Forthtelling [Transnistria/public]

Night. Another bomb exploded off into the air. Too close.

He was running, from something so familiar he felt betrayal and anger rattle his bones, but much more than that was the fear. The fear that he was alone against an army, and had no chance.

It had started early that morning. Tanks and armored car's rode over the river on the bridge. In a show of defiance, a row of unarmed civilians stood across it. They were mowed over. He should have been there. But he was already running.

He was a soldier, he forced himself to repeat. The most devoted of them all. He could dissemble and assemble a Thompson gun in under a minute-- that was his job. But in all his expertise he had never fired one, and was terrified to even try. He had dealt with death too much as a boy to make it so meaningless with arms.

But nothing meant anything anymore, did it? Not honor, not pride, not purity, not honesty. It's what tore down his beloved soviet union and why he had tried so hard to uphold it's tenants afterwards-- and why now he would be killed for it.

The bombs got closer, the shots fired became louder, as if it was a deadly game of tag with only one round. Suddenly he felt a sensation like a bite in his back and across his legs. He instantly fell, his velocity making him roll aside into the rubble of a bank.

Soon warmth flowed from the bites, and he twisted to look at his legs. Bullets surrounded by blooms of blood.

War waited for no man, and there was no way he could run away from the tanks now. He finally noticed he had been crying. When before the tears had come at a steady pace, they fell like a waterfall now as he began to shudder and sob. He was just a child, in reality. A man didn't care about right and wrong. He had to become that way. If he survived, he would have to become that way.

He was preparing for the worst when the earth rumbled under him and other tanks came the opposite way, bypassing him. Russian tanks. His salvation.

Cosim jolted awake, the radio still blazing some cowboy drama while the truckbed he was laying in was soaked in the sun. He couldn't even comprehend what he had dreamed, but it seemed too familiar to be created by the radio white noise. He had been sleeping after a show... But now, he didn't want to return to sleep. Looking on at the carnival, not too far away-- he could make out some faces moving about-- he thought about bits and pieces of the subconscious painting. He wasn't sure what the soviet union was... But it seemed familiar. Just like the setting, and the people. His people. ... He wasn't sure how the phrase popped into his mind. It felt true, which only confused him more.

Was it a foretelling? Or a forthtelling?

((Requesting permission to crash-- XD Why did I have to read this when I was already teary from the Wiki page about love--/sob))

((Permisson granted. B) FFF what? Oh, damn-- that reminds me. We were going over old children's books in creative writing today and I cried while reading mine to the class from memories. THE KICKER-- it was called "The Bigness Contest". I was sobbing over a book about fat hippos. :I))

((lmao, that's okay, the other day we had this Iranian family over, and my mom pulled out a big box of my old books so the little daughter could show off her reading skills to me. Then later, I went and read this myself and started full-out sobbing because it reminded me how much I moved, growing up. XD ...And that's not even what the book is about, until the very last page. :I))

She'd been looking around for him, as was her custom when she didn't know where he was and otherwise had no chores to do. For a while, she thought she was picking up on the sound of his snoring (which was as distinctive as his nose), and had tried to pinpoint where it was coming from. But a radio was also playing somewhere, and it had been messing up her sense of direction to the point where she was just walking around in circles for quite some time, with the truck unknowingly just several meters away.

But then the snoring stopped and all she heard was the radio, so she headed for that instead, thinking to turn it off so that she could hear Cosim.

Unfortunately, she did not realize that it was sitting in a truckbed, or that the vehicle itself was even there, and consequently ended up running into it with her arms outstretched, the open tailgate ramming her right inbetween the stomach and the chest. Squeaking in shock, she stumbled back while clutching her ribcage, already crying and looking something akin to crestfallen. As though the truck was a close friend and had whacked her with a baseball bat for no reason whatsoever.

((I seriously don't think I have ever written a scene where Sofia is not crying first thing when she meets with Cosim. SOMEDAY, I WILL STOP THIS. :I))

((Oh gosh :I Kids books make me cry so much. I have to read my all time favorite one, "Pup in school" tomorrow (I am 18 and still know it word for word :I) and I'm probably going to get sick from crying so much XD but everyone cries in that class, anyways XDD))

He didn't even see her approach. By the time she had pinpointed the noise, he was already trying to clear his mind by looking at the blank fields on the other side. He felt calmer, and the somehow real-feeling sensations on him where he'd been shot in the dream were slowly fading away. But hearing the loud thump of something hitting the truck's tailgate, his head snapped back to find her there, looking dejected and quite literally hurt.

