We Were Birds

With the sunset comes orange, pink and purple streaks through the electric blue sky over the Weeping Willows.

Quinn and Vivian walk along together, silently, down the winding dirt path from the train station to this magical, mysterious woman who exists to give answers to confused people like them. Around them, the Spring Peepers, those small frogs, chirp in the soft earth around their feet. They are a thousand tiny angels, singing a heavenly chorus, waiting for the one who will answer that call. Quinn listens to them and wishes he could understand their language, but knows he was never meant to.

Vivian has been mostly silent the entire time they have been walking. She just looks sadly out to the scene in front of them, as if she is not awed by what she sees, as if she cannot rejoice at the fact that she has been given a second chance. She looks with sadness only, she can see no beauty. This was how it was with me...before Fern, Quinn thinks. Fern taught him how to see beauty, as stupid as that sounds. But she taught him how to slow down and take a look around. To just see.

Besides the sounds of the animals, the coming night seems quiet enough, just like all other nights. Death is safer than Quinn could have ever imagined. Still, they should stop soon. They won't have much light to walk by. Quinn stops walking and looks at Vivian. She eventually realizes she is walking alone, stops and turns back to Quinn, her face painted with elegant sadness. She is beautiful in one of those terrible ways, where the beauty is too broken to even comprehend.

"We should stop," Quinn says pointedly and Vivan shrugs. "We can keep walking tomorrow morning, I guess," he adds on. It is not something they really need to talk about, there was never a question that they would keep walking, but he makes it seem like it could be debatable, either way.

Vivian looks to the side of the road. They have bordered a river now, with a grassy bank. More Weeping Willows live here and their arms reach down and down and down, toward the inky water. She doesn't say anything, just walks over to the tree and collapses beneath it. Quinn follows her. There is something flowing about the way she moves. She is almost like a waterfall. As Quinn nears her, he sees that her eyes are closed, she does not wish to talk. But Quinn can't sleep just yet. He feels restless and he does not understand why. "Who are you?" he asks instead, a relevant question, he hopes.

Opening an eye, Vivian looks at him. "No one really," she finally says.

"What is your story?"

Vivan sits up and leans against the Willow, as if the weight of the world has fallen on her shoulders. "I have been dead a month, I think. I am searching for someone and I cannot believe that there is anyway that I can find him." She turns to Quinn and forces a smile. "That's the short version."

Quinn sits down next to her and leans against the large tree as well. "Tell me the long version. We have time."

A laugh. It is not the same laugh Fern had. It is a foreign laugh and it unsettles Quinn's stomach in a way that he could never tell. "We met when we were very young, at school or some place, I'm not sure, maybe. It could have been one of those things where you ask the first person you see at the playground to be your friend and then you guys are so close for an hour until you have to leave. Maybe it was something like that, but we kept being friends. Ian, that was his name, his name was Ian."

"Ian," says Quinn quietly and Vivian nods.

"We were inseperable when we were kids, you know, always getting into trouble together, always playing around in the mud, always getting into scrapes...the kind of thing kids do. We have wild imaginations, and we always used to make up these crazy stories where sometimes we'd be living off the land, we'd be explorers, adventurers...and as we grew up, it was obvious there was no one for me but Ian. No one, never. When I turned eighteen, we decided that we were going to get married, but our parents didn't like that. 'Wait,' they told us. 'Do something with your lives, go to school, get a job, see the world, don't settle down yet, you'll regret it,' my mom told me. Well I didn't want to believe her, because I mean, how can you believe something like that?"

Quinn laughs a little bit but doesn't say a word.

"So naturally we did the smart thing and decided to run off together." She pauses for a second to laugh sardonically and Quinn understands her sarcasm. "So we packed up the car and headed out one night, very late." Vivian is quiet after that. Quinn looks at her expectantly, but doesn't say anything. The next part will come when it comes. "I don't really know what happened after that. I know we got into a car crash, because the last thing I remember is driving. And then bright lights, and then I was on a train and..." Vivian heaves a sigh, a sigh that comes from a very heavy heart. "I don't know where Ian is. I don't know if he is here, I don't know where he is and I am terrified."

Looking up, Quinn sees the moon overhead, casting down a pale light. It is not so bright out because it is dusk now, but it still is out. When he comes back down from the sky, Quinn notices tears at the edge of Vivian's eyes. So she is younger, well, he could tell that. Quinn opens his mouth. But what can he say? He doesn't know, he is not Fern.

"I'm sorry," Quinn says, but only because he can't stay silent. He is not sorry and never will be, not for something like that. But an apology seems appropriate, even if he has no idea why he is apologizing. Vivian looks away, one solitary tear leaking out of her left eye. Fern would brush it away, cover up her momentary lapse of emotional weakness. It was nothing that came consciously, no, Fern thought herself a fairly emotional person - and she was more emotional than he, to be sure - but she would cover up her sadness with the mask of insincerity, the kind of mask that always made Quinn's heart break. Vivian is different than that, and Quinn doesn't know what to think about that. He doesn't even know why he's comparing them. There is no point. But it is happening.

Instead of waiting for any kind of answer, any kind of conversation, Quinn stands up. It is warm out, it always is warm enough out and goes down to the river. It is clear, all the water here is clear, never dirty, never muddy, not like some rivers he's seen in Life. Unabashedly, because he was never afraid of himself, Quinn pulls off his shirt, kicks off his shoes and socks, pulls off his jeans. He's left with just his undergarments and he doesn't think twice about Vivian watching him. He wades into the water.

