The Blue Man
« You know what they said… » He leaned against the back of the chair, propping his head on one arm. The other hand moved casually on the rim of the glass in front of him, which slightly dimpled the dark blue liquid inside. « The indigo blue comes from the deeper sky, when it finally rains on the moon on a starless night. »
His blurry face, tired looking and broke, froze under the dim blue light in the empty lounge. The lamps in poor state buzzed occasionally. They failed to trap any moth, because of their worn appearance, perhaps.
« It hasn’t rained on the moon yet. » You gave a clear response after a brief thinking. There was something that he shouldn’t ever recall, since he didn’t see the risk. He would melt into that colour as the rain over the sea, which would end up disappear without leaving a single trace. His broken heart was thoroughly soaked into the same colour of what he pursuited, or what afflicted him.
He kept caressing the glass rim, but he shifted his gloomy sight to you. The chilling gaze did not make you uncomfortable. You were drawn into the ebony profoundness on the other side through his pupils, surrounded by his iris in dark blue. The everlasting storm on the Neptune was not less relentless when being seen through the door in his eyes.
Were you on the Nereid, the moon of Neptune? The only visible part, the great blue arc, the incarnation of the tremendous sphere himself crosses from the one side of the still sky to the other. The rest of his corpse stranded in the eerie somber essence of the silence. And you were stranded too, locked firmly by the gravity, also by the fragility of the icy crust soaked with the primitive blue under your feet. Any wrong step would let the whole scene shatter into the uncountable pieces, leading to the immitigable grief at the predestined moment of its collapse.
Fragments were peeled by the gravity from the monolithic icicles, as the shade of his chapped lips moved, from where came out his raucous voice. « Indeed… But the starless night hasn’t descended yet either. » This troubled man in blue kept staring at you, and continued his monologue. You knew clearly that the indigo blue was already long lost, but you couldn’t let him know. Any pursuit after it only brought you sinister foreboding.
His breathing became unstable. Yet he didn’t end his story telling. « …Once I got a sapphire from the Zephyr. A hendecahedron in the most mysterious colour closest to the real indigo blue. Still not the real one. But it could guide you there, through the weirdest oak forest. The elder screech owl lamented the premature death of the only blue serval. Their mournful howls echoed in the dark under the dense canopy of oaks and broke the heart of any passerby. » He coughed. « …Then I reached the river which flowed backwards, a calm river without a ripple, reflecting the shadow of the gloomy oaks ashore. And there, on the its surface like a stainless mirror, forever awaited the ferryman. I showed him the sapphire, and he took me all way up to the source, on his ebony canoe. He hummed a Phrygian tune sometimes, something that could remind you of the moving dunes on a clear night, moving towards the woeful seashore where countless stranded ship wrecks rest. The quaint blue jar that sealed a djinn would be buried once again into the deeper underground. And yes… yes… » His gaze became aimlessly for a while, as if he had seen something that only appeared in illusion in a day fever. His conditions were deteriorating. « Finally… I was at the place. The blue lily field in the monolithic mountain. The bewitching shimmering blue of those cursed flowers seduced the only blue serval. The only one. The flowers are merciless poison for it, and it was too young to tell his own kind… »
He was seized by another violent fit of coughing, and here the story ended. You saw the unshed tears in his watery eyes. The cliche good old days, when both of you kept staring at each other on the ebony canoe, stranding in the middle of the still river, far enough from the shore where the shadow of the mourning oaks could not reach. A forlorn howl came from beyond, and the liquid inside the glass was no longer perceivable. It was totally soaked in the same unforgettable colour as the space around you did. « Listen… Wouldn’t you take me back there? As our first time… » He already knew. He remembered all.
« It won’t be easy. » You rolled your eyes downward. « You are no longer able to… »
« I know… » He cut your words gently in almost whispering, pressing his trembling index finger against his lips then putting it back. « I don’t care anymore… The sky and the universe are always a whole. There is no difference between me and the blue. Let me go… »
A misplaced tear rolled down your face. There was nothing you could do to protect the man in blue before you, for he had already been revealed. The cerulean door opened at once, and you soaked yourself in the deluge that had been there for a long time on the other side. The indigo blue was hitting hard on the porous barren ground on the moon. The distant columbarium was going to shield one more urn, which contains the icy dust from the shattered ice golem who fell from far beyond through the door.
The Redder Room 