). Short story! Never was I able to actually write a short story short, and even writing this I was tempted to go on and on with the story and the plot! 
So here I go! *crosses fingers*
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The two jumped in the same gondola just before the doors closed behind them with a soft banging noise as they were catching their breath; the girl harder than the little boy.
She was a slender looking girl, maybe over twenty years old and with shoulder length red dyed hair. She looked as if she had trouble breathing and was pressing her hand as white as a sheet on her chest gripping tightly the soft fabric she wore. Her legs and feet were bare and as white as snow under the mud, but she didn’t look like she was cold. A happy smile was spread on her face as if she had wanted to run in her bare feet and hospital gown on a Ferris wheel all her life.
She turned her face to the little boy and sat on the bench opposite him as he pulled on his own hospital clothes and pushed his little feet in the no longer white slippers. They were now stained with mud from his run and so were his slim ankles. He was small and ill looking his arms and legs slim and lank. His light brown hair was damp over his forehead hiding his black hollow eyes. His face was haggard and pale as if he was going to faint there in the gondola.
They both looked like that; one more ill than the other but with happy smiles on their lips. As the wheel started to move a faint song of a music box come from the speakers and orange lights sparkled in a pixie like dance.
“It’s going to be sunny!” the girl breathed out looking at the cloudy sky. “The lights have spoken!”
He brushed his hands over his face as if he wanted to pull off a mask and change his face. His long fingers traced down his cheeks before looking up at the cloudy sky too and then at the orange forecast lights of the wheel. Could they be wrong? Or was it going to be the way she had said: “The lights have spoken!” Everyone said that the lights have never been wrong.
“You’re that girl!” he turned his head to her and she smiled amused at him folding her legs in a lotus position and ruffling her red hair.
“You are a very polite one!” she rubbed a finger on her left eye to move her contact lens that made her look like she had amethyst stones in place of her irises.
“You’re the clown!” he threw his slippers away and got closer to the window.
On the outside a lost cicada was colored in orange and its cry fit perfectly with the dance of the lights. The boy pressed his finger on the glass as if wanting to squish it and bring to an end her foreboding cry.
“Don’t do that!” the girl stepped down and getting closer to him she circled her cold finger around his pulling it away.
She stroked the glass with her other hand patting the insect from afar. “She is here for us!”
“I hate her cry!” he grabbed her hand holding it tightly and she looked at him smiling her fake amethysts sparkling with little orange lights in them like stars. “You stopped coming!”
His hand was shaky on hers and she stroked it gently falling on her knees in front of the little boy.
“I’m sorry” she sighed “They took me away and locked me up to rest my tired heart…”
“The other kids cried” he looked away from her out the window as the cicada climbed the window flapping her small wings and crying loudly.
“Did you cry?” she looked at the insect as well, sighing.
“No, you were just a fake clown!” he turned to her and pulled his hands out, his eyes looking at her accusingly.
She got up and imitated the way he had brushed his hands down his face and also tried to change her face. To take off the clown make up from her skin even if it wasn’t there anymore and be only her.
“Why was I fake?” she asked when she didn’t succeed and sat back in the opposite bench.
“You lied to us, making us smile and be happy, making us forget that out future was short. When yours is even shorter than ours!” she looked up at the digital clock above the black speakers. They had been in the gondola for seven minutes already and her heart felt like it was going to crush in her ribcage.
She pressed her hand over her chest and looked up at the boy remembering the way he was always sitting in his room every time she visited their ward. He just sat in a chair next to the window and looked at the Farris wheel with longing eyes his hands shaking over his bony little knees. He always had forlorn eyes but never teary, because he was determined not to cry until the end.
He had the same eyes in that moment as well as he clutched his small fists expecting her to say something.
“They left you didn’t they? Your parents …”
He frowned at her when he didn’t hear what he seemed to want.
“They abandoned you! Such cruel parents…”
“I don’t need you to tell me that!” he snapped at her and she folded her legs again looking at the clock.
Nine minutes.
“And still, you had a family you know!” she looked back at him smiling at his furious innocent face. “All the other kids that were with you in that ward were all your family.”
“They were all stupid because they believed your lies! They hate you now…”
He stopped when he saw her smile still not fading from her lips. He jumped up from his seat and slapped her cheek with his shaky hand. She always smiled, as she jumped, as she joggled, every single moment she was smiling.
“Of course they do. And I deserve it!” she laughed out loud. “Oh, how I deserve all your hate…mother’s hate. But doesn’t that mean they won’t suffer when I’m gone? They already hate me!”
