Bus
The bus engine hums lightly through a crack in the window in which the pilgrim rests his head. A faint hum, almost a whisper, echoing through the night. The sky a vast darkness, blinking stars echoing long forgotten dreams of past pilgrimages. Lamp posts, an orange-ish glow, enveloping his face in a variety of patterns in sporadic flashes. The pilgrim's eyes are shut, but he's not sleeping. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't. His mind is still flowing freely, his conscience is still awake. Eyes are shut, but perception is awake.
One, two, three. Three knocks against the windows.
In peace I sleep, he mutters to himself.
Again, three knocks.
In peace I wake.
He opens his eyes.
It's too dark to see anything. Only silhouettes enveloped by shadows. How many? Three again? What meaning does three have, he wonders. But then he counts five. Then six. Is that all? Yes, that's all, he mutters.
“If you need to talk to yourself, keep the dialog in your mind.” Says the girl sitting besides him. “Or else you're gonna look like a weirdo.”
Black and long hair, brown eyes, tired complexion. One year behind him, eighteen. She calls herself a chronicler, but she only writes fiction. Fantastic fiction, even. Not even magical realism or something more down to earth. The title makes as much sense as her stories, in fact.
“You're thinking something rude, aren't you?” She says, a faint smile in the corner of her mouth.
“No, I'm not.” He says, looking at her eyes, black irises as if staring through me and reflecting the sky. “You're just thinking too much.”
“If I thought that much, I would be the one talking to myself. But as it stands, maybe I'm right. It's never different with you, the answer to this question.”
She sits her head against his shoulder, muttering something intelligible to herself. You're doing it too, thinks the pilgrim, sitting his head against the window again.
One more time, he closes his eyes.
The pilgrim is running away from home which is not home anymore. That is, that which once could call a home, which now belongs to strangers. In a sense, he can't even say he's running away. You can't run away from something you can't get back to.
Rather, he is migrating. Moving through the multitude of paths given to him, taking care to heed the worlds of the prophet, looking for the single path. A straight and narrow one, almost suffocating.
The only kind of journey he had before this were school trips.
It's daytime. The pilgrim sleeps soundly, so does the chronicler. Through the windows, green expanses and blue skies, so stereotypically picturesque as to look fake. That is the vision beyond the right window. The left window is filled with the sea, the horizon divided by a thin and tremulous line in two quadrants. One, filled by the sea, a grayish expanse humming loudly, contrasting against the stillness of the early morning. The other one filled by the sky, a pale blue, the clouds almost immobile. A blank canvas where dreams can be given reality.
The pilgrim mutters something in his sleep. Something, something, prophet. Something, something, fate. The chronicler slowly opens her eyes, looking at him. Her eyes looking heavy, she observes him in the corner of her vision, a little smile adorning her pressed lips. With an elbow strike to the ribs, she wakes him up.
“You were talking too much in your sleep.” Says the chronicler, trying to hide her smile. “You looked bothered, so I woke you up.”
“Come on, now. You just wanted to hit me first thing in the morning, didn't you?” Responds the pilgrim, rubbing his tired eyes. “I'm not really angry or anything, but you shouldn't lie like that. You are a chronicler, aren't you? Truth is your expertise.”
“Fabricated truth. A replica, but far from the real thing. It's more about the feelings than hard factual reality. That which moves reality, but which is not reality itself.”
The chronicler looks through the window, thinking to herself. The pilgrim complies with her silence.