Before the First Light — Rira Hakimelahi
Central Park was one of the biggest areas of nature that Tara knew about in the city. It wasn’t the most natural thing in the world, sure, it was mainly man made, but it was the most she could find.
Alex had told her he wanted to walk there. She couldn’t blame him, after all he’d been trapped in a lab all these years; the poor guy probably needed more than a bit of fresh air. They’d met for the first time in OXE tower just two months prior. It hadn’t been a long time, but it was longer than most of her friendships.
They stood at a cross walk together when Alex abruptly said.
“That’s a pigeon, right?” He pointed over at a pigeon that sat on the yellow spray painted concrete just six feet away from them. Tara looked up at him and squeezed his hand.
“Yeah, that’s a pigeon.”
Alex’s eyebrows furrowed together before saying in a completely serious tone, “He looks like he should be wearing a bowler hat.” He nodded to himself as if this was a reasonable thing one would say when seeing a pigeon.
“Maybe he should be.” She shrugged before she pulled him across the street with her when the walking light turned on. His hand tightened around hers, his eyes darted around the street in a panic.
“The cars aren’t gonna hit us, right?!” He started to pull himself back towards the curb but Tara still dragged him forwards.
“They’re not gonna hit us, look, the park is just there. You can make it a few more steps.” She motioned to the open gates of the park. He took a breath as the crosswalk counted down until they had to be on the other side. Finally he nodded to her and they finished the walk to the other side of the street. His eyes had been closed the whole time, and he let her lead him blindly into the park. It was odd to her, having to explain the concept of walking to a 25 year old man, but it was what had to be done if he ever wanted to do press conferences for the team.
“This is a park?” He tilted his head to the side as he looked around at the park, and he just froze. He stared at the lake and the kids with their little remote control boats, his eyes widened with awe. But Tara couldn’t see it, at least not what he saw.
All Tara saw was a boring old park with brownish-green grass, the leaves were dull, and many of the kids were shouting at their parents to have their phones back. The Alice in Wonderland statue stood lonely, not a single kid to climb it in sight like they used to when she was a kid.
Before OXE boarding school.
“Yeah, this is a park, not much to see-” But he cut her off as he ran over to the lake to look at the ducks and see his reflection in the water. “Alex, wait up!” She shouted while she ran after him.
She’d been given one condition to take him out of the OXE tower, that she wouldn’t lose him.
“That’s a duck! I saw those on the TV! That’s a duck right?! It has to be a duck!” He reached his hand out into the lake to try to touch the ducks. The birds flew away in a startled manner while some of the people nearby gave him a weird look.
“Yeah, those are ducks.” She put her hand on his shoulder to calm him down; the brown ducks flew away. They weren’t even the green ones that you see once in a blue moon. They were just regular ducks, another creature on this earth, and that’s what they’d always be.
“Why did they go away?” He blinked a few times, confused, before he looked back down at his hands. “Did I hurt them?” He whispered to her in a feeble voice, his gaze still focused on his hands that could in one simple moment cause more pain than she had in her entire life.
“You didn’t hurt them. They’re just scared, that’s all.” Tara shrugged and put her sweater covered hands over his. His hands were warm and they felt as if she was holding her hands close to a fire.
“Oh…” Alex tore his eyes away from his hands and looked down at her with a soft sadness in his eyes. “Why would they be scared of me?”
“Alex, they’re much smaller than you. If you were that small, wouldn’t you be scared if a guy ten times your height ran at you?”
“I guess so.” He sighed then let go of her hands and looked over at the lake. He looked a bit behind her and his eyes suddenly lit up.
“What’s that?” Tara turned around to see the Alice in Wonderland Statue in its full bronze glory. It looked lonely over there with no kids climbing it.
“Oh that’s the Alice in Wonderland Statue. I used to climb on it a lot as a kid, before OXE took me.” She took his hand again, and they started to walk around the lake towards the statue.
