She deftly goes round objects scattered carelessly over the apartment.

The guest, who could not find a cause to look in here, wouldn’t find anything unnatural about this mess. Each object just couldn’t have settled in any other place. Everything in this apartment spoke that what was going on was right. Everything but the shrill scream in the vicinity of the entrance door.

She spills the contents of her small bag onto the bed, noticing that a lipstick glimmered with golden scale in the waterfall. With a habitual movement a hand snatches it from a rushing flow, saves it from hitting the floor and shelters it in a palm. She holds the lipstick to her face, watching in the reflection how a scarlet line glides down the faded corners of her lips and fills them with life.

Wandering around the apartment and chiseling each tiny piece in his memory, the guest who never came couldn’t but hear rare yells of despair. The sound came from the hallway, becoming more heartrending with each minute. The guest wanted to stay here as long as possible, to memorize everything he saw. If he could open his eyes even wider – he’d certainly do it. Only the unbearable scream didn’t let him focus.

She approaches the exit a second before she throws herself into the street flow, takes her umbrella. The screaming stops.

The waves gently beat against the side of the boat as if caring hands stroked the hair of a beloved woman sitting comfortably at the window, waiting for a storm.

The boat was in no hurry to cut the waves, and she succumbed to them as if she wanted them to become her guide. The oars lay humbly at her feet, like faithful dogs, full of calm when the master is at home.

All around the boat was only the blue of the endless sea. There was not a single figure on which one could stop his gaze and make the goal of his journey.

Her eyes were fixed forward.
If you were sitting next to her, you would certainly ask where she was looking. It may seem that she has spotted land or a lighthouse and will head toward them.
In another second, she could swing the oars, which would become an extension of her arms, and the boat would head straight for its long-awaited goal.

A second, two, an hour. She stares into the distance, ignoring the oars sleeping quietly beside her.

You understand that any of your questions will sweep past her and become just a light sea drop that fell on her shoulder. This question will disappear into the depths of the sea.

She looks into the distance. She has a purpose. By all means, she wants to achieve it.
She is floating toward the skyline.

When their feet first touched the ground, they felt their soles sinking in silky grass.

Long before the arrival, flying above this island, they saw mountains covered with trees, reminding of a shaggy plaid that one wanted to curl up in. Azure lakes watched them, inviting to plunge into their depth, where water would tenderly wrap their bodies.
They came to this island just a couple of years ago, but it seemed that it was here that they made their first breath. Each day they took a walk through green oases. Exotic birds fondled their ears with symphonies of warbles and painted thoughts with tropical colors.

One morning he woke up to the wind harshly crying outside. He turned around in bed and wanted to habitually embrace her from behind. But her pillow was empty and cold, as if she had never been here. Shutters abruptly fell off hinges, and dry air broke into the room. He reached the window and saw a sandstorm spreading for many miles.

He threw his body outside, and a shrill howl deafened his ears. The sand rising monstrously from the ground swept him off his feet. In this howl he distinctly heard her voice. He held his head to the ground, and the voice became brighter. He began to bury his hands in the sand, feeling each sand grain touching his fingers exactly like she did. They cut under his nails like sharp words snapped passingly the day before.

The sand broke through his fingers, wishing to come back to where he was taken from without asking.Her voice became quieter with each fall of a sand grain from his hands. And when the last one slipped through – her voice disappeared. The wing faded, and the desert re echoed this silence with complete humility.

A shadow slowly descended on the orchard house.

Infinite stately columns, like strong arms, held back enormous blurry glass, not letting them shatter in a hundred of small pieces. A grid of cross-bars span like cobweb up to the very roof, creating a safe dome for those who were inside.

She strolled along the beautiful plants, ready for sleep. She tiptoed, absolutely soundlessly, afraid to disquiet them.
Her thin fingers glided down the shelves, deftly going round the inhabitants of this orchard house.
Every night she came here and weaved between languidly spread leaves. She tried to understand why it was here, at the place hidden from world, that she felt so cosy. It seemed that only here she could breathe freely as she wanted.

Moonlight burst through thick glass windows, casting light reflections at the captive plants. Even in this dim light one could see that love prevailed here. The gardener took care of each one with a gentle hand, delicately wiped the leaves and gave them as much moist as they needed.

And still it seemed to her that the plants were cramped, that they needed vastness. But the rebel branches which strived farther and farther from the stem, were carefully put back to their place.

