They sat outside at table under sky of changing mood. Gone were the still winds and clear sky of before as front approached, grey and lavender depths of layered watercolor sky with wisps and tails of rain arced in curl by winds in undertow beneath. Fallen leaves, dried and curled, scattered in scratch across cemented ground around as winds accompanied the soft percussion in sounds through trees, awnings, table umbrellas, and urban instruments that all gave song when affected in the wind.
To the change of season, Emma wore turtleneck beneath burgundy sweater, its thread and wool holding warmth even in the winds. Ryan wore a dark flannel shirt with leather elbowed accents, reinforcements in an age where such was prone to wear and work in the wilds, but in the urban desolateness, it was only an accent: no different than the trees chosen not for utility or purpose, simply the aesthetics of seasonal displays—the soft maples showing full in their golds and ruddy hues as winds and world proceeded in their denuding down to nakedness.
The sky was changed, and so was his mood, and as the skies soon would break and fall with rain in the weight of their withholdings, Ryan’s heart sought too to shed.
“Have you read anything nice lately?” he asked. “I’ve started about thirty books—old ones, new ones, one’s I’m told are good and special, but I made it nowhere in any of them. They don’t hit me.”
“What are you searching for?” Emma asked.
“A story that that makes me feel something.” Ryan looked to the sky, the curl of the rains without sky-emotion of lightning and sound—only dampness and cold; and the soft incessance rain strike on urban stone—that soon to be upon them. “Something different than these days…”
Emma listened, sensing sky’s depression that surrounded.
“Why are you searching in other’s dreams for the one that is in you?” she asked. “You know what you want to find? You know what you are looking for. Why are you sifting the dreams and words of others already written and lived? Make it.
Maybe you can’t find it because it is on you to give it life. Why don’t you make it; write it, or live it, whatever you want it to become?”
Words and winds cut striking chill into his skin.
“What if no one reads? What if no one cares?”
“Why should you care? Do it for you. It’s your life, your dream. Make it. And you never know, it may affect others who never say or show.
You are searching the words of dreamers, dead and gone. If lived and written well, why shouldn’t yours live among the same?”
Wind caught and bellowed in canvas awnings sheltering entryways along the street. Emma’s hair caught in scattered spread in sky’s gust, falling loose and free over front of her shoulder. In wind’s after-settle, Emma took hold of it strands, brushing it back to place and order behind.
“You think the chance is gone, that you are set and fixed on a fate, but it isn’t true,” Emma persisted. “Every year, the world ages. Every year, life dies away; and every year—there comes a new spring; but it only lives because the old falls away.
You are too young to be living in other’s dreams when the dreams in you remain very much alive. Make them.”
The tailing undertow of storm arrived with cast of light cold rain scattering company of the outdoor tables as wind did to leaves in preceding front. Ryan and Emma departed.
In the slow fall of the rain, Ryan remembered her words, her message repeating with soft incessance like rain on urban stone.
“You are too young to be living in other’s dreams when the dreams in you remain very much alive. Make them.”
And so he would.