“You used to climb on the statue? Isn’t that a bad thing to do?” His eyebrows furrowed and he looked down at her.
“I mean no one really cares much if people are climbing on it. It’s just an old statue. I used to try to climb and sit on Alice’s lap, or on her shoulders. But my favorite was in the tree part with the Cheshire cat.”
“But it’s not a play structure, it’s a statue. Why would you use something so pretty as a playground?” He scrunched his nose up in what she thought was confusion.
Tara couldn’t see what was so pretty about the statue.
Nothing about it gave her the idea that it was pretty like it did for Alex. Her opinion on it hadn’t changed since she was seven, it was just as creepy now as it was then. The Mad Hatter looked like he was an ugly short version of Willy Wonka who ate people instead of chocolate, and the Cheshire cat had an unsettling smile from upon its metal tree. Nothing about it screamed beauty; it was just another ugly statue of a beautiful story, like most of its kind.
“It’s just a thing with this statue. Come on, it’s fun if you try it.” She ran up to the statue and tried to climb onto the mushroom base.
She could remember being seven and climbing here, putting in all her strength to swing herself up onto the metal tree. But with seventeen years of combat training, it had become a second nature. OXE had made her like that, and she knew they’d make worse of Alex. That was all that government organizations that hid their tracks did, turn innocent people into monsters.
Once she reached the top and stabilized herself, she looked down to find-
Oh shit, where did he go?
“Alex?” Tara called out, she prepared herself to jump off the statue and go find him.
“I’m here!” She heard his voice from under the metal mushroom cap. “There’s a freaking metal baby crocodile! How cool is that?! Is this normal for statues?!” He exclaimed and stuck his head out from under the statue. Tara let out a sigh of relief.
“Uh, yeah, it’s normal for it to have details.” She turned her body around so she could look down at him. Her long wavy brown hair fell over her face and she flashed him an awkward smile. She couldn’t begin to imagine how stupid she looked up there.
“That’s so cool!” He went back under the cap. Once she was sure he wasn’t going to just disappear on her again, Tara closed her eyes, and she tried to feel the joy she’d once felt here as a child. But all it felt like was being on another random landmark during a mission. The differences being she was here for fun and wasn’t holding a sniper.
The wind was the same and the fear of falling remained. But if she lost her balance while taking the shot she would fall…
And fall…
And fall….
Until she was just a mush of flesh and broken bones at the bottom of a famous landmark….
She shook her head and blinked a few times in an attempt to snap herself out of it.
This isn’t a mission, you’re just on a kiddie statue. You’re fine.
She forced herself to move past it and focus on the statue itself. There was nothing that made her heart spark with the first rays of curiosity. It was just another day in New York City, just that now she had free time and Alex was with her.
“This statue smells like a penny.” Alex commented from the ground below her. Tara opened her eyes to look down at him.
“It’s made of bronze, bronze smells like copper.” She answered simply while she leaned on the Cheshire Cat. He started to climb the statue to sit on Alice’s shoulders. She watched as he did, she paid attention to every movement. An irrational fear took over her that he’d fall, but deep down she knew he’d be fine.
“Huh, I didn’t know that.” Alex wrapped his arms around Alice’s head and placed his chin on top of it. “And you’re saying you got to see this whenever you wanted as a kid?”
“I mean yeah, I did. It was nice at first. But the more I went it kinda got boring.” She pulled her baby pink cardigan closer to her body as a gust of wind hit them. “Looking back, I wish I’d asked to go more back then.”
“I don’t think it’s boring. If I’m gonna be honest, this was the best day of my life.” Tara glanced over at him, her heart heavy with pity. Alex’s gaze was stuck on the sunset, his eyes wide with awe.
“I’m sure you’ll have better days. Soon this will seem like the most average thing ever. All we did was go to the park.” He finally looked over at her.
“I don’t want it to. I don’t want to see things the way you do,” he whispered and his dark blue eyes looked down at her through his slightly grown out brown hair.