Water in Death is different than water in Life. It is not so cold. It does not feel the same. It feels surreal and is the only reason Quinn knows that he actually is dead. Instead of something tangible, water here feels like opaque silk that he could run his fingers into. He lays on top of it, bouyant and small and watches as the sky darkens above him. A few dark, tiny birds fly over, from one side of the river to the other, from one tree to another. There are a few late night chirps mixed in with the frogs and the cicadas.

Fern's tears were something mystifying and all-encompassing, something elusive, terrifying, terrible and magnetic, all at the same time. He'd seen her overcome by emotions before, like the morning they woke up at the Grand Canyon and she looked out at the sunrise over the red, orange and brown rocks. She had been stunned into silence, just put her hands to her mouth and watched. Ten minutes passed by as the sun climbed higher and higher into the sky. And then she had looked at him. "Is that real?" she had asked. "Did that just happen?"

Quinn had laughed and put his arm around her waist and put his forehead against hers and assured her that yes it was real, yes they had just seen that, yes these kinds of things existed...things beyond their town, beyond what they had left behind them.

But tears?

Those came softly. Silently. Secretly. All words that Quinn wished he didn't have to use to describe them. The second night they'd been gone. They stopped at another motel, this one with some tacky name like 'The Two Dolphins Inn' or something cheesy like that. The room had smelled of stale cigarettes and bleach, but it had been all right with them. And Quinn hadn't been as tired as he had been the night before. He'd climbed into bed, turned on the T.V. and flipped through the three channels repeatedly while Fern had fixed herself in the bathroom.

He was nervous, no shit he was nervous. This was going to happn. Sex. His hands were shaking as he changed the channel. He'd never been nervous with a girl before, and then again, he'd never loved a girl the way he'd loved Fern before. He'd never taken so much time with a girl before, he'd never waited so long. He was eighteen, still very young, but none of this was that new.

But when Fern had come out, it all had been wrong. They'd started kissing but only because they knew kissing was supposed to happen before it. She was touching him but not the way she sometimes did when things got a little dizzingly, beautifully out of control. She still held onto that control and she was keeping it close to her. This was not the way it was supposed to be. Quinn couldn't do it. He'd pulled away from her, kissed her on the cheek, smoothed down her hair and turned over, shutting off the light. He'd felt more than a little nauseated by the fact that he was probably causing her pain - it caused him more pain than he could describe. He wanted to do it right, though. Not like that.

He'd fallen asleep eventually. Hours later, however, he'd awoken. Simply opened his eyes and he was wide awake. At first he had no idea what had woken him up, but soon he'd heard it. Sniffling. Small, quiet, tiny little sobs. From the other side of the bed. Quinn had turned over quickly and saw that Fern had her back to him and she was curled up, her back arched, her head off the pillow. Her arms were around her head, protecting her almost.

There was fear and there was anger but most of all, there was sadness. He'd made her cry. Dear God, how could he do such a thing? Quinn had closed his eyes and moved closer to her, put his arms around her waist and hugged her closer to him. "I love you, I love you, I love you," he'd whispered. He'd kissed her neck, he'd kissed her cheek, both wet and salty. And eventually the tears had stopped. And in the morning, it was like nothing had even happened.

He knows now how stupid he'd been. He should have just done it, just to make her happy. But then Quinn thinks of when it really did happen, and then he realizes that maybe everything does happen for a reason. Maybe disappointment exists to balance out the extreme happiness because humans can't feel happy all the time. Just some of the time. Because life is about more than just searching for happiness, even if happiness is that ultimate goal.

The stars are coming into sight and Quinn truly realizes the weight of his thoughts. There is more to life than just happiness. Searching for it, cherishing those moments. There are times that he has been so happy and he has never felt more alive. But then again, there are times when he has been so sad and he has never felt so alive. Maybe they should change the meaning of life then. Don't look for happiness. Look to feel. We must all learn how to feel.

Taking a deep breath, Quinn plunges himself entirely into the water. Underwater, he opens his eyes up and flaps his arms and legs to keep himself submerged. Down here, he has a different perspective on how things look because everything looks different down here. There are plants and fish and the occasional turtle. This is the rythym of Death, so much like Life and still so different. Qunn exhales his breath with bubbles and keeps himself under the surface for too long. He doesn't feel the need to take another breath, though. Well, he can't drown. He's already dead.

Eventually, though, the green world of underwater gives way to the smoky dusk of the earth around him. His head comes up and he looks to the willow. Vivian has laid down, she looks to be sleeping. Quinn swims to the bank of the river and gets out, dripping wet and feeling different than when he went in.

Quinn lies down on the grassy bank and puts his hands behind his head and looks at the stars. Vivian has turned herself away from him, her body arched, her head tucked over, her arms cradling her head. Leaning up, Quinn looks to see that she has cried more, her cheeks are stained by tears. But he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't feel the same need to comfort her, the way he did with Fern. And he knows that he could never comfort her anyway. And he is just as messed up as her. He just shows it differently.

Maybe the point of Life is to find happiness. And maybe the point of Death is to find other things. Like yourself.

It's a stretch, Quinn thinks, rolling over to his side, some of the grass sticking to his wet body. But it's the only reason I've got.