She strolled here again and again. She told no one about this night pursuit. It was a little secret between her and this orchard house. Besides, if one imagines her share with somebody, she’d have to tell that each night in the darkness she distinctly heard her name Lily.

She was staying on the bluffs and was afraid of looking over the edge because she knew, that there was nothing but black shadows.
She didn’t take a step but in a second she felt that she was falling down.

To her surprise the flight was lazy, the wind did not nip at her body but gently moved deeper, to the very heart of darkness.

It seemed to her that she was flying up rather than down. She did not get cold feet. It was a strange feeling like before Christmas Day, when a child sneaks into the room with the holiday tree at night to catch Santa Claus during his secret visit.

She was flying so fast that remaining around her colors were blending in a single flow and becoming darker every second.

Suddenly she felt that she didn’t fall down any more but stayed put in the air. Fingers of the left foot felt warmth. This was not dark shadows.

Black lava was wrapping her body slowly and smoothly, giving full play to every cell like a separate living creature. Lava was penetrating through pores, filling them up from within.

Lava was not speedy to trap her out in a flash. It was savoring every moment, bending her beautiful body to her will.
She did not think at that moment how she would move out. She felt how her body ceased to belong to her any more and thought what would happen to her when lava would get to her head. Would she remain the same or become completely different person.

Lava was rising, enringing her neck as if tightening liquid metal wire round it.

Suddenly a harsh sound flitted through her temples, lava trembled and moved a few centimeters back. But as a hush fell, lava continued the attack.

Again the sound went, a louder than the previous one. Lava moved down to her chest. Giving no opportunity for a black quaking trash to come round, the sound roared again, each time gathering pace and making lava dropping down.

A nervous continuous tone was throbbing in her temples and when the last lava-tear fell from her leg, she took a nice deep breath.

The light shining upon her bed through the window scorched her eyes. Opening slightly her eyelids she heavily threw eye on the table. The phone moved restlessly on it as if doing a dance of triumph to the tune which was familiar to her for a lot of years.

She loved to watch how the lighthouse spread its rays, and to imagine how the sea drops, runaway from the wave, played hide-and-seek with it, believing naively that the light couldn’t find them. But today it wasn’t so. The lighthouse didn’t wake up by night as it usually did.

She didn’t remember how many hours she walked to this lighthouse, she was not tired, only one question troubled her: why there was no light.

From distance it seemed like a toy to her. But approaching the lighthouse, she had to tilt her head back to see it completely. The sky was a solid dark blue abyss. For a second, she thought she was looking into the depths of the ocean.

The lighthouse was enormous. The cracks in the solid masonry looked like scars on the body of a fighter who had heroically withstood the blows of storms. She touched the wall, as if stroking the shoulder of a close friend, to dispel his dreary loneliness over the ocean.

She went inside and saw an endless staircase.
As her feet climbed step by step in unison, she wondered what mysteries these walls might hold. At what point does a person decide to become a lighthouse keeper? Could it just be a desire to be alone with yourself, listen to the inner voice, or was it a real desperate escape from people?
In any case, she thought, a person must have a good reason to open the door and step into the echoing room of loneliness.

The last step was under her foot. The traces of oil around the burner looked like a lake of tears. The fuse, desperate to ignite again, seemed so fragile that she was afraid to even breathe in its direction.

The decrepit wooden floor, greedily absorbing spilled oil, did not inspire trust in her. She glanced ahead and tried to see something important through the murky window. The forces she had spilled on the steps of the stairs filled her body again, it seemed, there were a hundred times more of them. She straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath and looked ahead, trying to find the horizon line. But the sea and the sky merged into a single dark haze. The only thing that allowed her to distinguish objects was the moonlight, desperately trying to give the appearance of life being present here.

She saw something flash in the corner, and went up to this moon beam. In her hands was a dog collar with a steel dog tag engraved with Neptune.

The rain was pounding outside, as if warming up for a concert where thunder and lightning were to be special guests.

She sat in the empty room with her eyes closed and felt goosebumps through her body fall into dots, mirroring the amplitude of the street noise in detail.
This noise, ordinary for these places, turned into a symphony of Rachmaninoff in her head, soothing her ears with a light touch and whirled around like a bird-of-paradise.

Nervously, the rain was getting stronger, leaving her calmness no doubt.
She was wrapped in bliss, as if an invisible dome securely protected her.

You were here beside her. But you didn’t want to disturb her meditation. A subtle smile froze on her face and if you were able to notice it, it would imprint on your face at once.

Her arms were outstretched along the body, hands lay softly on her lap, palms up. Her legs repeated the silhouettes of the statues of Buddhas, her straight spine stretched up to the ceiling, ready to slip through it right away, her neck held her head like an arrowhead.
The light dress patterned with flowers, whose names you didn’t want to remember, humbly covered her body until the wind slipped into the room through a tiny hole in the window. It disturbed the peace of the dress and it responded to the intruder with waves.

She didn’t notice it.
The music of the rain carried her thoughts far away from here.
Maneuvering through huge raindrops, she flew above the city, away from the bustle. Passing thousands of windows that were not yet lit, she managed to break away from the nets that stretched for kilometers of interconnected people and now felt truly free.

The fog crept down on the streets, slowly locking the upper floors of the buildings in its embrace. The lit windows disappeared in the thick shroud, hiding from prying eyes.

She walked through a dark street and watched the rare lights. In her mind she went over different reasons why people could stay up late, trying them on herself. But none of these reasons could answer her why the insomnia had been going hand in hand with her for months.

There were no obvious reasons, no disturbing thoughts or anxiety. She just couldn’t sleep.
Every evening she performed obsessively all the rituals she could find or hear from the others, hoping that, as soon as her head touched the pillow, she would feel her heartbeat becoming slower and her breath even and quiet. She imagined the blanket that was wrapped around her body taking the day away and finding a place for it in the album of her memory.
But every time she closed her eyes, they opened again, as if her body had forgotten how to sleep.
Such a simple thing as sleeping was now out of her reach.

The fog crept lower, imposing itself on the roofs of the buildings, dropping the corners of its blanket down to the asphalt. It seemed that even the city could sleep, but not her.

Eventually, as the fog hid the lit windows, her thoughts lost their clarity, dissolving in the white shroud.
Suddenly all her body was stung by goosebumps. A moment later, she felt warmth on her back and saw her shadow on the asphalt in a dome of fire. The lights of a car pierced the fog a few meters before her, breaking the inviting spell.

Without turning around, she stepped to the side. Dull aching pain penetrated her, just like the pain she started to feel every time she thought about sleep.

The vase dropped off the shelf in an instant and rushed these one and a half meters to the floor, not leaving a single hope that it could go back to its place in one piece.

The shards were scattered across the floor at once, taking over almost the whole space. Even the smallest slits couldn’t escape them. It seemed that they’d split up into perfectly sized pieces selected specifically for each corner.

They only couldn’t reach the spots where the feet of the two touched the floor. The sound of the vase breaking worked just on time like a cold shower. They froze and the shouts parted like clouds. A thin beam of light came out, a hope of reconcilement.

She liked feeling his gaze on her. She felt warmth on her body in these moments that went through her skin like a spring sun that helped flowers break through the snow that hadn’t yet melted.

He watched her every movement without looking away.
He wanted to remember her face this way, helpless and a little confused. He remembered this look. It was the same look he had first fallen in love with.
He tried to remember when it had happened that she’d bloomed from a timid young girl into the beautiful strong woman that he was so proud of.
He suddenly realized that he missed the one who had disappeared long ago.

He took a step toward her. The shards pierced his skin, making his whole body shiver to the toes. He wanted to jerk away and pull his foot back where it was safe. But he couldn’t. He moved the weight of his body on it, preparing for the next step, not noticing the scarlet tears of sharp pain spreading across the floor.

He took the next step. The pain couldn’t break through to him anymore, it stayed down there with the shards of the vase which would never be back.

Dedicated to Ernest Hemingway, the writer, who many years ago told his stories to a little girl and forever settled love to prose in her heart.
Inspired by “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”.

The shabby walls seemed to her something like an execution over a once even and carefully laid out row of logs.
A few years ago they were built for guests who came to this most beautiful place to quench their thirst for the moment, when the fresh mountain air slowly spreads through the lungs, bypasses all their possessions and leak as warm steam from their lips.

She looked at him, laying next to her. In his open eyes, she noticed a storm of wandering thoughts, but they were all a hundred kilometers away from her.

