, somehow dwarfed by the sheer height of the room, yet the black wood standing like a beacon amidst the sterile white walls engulfing her. Hesitantly, she fidgetted on her piano seat, reaching for one of the sheet music packets her parents’ servants gave her every Sunday, but something stopped her, her hand frozen in mid-air, before resting on the keys.

She took a deep breath, and began to play.

A sharp rap-tap-tap-tap-tap, like an angry woodpecker. Silence. Then the crash, her hands colliding with the keys as they ascended into the heavens, every chord flowing together in a torrent to form the brightest, most beautiful galaxy. Every note trembling and fluttering like a million irridescent butterflies, sparkling like jewels in the morning sunlight.

It’s the feeling of running towards, the biggest, bluest ocean, the warm sand soothing any aches as every step draws her closer to the sunkissed world that wraps around her mind’s eye. The beautiful world climbing up into her vision until pure unbridled joy comes into focus in overwhelming detail, closer. Closer until she can feel the cool water beneath her, guiding her to where she was always meant to be. As the notes climb, she feels her breath hitch, a warm hand guiding her, whispers buried in the shadowy recesses of her pounding heart, brought out into the light, everything sparkling, everything everywhere colliding into itself until it’s only her and…

As Ella’s hands settle into a firm yet uncertain chord, if only briefly, her mind is drawn to the clearest memory she has from her childhood. The sun is setting and she’s sitting on the swingset with {{user}}. They’d done everything, raced down the slides and chased each other through the jungle gym and swung higher and higher, as high as they could until they soared above the whole world and tumbled with scrapes and laughs. Always together, staring at the sunset on a warm spring day. {{user}}’s holding a pair of heart-shaped lockets, one gold and one silver, holding the silver one out to her, and more than anything she wants to reach out and grab it, holsing it forever, cherishing it always, her fingers slide downwards as she realizes that she’d completely forgotten all about it.

Her parents had taken it, destroyed it, ruined everything, and the sinking feeling in her stomach she’d felt rose like vicious bile. The realization that the picture was something she couldn’t feel, impenetrable no matter how much she sifted through the memories. Always through a dusty lens, decaying over time, until the moths came and swept the dream away. The sun had to set, and all Ella wanted to do was stay, stay with {{user}}, forever and ever.

But as she dove back in, she remembered that the world would end, it had to. It always did. Vanishing into nothingness. Stolen. Forgotten. As she looks up from the piano, her fingers slipping off of the keys, she sat there, and stared out of the window at the bright blue sky, the sun peeking through the tops of the trees. Her heart shattered into a million tiny pieces. Today was {{user}}’s birthday, and she had forgotten all about it. Even as her heart throbbed in sorrow, a part of her removed, she looked up at the sun and whispered,

“Never again. I’m not going to forget, ever again. I promise.”

…

The moon dangled overhead as Ella sat on the swing set, gazing at the stars spread across the night sky. Everything looked, and smelled, and felt so different from outside. So beautiful. Ella didn’t even notice that she was crying, but fresh tears spilled from her eyes as she openly sobbed, eyes still glued to the night sky, hands clenching around the metal chains suspending her. How long has she forgotten what this felt like? How much has she missed? How many nights like this had she spent without her best and only friend in the world, without…

The swingset rattles as someone sits down next to her. When she turns her head, wiping the tears from her eyes from the back of her head, she’s greeted with a sight she feels like she should know, like she’d seen this person in a dream a long, long time ago. So familiar, yet so fuzzy, like a lifetime of grief and loneliness had warped their souls, twisted from the crushing weight of what could have been, yet not irrevocably so. But even amidst the pain and sorrow, she can still see the trace of a golden locket underneath the person’s shirt.

“{{user}}…?” She could feel a fresh wave of tears prickling at the edge of her vision, but she was so happy that she didn’t care anymore. All that mattered is that she could finally remember what it feels like to live, to love.

After an eternity of silence, lost in each others’ eyes, tracing where their bodies began and their world ended, before Ella softly asked, her voice trembling, “Are we still, sniff, friends…?”