Just Me, Myself, and I (Part 2 of 3)

(Before reading this Part 2, please read Part 1 here )

I returned to the doors and chose the left.

I didn’t find her; she found me walking at a casual pace. Grasping my wrist, she twirled me around and our faces nearly collided, but I stumbled to halt before impact. I stood nearly nose to nose with myself. My vision was consumed by wide, round eyes in which fervent blue irises beamed and were framed by dark, sweeping lashes. They in cased an entire ocean on the brink of gushing out. Locks of golden brown twisted and curled playful in thick bushels around her face. An impish smirk danced on her lips.

“Run,” she whispered in hushed exhilaration.

Then she was gone and so was I. Her feet flitted across the ground as her the wind tangled her bouncing curls. My wrist was still in her hand and a swinging paint brush was gripped in the other. Once dripping paint was now flying. Bits of paint carried by the air splattered against the ground and me as well.

“Don’t let them catch you!” she cried.

I staggered and fumbled from behind as she whisked me away. We ran through the emptiness and kept running on as glimpses of the world rushed by. I didn’t have time to wave goodbye, I didn’t even have time to breathe, my lungs were the ones crying out now, for the oxygen was going by too quick to gasp in. The pounding of each hurried step shot from my feet and up my spine and along my arms and all the way up to my head. I could hear it in my ears, or was it the pounding of my accelerated pulse?

“Who?” I cried back. My steps slowed, unable to keep up.

“Huh?” she grunted as she suddenly came to a stop. Her wild heap of curls partially covered her face as she turned to me, but she pushed it back without a thought. Her head was tilted to the side and her eyes remained wide and transfixed on me with a bewildered gaze of a deer.

“Who is chasing us?” I gasped between heavy breaths. “Who are we running from?

“Oh, no one,” she informed me with delight. Her expression relaxed into an amused smile. “I just felt like running.”

“Then where were we going?” I demanded.

“You didn’t know?” she asked in befuddlement, but then she just shrugged. “I figured you knew, because you are me… but if you didn’t and I didn’t, then I guess nowhere at all.”

She had begun to wander as her feet lazily stepped one way then another. The paint brush swung in wide arcs causing color drizzled like rain. Soon both her and the ground were splattered and dripping with paint.

“How could you go somewhere without knowing?” I questioned her with disbelief. “Why would you?”

“To see what’s there when I get there,” she said wistfully, but did not stop her painting. “Isn’t that what people usually do when they go someplace new?”

“Yeah, but usually people make plans,” I told her as I stalked after her. “They look at a map, and tell their family they’ll be gone. Maybe invite a friend or two. People just don’t just get up and run away.”

She was dancing now as she stepped and to an unheard beat and her arms flung about her as she twirled carelessly, tossing her hair in every direction. Sometimes she would leap or run the paint brush against the ground. Her hands were coated in paint and left fingerprints where she cartwheeled. She danced with no restraint, but frolicked with only the whimsy and freedom of daydream.

She did not respond. Of course she did not respond. She was too busy to hear anyone, not even me—not even herself.

“People will think you’re crazy,” I spat as I crossed my arms. “Dancing like that and finger painting like a child.”

She did not hear a word.

Fuming now, I chased after her. My hand reached out and yanked her shoulder without a thought. I was greeted by a mist of paint across my face. My eyes snapped shut.

“Why?” her voice asked in earnest through the dark.

“Because,” I began, but I refused to open my eyes, “no one will know where to find you, so they won’t bother to look at all. If you never tell them, they will never understand. They’ll just think you’ve gone insane.”

“I was never trying to explain.”

I opened my eyes to see the blue expanse that was her eyes. They were nothing but vast oceans brimming with a yearning to overflow. To pour out every mystery they had to offer for all of the world to see.

“Then why were you running?” I asked in wonder.

She did not answer. Instead, she gently placed her hand on my shoulder and turned me around. The vast emptiness was now filled; every inch of the ground was covered in paint. Dots sprinkled the ground like stars and long curving brush strokes flowed like rivers of every hue, while quick, thin wisps of color danced like the wind over it all. Intertwined in the chaos was a winding trail of foot prints the color of a vast, blue ocean. Each footprint held a glimpse of what lay hidden within. It was all laid out for the world to see.

“Why is there only one set of footprints,” I asked.

“There’s only one person here,” she replied.

I turned back to her. She was still standing there with eager eyes and an impish grin, but she held out a paint brush to me. I took it from her hand and began to run.