She was scared, she knew it. But it was a different fear, much stronger than all the insane roars and tantrums, much louder than the piercing screams and the howl of a siren. It was so powerful that it drowned out everything around. It was absolutely silent.

This silent killer sat firmly inside her, paralyzing all the muscles of her body, capturing her thoughts and the very ability to think.
She just sat in her seat and couldn’t move. Everything in her head was filled with solid white. For a second it seemed to her that she might go insane, but even in her thoughts she could not escape from there, to say nothing of real movement even with her fingertips.

She was scared. This was not how she imagined their trip. Why did they even come here.

She was looking at him, and love turned to rage. She hated him because he stopped fighting. That like this, lying here, he might appear so weak that he would just walk away and leave her alone.
Suddenly, the fury receded, and tenderness spilled over her body at the very moment she remembered his tremulous touch and the careless, affectionate look that followed her at their home.

She touched his scalding hot hand. She squeezed her fingers tighter and tighter, and finally, with an effort, he turned his face towards her, and in his eyes there was a distinct phrase that she deliberately did not want to make out.

Silence spread over the surface of the water, calming the small corners of the waves rising above the sea level.

He breathed in the salty cool air and hoped that the sea would be kind to him and that a light wind caressing the horizon would fill the sails of his boat.

However, he liked to sway so slowly on the waves. He was in no hurry, and now, finally, he would be able to think about which course to take.

The sunset enswathed many miles around, luring the waves into its play. In the distance he saw a dark, graceful figure. There were sounds in the air, caressing the ears, so gentle, as if it were a lullaby of a mother humming a child to sleep.

Suddenly, the sails, which had been wearily swaying on the cables, opened up in full force. The boat, clinging from its place, rushed forward. The figure became clearer, and finally he got close enough to see a beautiful young woman in the sunset. The waves rising from the very depths of the sea served as a throne for her, and the curls of her hair passed into the horizon.

Drops of water that fell on her naked body sparkled in the sunset glare, like iridescent scales. She was like a sea queen rising to the surface to give her permission for a guest to be in her realm.

He did not notice how his boat was rapidly rushing to the rocks, which for centuries broke huge ships into small chips and sent them to the service of Neptune.

For a moment it seemed to him that she was very close, that her eyes were a few centimeters away from him and were peering intently, trying to catch every millimeter of his face.

When their eyes were opposite each other, he felt his pupils dilate and his heartbeat, which beat out a rhythm in his chest, as if driving each blow into the very depths of his body, suddenly stopped and switched to a quiet, measured pace.

He lifted his hand and ran his hand over her cheek. She froze for a moment and in a second she dissolved into the night sea.

The melody faded, the wind died down, and there were no more rocks around. He rocked slowly in his boat, and the sails hung lazily on their ropes.

There was only one window in her room through which she could observe the world. Through it, she learned how majestic and detached mountains can be, how gentle and formidable clouds can be. She saw the leaves on the trees change color, since their very birth until the moment they succumb to the autumn wind, fall off the branch and spread all over the earth, protecting it from winter frosts.

Through this window she saw the sun and moon replace each other, not leaving people without their light for a single day.
She saw people. Friends, family and just passersby. She saw them laugh and cry, run about their business and freeze in place, looking at something in the distance, she saw them quickly achieve their goals and lose their way, love and hate forgive and take revenge, she saw how they are born and how they die.

She looked at the world through this window and accepted it the way it is. She never wanted to change a thing about it. Never before.

One day she began to notice that everything around her was losing color. That the color palette of the world and the range of emotions are not as bright as they used to be.

It seemed to her that now she was looking at everything through the blurry film, as if a passing car swept past her and plunged her window into a ton of dirty water accumulated on the pavement after yesterday’s bad weather. And no matter what she did, she could not get rid of the feeling that even tropical downpours would not be able to restore her window to its former purity.

Once she passed by a cathedral with stained-glass windows. Huge windows, seemingly of infinite height, were woven from colored pieces of glass, forming pictures on the outside.

She went into this cathedral and suddenly realized that if she looks separately through each piece, she can paint the world in any color that she chooses.
In a snap of a finger, the thought popped into her head that these small pieces of colored glass do not just create a picture, they are able to magically change the very course of things and the laws of nature.
Now she saw that the sky could be red-orange not only at sunset.

She decided. Her window will never be the same.