“What do you mean the way I see things?”
“I don’t understand you, I mean look around,” He gestured to the almost empty park; the dying grass, the ducks, the leafless trees, and the cracked cement walkway. “How can you look at all this and not feel anything? How do you not see how amazing it is? I don’t want to get so used to a world this beautiful to the point where it looks boring to me. Don’t pretend you understand, you and I both know you don’t.” Alex stopped to let out a tired sigh.
Tara could see all the years of being locked up in a padded room in OXE’s lab reflected in his eyes. Captivity, experiments, loss of memory, all sixteen years of it was all on display for her just in a single tired expression. Her heart felt like it got ripped apart just looking at him.
“Tara, did you know this is my first time at a park in sixteen years?” She could feel her hands start to shake.
“No, I didn’t.” She whispered and closed her eyes. It was difficult to imagine a world where all she’d known were white walls and syringes full of propofol. But that was his reality, and it scared her.
“I don’t think you- or anyone really -know what life is really about. It’s like you forgot. You don’t remember what it’s like to live. I didn’t when I was nine and they took me. I don’t want to ever take it for granted, never again. Not when I know I could lose it.” His eyes were shiny with unshed tears and then he just closed them. Tara leaned over to put a hand on his knee.
“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” They both sat there in silence for a bit. She tried to think how he could, to see how beautiful the park was besides decaying nature. But she couldn’t get it. She couldn’t reach far enough into her mind and find the seven year old Tara who could see the world for how beautiful it was. All she saw was a park dying and preparing for winter.
“We should head back, my curfew is seven.” He finally spoke up.
They started to walk back together in silence, their footsteps matched one another. All of a sudden Tara got pushed aside as a little girl with wavy brown hair accidentally ran into her before she sprinted to the Alice in Wonderland statue. A moment later the girl’s younger brother ran after her and they began to climb the statue, they bickered with one another over who could climb the highest while their mom warned them to be careful.
Tara stopped to watch the children climb the statue and Alex had stopped with her. She watched as the little girl in the magenta coat climbed up the statue and took her place on the Cheshire Cat’s tree.
“Maman! Look how high I climbed!”
“‘Joohnam,’ sweetie, please be careful. You don’t want to break your arm again!” Her mother had called to her and the girl’s younger brother had crawled over to sit on Alice’s lap with the small statue of a Dinah the Cat. Finally, it came to Tara like the first light. Seeing the joy in that little girl’s face and watching her be so excited, it gave Tara hope. The world was far from regular for that little girl, maybe it didn’t have to be for her either. She could be used to the world, but she could still look for more. Look for happy little moments like this. She walked over to Alex and put her hand in his.
“Come on, let’s go. We’re late anyways.” His eyes trailed from the kids on the statue over to her, and he gave her a small smile.
“Yeah, let’s go before James decides to start writing his lecture about being late.” He laughed a bit and she laughed along too.
As they continued their walk back to OXE tower, she couldn’t help but notice how beautiful the grass was with the red leaves decorating it. The duck from earlier was back on the pond, this time it swam with its family. Only now did she notice how special each and every one of their feather patterns were to each duck. They weren’t boring, quite the contrary, she just had to look a bit deeper to see how pretty each of them really were.
They walked out of the park gate, and the pink lighting from the sunset coated the street in a rosy glow. A pigeon stood near a hot dog stand on the other side of the street, probably just waiting for someone to drop some bread for it.
Tara looked up at Alex who looked down at her.
“Still the best day ever?” She asked simply and let a small smile take over her pink painted lips.
“Yeah, it is.”
“You know what I think?” Tara prompted as they stepped onto the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He raised an eyebrow and flashed her a loopy smile.
“What?”
“Pigeons really do look like they would be wearing bowler hats.”
Rira is a fiction author who currently spends her time writing short stories in hopes of writing a novel. Her publications include "Before the First Light". She can't wait to publish more stories from her desk in Massachusetts.