The Night of Aching Scars

She was standing still and straight right in the middle of the bridge, disturbingly close to the low fence. In the pervading dusk her hair looked ghostly white, her skin too pale, and her eyes strangely sparkling with the distant lights of the city. Her troubled gaze shivered at the sight of the bright street illumination. The skyscrapers were blazing that night.

She looked down at the black water of the river, cold and so captivating. Leaned on the barrier, a deep frown altering her elegant features. Tried to grasp some of the orange electric radiance with her left hand, the right one still gripping at the fence. Her ashen red lips curved slightly while she stared at the running water. Her face went blank, and tears flowed down her white cheeks, dropping on the already wet concrete.

She stood straight for a few more minutes, as if she hadn’t been crying, as if her hot teardrops hadn’t been raining through the cold air. Then a sad, heart-wrenching smile crept into her whole being and her body tensed, ready for a jump, her eyes locked on the darkness under the bridge. Her small hands spread against the frozen stone, rosy nails dug painfully into the marble.

He couldn’t stay silent anymore, couldn’t just watch this marvelous apparition in front of him; he couldn’t let her get out of his life as suddenly as she tiptoed into it, emerging from the twilight of the lonely bridge where his tired feet lead him during his unexpected but long-lusted walk. He stepped closer and talked to her, his low baritone mingling with her soft whispers under the greyish violet clouds.

“Why are you sad?” Her eyes widened with surprise.

“I’m not sad” she said without even moving, still gazing at the cold water.

“Then why are you crying?”

He was observing her, her every move, every subtle change in her expression. However, she expressed nothing but a complete blankness when she finally, finally looked up to him, sad and void, whispers and tears.

“It’s a night when all the scars are aching.”

And true enough, he was feeling the tiny little scratches on his heart bleeding again, silently dripping a sweet madness over his sorrowful soul. Lost and dazed, he attempted to ignore the wind weeping around them.

“You’re so young, what kinds of scars can you possibly have?”

“You wouldn’t know,” she accused him. “No one would.”

“Show me,” he begged.

“You won’t see. Nobody saw when I was drowning in my own blood, why would anyone notice a vague reminiscence of these days?”

Her smile was sad, so sad; her lips were slightly parted, catching the salty pearls which ran down her cheeks. The distant city faintly brightened her features and he knew she was cold, roaming around the night without a coat, and lonely, and so desperate to grasp a piece of reality…

“You look like a fairy,” he stated with a boundless wonder in his voice.

She smirked, something so human yet it was gone so quickly.

“You’d be disappointed by my sight in broad daylight.”

“I am sure it’s not true.”

She turned to face him, to make him go away, and he reached with his slender hand to wipe her tears. Startled, she flinched, and then leaned into the touch, eyes closed, frowning, trembling. His warm hand on her cold skin, he gently removed the tearstains. She opened her endlessly blue eyes and studied him in silence. Under the grey skies, under the city lights and the dusk, he read the wordless plea in her posture, a hopeless ‘would you save me?’; save her from the bleak, fragile and merciless world she had been living in, from the shadows and the shimmering lights, from the screams who had been living in her shattered heart, from the dark water who had been calling for her every second of her existence, from the terrible void who had been threatening to devour her ethereal soul.

And he held her, held her tight, and close, and warm, through the rain and the dark hours, through the chilly winds and the endless clatter of the cars passing by the bridge, their bridge. He held until the city lights dulled and the dawn dripped blood all over the clouds, chasing the eerie night and the icy stars, and the silk of her skin away from him.

She brushed her lips on his chin, such as a quiet soul of the night, waved shyly at him while he nodded and told her that she looked like a queen in broad daylight. The night wind exhaled its last breath and she vanished in the fleeing shadows, dissolved in the surfacing grey and green and yellow sunshine.

He stood there, aware of the coldness of the stone and of the warmth in his chest, and then he went home to never turn back to that lonely bridge, to that chilly night under remote electric lights when he saved a fairy.

And after days, months, years, he felt the terror of that loss, he yearned for her breathing, he craved for her soft whispers and invisible scars for him to heal. He stepped back and she was there, sitting on the stone fence, back turned to the running clear water, facing the sky, the blue summer sky, and the white clouds, and the everlasting green. And he understood that she came from the world of sharp broken glasses to his world of warm friendly smiles, and he reached for her again.

Her eyes sparkled with glee, her golden hair brushed his neck as he held her tight and warm, and they were equal at last, both human, both scarred and scared and happy, both ready to save each other whenever cunning demons might come to snatch one of them to the eerie world of the night of aching scars.