I carry them to be incinerated, my eyes blurring with tears. That’s how I know she cared about losing the picture, because she knew exactly where the fragments lay.
In one swift motion, Indie brushes the pieces from my bed. How did I not see that the color of the green near the canyon was so new you could almost feel the smoothness of the leaf, the stickiness like butterfly wings opening for the first time? So many carefully selected pieces of beauty and still we didn’t look at them enough. All that paper in the ports, all that luxury. I don’t know why I didn’t carry around pictures and poems all the time before I came here. It’s looking at something without being watched, without being told how to see. At first, I thought it was having the picture that made it special, but it’s not even that. I don’t know why it’s not the same, but it isn’t. Indie makes a dismissive gesture, turns her face away.
“Tomorrow during breakfast, then,” I say. It’s true we’re supposed to stay in our cabin after dinner. The one port in camp sits humming over in the main hall, large and listening. “We could go view the painting on the port,” I tell them. We all sigh, at the same time, our combined exhalation moving the fragments on its breeze.
I was right about this being the last time we could look at the picture. Now, when I see the painting or touch one of the newrose petals, I remember the way he felt so familiar and knew so much, and I ache for what I’ve had to let go. Xander still plays the game in a subtle way. I wonder if some of that longing came through in my voice when I spoke of the painting, if Xander noticed and remembered.
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