“I’m nine, I skipped the life and death philosophy class!” the boy snapped again outraged. “I don’t … even have people to hate me…to hold my” he sniffed back his tears looking down at his abandoned slippers “…my hand!”
Eleven minutes. The girl blinked hard and sighed.
“You followed me here!” she looked out side the window.
Paths of light were opening up from the gray clouds shooting like arrows in the earth to pierce down to the core of it. “Time waits for no one” she read on a plaque above the boys head illuminated by the sun as they reached the top. They sank in a pool of light that exploded around them and the cicada’s song seemed to be louder like it was inside with them.
“We are all we have got!” she almost sang and the boy looked in her glowing eyes.
The light was pouring in her contact lens making her eyes shine like precious stones. She held out her hand to him and he took it tears falling down his cheeks. Under the light their skin seemed to peel of leaving a slick crystal surface.
“Will it hurt?” the boy sat next to her.
He moved his head putting his cheek on his shoulder and moved it slowly to wipe his tears so he wouldn’t let go of her hand.
“He promised me to make is as painless as possible!” she gripped his hand tighter in hers.
His face was so luminous that he looked like an angel under that glorious light.
“He?” he looked up at her with big eyes filled with tears.
“My death god!” she leaned foreword pressing her forehead on his. “I promise you … I will give it to you…the peace…”
She smiled tenderly to him and he traced one of her tears with his warm finger. He could see beyond her eyes, beyond the pain she had in her heart. They made a wonderful whole: her heart was tired while for him, his body was tired. The pieces were getting back together.
“I was having a transparent dream” he whispered to her closing his eyes “It was a tender eternity. The faint, wind-like voice was calling me from the high sky…”
She sobbed closing her eyes tight but even then the light pressed on her eyelids warming them. She felt the palm of his small hand in hers and many smiles reflected on unseen wet cheeks. The cheeks of everyone they touched in their lives, whose lives they touched…who would cry if their souls began to remove their masks and become the wings
that pierce the veil spreading into the light.
“If we can see a little future within our joined hands, then the words, thoughts, everything that swayed in the light…“ he hiccuped and brushed another tear with his shoulder.
“How long do we have?”
Her voice came as a whimper and he opened his eyes looking up at the clock. The cicada was sitting on the digital five from the clock buzzing her veined wings. He smiled at it finally understanding.
“Two more minutes”
“So little?” she sighed “Let’s hold hands!”
“We are.”
“Really? Are we there yet?”
He closed his eyes and entwined his fingers with hers, their palms brushing like butterfly wings on each other. There was no pain, just a fulfilled promise as thoughts overlapped and flourished.
Good bye...
Thank you...
The music box sound was cut off as the doors slid open:
“Welcome back!” the attendant’s voice filled the white silence. “We hope you…”
Her voice broke off looking at the two sitting hand in hand their heads next to each other. Their faces were illuminated, peaceful smiles spread across their pink lips. They both looked like sleeping breathless angels in a cradle of newborn light.
“Today a nine year old boy and a twenty one year old girl were found dead in the Tempozan Harbor Village Ferris wheel. They had been previously reported missing from the Osaka Central Hospital where they were treated. The two ran from the hospital early this afternoon and were found by the Ferris wheel attendant. They were both deceased in one of the gondolas. The two were severely sick and neither of them was expected to live past the end of the year. The condition of their death was not revealed though they were suffering from different illnesses.”
The young doctor threw the paper in the recycling can looking at the high Ferris wheel. The sun was up above it, making it seem like the whole wheel had a halo from heavens. He started to walk, passing a young woman sitting on the ground, guitar in her arms and the case open if front of her. Her glasses sparkled in the morning light and her hand pinched the cords with a strong feel of certainty. The music caught him in an instant and closed his eyes listening to it and thinking of the greater power that made him powerless.
He whispered something as the song slowly traces off and the girl got up to her feet following where he was looking the halo of the wheel blinding her. She let her guitar down and used her hand as a visor when a group of tourists passed by them, one with a flier in his hands. They were talking loudly and exited heading for the wheel.
“It’s a seventeen minutes ride. They say the view is priceless, you can see even the mountains!” A lanky youngster with purple died hair was telling the others his head falling back looking with awe at the wheel.
“It took them seventeen minutes!” the singing girl said and he looked back at her smiling. “It takes us a lifetime!”
“Makes you wonder what they saw up there, doesn’t it?”
Capital H.
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