Fleeting Glimpses Out There (freewrite)

honeydue (68)in #freewrite • 8 years ago

I loved the way she said 'balloon'. She said it as if she were blowing bubbles. Maybe that doesn't make sense to you and that's alright. It don't make much sense to me either, and for a long time, it made no sense at all. Perhaps you sort of had to be there, you know, maybe it was something in the way her lips formed a perfect 'o'. You can try to make that shape yourself in your mirror, but you can't.
Or at least, I couldn't, though I tried. Afterward, I tried this many times. I have somewhat feminine lips, so in my desperation, after a shot or ten, I convinced myself that I might be able to make that shape too.
It would've been a nice illusion, I was really upset when it didn't work. There I was, saying 'balloon' to the empty house, like an idiot.
That's how my landlady, Eugene, found me. She's an old woman and it was most embarrassing, let me tell you. But any feeling,even that, is better than the numbness I felt inside. The problem was I had waited for Eile for a long time. A very long time.

Months, days, minutes. I don't remember now, but it was a lengthy and painful process, our separation.
Eile was five when she left. Yes. It's taken me a very long time to be able to say this, but my daughter wasn't taken by them, she left voluntarily.
I cried, and so did she, although I think she knew, in a sense, what was going to happen, since the first day they came.
When the first ship landed, we were all a bit unaware, we didn't know what to say or do. We expected war and we tried to prepare for it. The men were called up to fight. I, of course, didn't want to. So I ran.
We ran, Eile and me. It's not that I didn't want to defend our planet against those gray bastards. I'm not a coward. But Eile was just a child, she needed me more. So I ducked out of training and tried to take Eile as far away as possible.
I hoped, against everything, that maybe there was a place where they hadn't heard what happened. Where the mysterious ship that had landed outside Chicago was just something out of a sci-fi movie, still.

The house on the corner had always been subject for gossip. I was the only one who knew the truth, or so I thought. Eile was never what you'd call 'normal', and the neighbors blamed it on what happened to her mother. Jamie died soon after Eile was born, with our baby daughter next to her. It was one of those unexpected deaths. One moment here, and then...she was just gone. I wish I could say it was painless, but in truth, I don't know.
But I think Eile did. Whenever she spoke about her mother, she was very calm. Serene, I guess you'd call it. And she always encouraged me to be the same.

'Don't cry, Daddy,' she'd say and pat my beard. She always liked running her little fingers through my big beard.
And she was always very mature for her age, very...I don't know how to put it in words. She was Eile. She was unique, of course. I think I'd have to say she was very generous, very big-hearted. She cared so much about the little ones, the creatures, the aliens in the old movies. She just loved E.T., she kept saying how far away from his home he was, how small and helpless.
She was a big sucker for the lonely ones and I was always afraid she was feeling lonely, in her heart. I didn't want her to lack anything.
One mother was bad enough, on my count.

People talked, they thought she was weird, strange-in-the-head. You know how people are. To me, she was the stars in my sky. No, she was the sky itself, air itself. She was everything, which is why I tried to protect her when the aliens came. I couldn't leave her alone and go off to war, because they wouldn't understand her.
She was too strange, too special, she was too far out there, I understood, but I was alone. I feared that if the authorities got their hands on her, put her up with some neighboring lady, she'd be lost. They'd hate her. Humans have always hated those who were different from them.
But I didn't run fast enough, it seemed, because they caught up with me. At first, I thought I was going to face the usual charges for someone who tries to dodge service.
It was only when the small, gray things crawled forward that I learned they were after Eile.

The first one was holding a crooked purple umbrella, and they all huddled under it. It was most strange, they weren't much bigger than cats. Fat cats that looked kinda like koalas. The famous aliens we'd all feared turned out to be nothing more than house pets.
And then they didn't. The general who was with them explained politely and through clenched teeth that it'd be best not to get too close to them, otherwise I'd be blown to smithereens. I decided to take his word for it.
He then proceeded to explain to us that the things – the aliens, whose name they hadn't been able to establish, as it was untranslatable to us – wanted my little Eile. They said that, through millions of soundwaves, they had heard her signals. Faint and in the light-distance, but it was there, the first signal to come out of this side of the Universe for millions of years.

I looked down at my daughter, who was just smiling at the little creatures. But I could tell her eyes weren't. They studied the aliens very carefully, as if she was trying to decipher their story. To see in their fur the many miles they'd come.
The signal had surprised them and set them back, at first. They were so very shocked, when they heard it.

But then, as they sat listening to my little daughter, they realized that they needed whatever was emitting that signal. Because if it made it through all the darkness that apparently surrounds us out here, its source must be pretty strong. Thus, powerful.
At first, I feared these creatures wanted to use her as a weapon, in some sort of war. But the general explained a peculiar thing – that the creatures on that side of the universe had transcended war. He seemed to be as baffled as me by this concept. Perhaps even more, after all, it was his job.
Through mangled, broken sounds, the creatures themselves explained that they did not wage war against each other, that they had realized the might of creation. They were just busy building up their worlds, growing.
And that in my daughter, they saw potential. They saw her as a possibly great architect of the cosmos. They wanted her to build worlds, not destroy them.

I didn't want to let her go, but I didn't have much of a choice. I could see it in the general's eyes that although these creatures might have transcended violence, he surely hadn't and wanted them gone off his planet, so he could get back at it. And it wasn't because they threatened to take her away forcefully, but because I could see she wanted to go. I marveled at how this little child could understand the magnitude of this, but then again, Eile was special.
So, I let her go with the furry aliens. There are times I wish I hadn't. Many, especially the nights. Te house gets quiet at night, and it's strange not to hear another heartbeat. Sometimes, it gets so quiet, I'm not even sure I hear my own.
But she wanted it that way and she promised she would come back. She said it to me on the platform, before she boarded the ship.
'I'm going in the big balloon now, Daddy. I love you.'
'I love you too, sweetheart.'
'See ya!' she waved as she got into the giant balloon that apparently belonged to these creatures.

It's only been three years, ten months, twenty-four days and fifteen hours. I try to stay hopeful.

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb