The Aftermath

I watched him tossing and turning in his bed. I could see him moaning and groaning all though I could not hear it from where I sat. His arms flailed helplessly, trying to fend off something beyond me.

I knew it would not be too long before he woke up from his nightmare.

The nightmares. They were on my list; fairly high on my list, actually, of things I wanted to understand. I wished I knew what he was dreaming about. What would jolt him awake only to make him cry himself back to sleep.

The scream I could hear, and I knew he was awake even before he sat bolt upright in his bed. For a long moment he just stared into the empty darkness in front of him. I could see him shaking, but I was almost sure he had not started crying yet.

As much as I hated it, it was better when he cried. When he cried he at least seemed alive. When he just sat staring as now, as though the horrors had consumed him entirely, as though he was nought but an empty shell, it scared me. It scared me beyond words.

I watched him in silence, unmoving, waiting for the tears. And slowly, ever so slowly, I realised they were not coming. I felt a slight shiver run down my spine.

For a long moment I considered what to do. What I could do. A movement caught my attention before I had come to any sort of conclusion.

He untangled himself from the bed sheets and stood slowly. I held my breath as he made his way to the window throwing it open without hesitation. I looked at him thinking that the air of the autumn night had to be biting at his skin.

He still was not crying.

I watched as he turned his gaze upwards, probably to see the stars that were not there, it was clouded, and heard him sigh.

“What am I going to do?” he whispered into the silent night, his broken voice breaking my heart then and there.

“What can I do?” He leaned slightly out the window and I was suddenly fighting with everything I had to just stay still.

“Oh, Mikey, do you know what I would give to able to see you again?” he breathed out, “Just one more time,” he pleaded the night.

With a strangled cry, which I knew by now he could not hear, I leapt from my place on his windowsill, flying as far away as my feathery wings would carry me.

He was dreaming of me. Two years had passed and my big brother still had not moved on. Two years after my death, and he was still dreaming of me.