Parallel Lines
Vrooooooo.
The car’s subtle rhythm threatened to put the boy to sleep.
Vrooooooo.
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For some time it relaxed him, soothing the stress of coming back home. Its consistent flatness gave something to fill his mind. Strangely, the monotony let him focus. At first.
Vrooooooo.
But now? It droned on and on, driving him to apathy. Endlessly — vrooooooo — the sound irked him as much as it bored him. He rolled down the window for any signs of excitement on the highway. Cars zipped by and cut the air. Their rhythm too was predictable. He could guess the seconds between one car and the next, a game that entertained him for just about that long. So he lifted his gaze beyond the roads, to the nature thriving next to them. Empty grassfields and empty cliff sides. His eyes glossed over a forest, so thick and yet so devoid of vitality. He glanced further back at a thin ravine; flat and shriveled and emptier still. He sighed. The same as always. The poppies weren’t in bloom this time of year, the only thing that really made the route back special. During these times, everything seemed so motionless. So grey. It reminded him of home. Thousands of trips there through this very highway stained the images permanently on his mind. All of it a familiar, tired tirade on the eyes. Maybe he ought to rest his eyes after all…a sudden thick shadow darkened his sight. He looked up — the hills. They blotched out the sun entirely save for a thin line of an amber glow. His eyes wandered down their slopes, across the opposite lane, following the encroaching crawl of the sliver of light. Then, all at once, the late afternoon sky illuminated with the full grandeur of the sun. For a second, the sun’s glare blinded him. He refused to look away, instead waiting for the moment to pass. The sun relaxed and its embrace glimmered against car windows. He peered into the reflection of the car’s window beside him, and sucked in breath. The world seemed to sparkle. In that glass, it did sparkle. His eyes fell onto the stranger in the car.
She did not see him. Her eyes locked with the explosion of light refracted against his window. The hulking hills behind him spilled out into golden glades, as if a million rays that — if only she were closer to the sky — she could graze with her fingertips. They rolled, up and down, up and down, keeping pace with her car. Green itself spiraled up those hills, leaped upwards as trees with such excitement in their leaves that flittered and spun with the wind. The wind sang as it flowed by her side like silk. It fell in tune with her car — vroooo, whoooo — and the song gave the drive the edge of freedom. Indeed, she was free. On her own, home left behind (even if only for a little time), the allure of something new on the horizon. This was her first time down here, and hopefully not the last. The hushed echoes of the ravine as it splashed against grass and made mud; the tower of cliff sides balancing unevenly on each other, spearing the sky as the true skyscrapers. She felt so small here, heavy with the awe within her, and as the sun gleamed upon her now, aware so deeply of the greatness surrounding her. It all melted into each other, and then washed away, fleeting and fading. She bid the moment farewell as the landscape fell behind her in the car window. It was time to exit. She readied to change lanes, but the stranger still remained beside her. She would have to wait. That was no reason to complain, of course; it gave her a little more time to soak in the feeling. She let the wonder grow onto her face as a sincere smile.
He noticed that smile, and looked where she looked, saw what she saw. How could he have forgotten? He felt small like her, glimpsing the fullness of the way home; all color returned to his world. He shook off the sensation, then closed his eyes as the car glided to the exit, towards the not quite greyness of his home.