His first question would have been how she had hit it at such a velocity in the first place, if he wasn't so worried. "Sofia--" He immediately scooped her off the ground and onto the thing that had assailed her moments before. He didn't bother to ask if she felt alright-- he knew the answer would be no regardless of if it was really true. Instead, he felt her ribs lightly to see if she really hurt herself, sighing in relief as he saw she hadn't. It would certainly leave a bruise though.

Then it hit him-- he was late at finding her again. Or was he? Had she just decided to find him? He laughed lightly. "There's enough daredevils in this place, you don't have to volunteer." Cosim did feel awful that he hadn't caught her before she'd hurt herself, but the confusion in those big, blinking eyes was too laughable to dwell on his faults for long. He pulled a (slightly dirty with dust, but she didn't need to know that) handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the tears from her cheeks. "Don't cry, the truck didn't mean it..."

((The mental image of her running into metal while gearing up for a hug is so hilarious XD))

((Unfortunately, I can only really clearly remember one story from my childhood: Urashima Taro. Which is basically the Japanese Rip Van Winkle, except that at the end, he opens the Japanese Pandora's Box, and 300 years of his life flies out. So he suddenly ages so much that he turns to dust. :I Very heartwarming story.))

Well, at least she had miraculously managed to find him, in the end. It seemed the radio had been with him all along. If only she'd known, then maybe she wouldn't have wasted so much effort trying to walk away from the radio while towards his snores at the same time.

Relieved to see (figuratively) him despite her ouchies, she rubbed the sore spot before accepting the handkerchief and wiping her face with it. The dust thankfully remained unknown to her, even when it made her sneeze lightly. Sniffling one last time, she folded it up quite sloppily and placed it back onto what she thought was his knee, but was actually the space in the air right next to it. The way she sat with her hands in her lap so neatly afterward suggested that she was content with her folding and navigational skills, completely unaware that she'd missed her mark by a good four inches, and that the square of fabric was now lying on the truckbed in a rumpled heap.

"Is this a truck?" She asked as she felt around a bit, investigating the metal floor, "Why are you sleeping in a truck?" It was an innocent enough query. The thought that his snoring might have disturbed others at regular sleeping hours didn't occur to her, because snoring had never been a bother to her personally before. For eight to nine hours a day, she was conked out, and nothing anyone said or did could change that.

((lmao, that is cruel. I hope you know that. XD /hypocrite))

((And look what you made me do; I just had to go look up another Japanese children's story and came up with an image so creepy that I had to replace my equally creepy Pripyat amusement park ride avatar. :I))

((OH GOD THAT IS SO CREEPY. XD))

He wanted to get closer to her (which, apparently, she thought he was already there), but he had no idea where he stood in her mind. He kissed her, once, and sadly rejected all his compliments. Maybe it was better to just stay her friend, although it wasn't what he wanted in the slightest. He picked up the handkerchief silently and replaced it in her pocket. Forgetting his manners, he had to laugh when she sneezed, as if she was a newborn animal who had sneezed for the first time.

"Yeah, it's a truck." He replied. One reason he was there was because of his snoring, of course. But it certainly wasn't all. "It's easier to sleep here away from people after a show," Which he always desperately needed, but the dreams were making it difficult, "Plus..." He laughed embarrassedly. "I don't fit in my normal bed." With the additional few inches on the tailgate, his feet fit comfortably on the edge, all of him drenched in sunlight, whereas on his bed, from his knees down, his legs hung off the bed and weren't covered by blankets.

He wasn't sure if she knew how tall he actually was. But he supposed that was inconsequential, to her, anyways. "So what were you doing, wandering around like that?"

((dsvlsjdfkldsa--/sooooo late, I'm sorry. I was having a nervous breakdown for the past 7 hours because my prof arbitrarily cut out a major chapter from our test--completely negating nearly all of the studying I did. The Japanland side of me couldn't handle it. :I))

She was nodding along just fine until he revealed that he couldn't fit in his regular bed. Her immediate reaction was to wonder why they'd give a smaller bed to someone who was tall--for even she could tell he was...though perhaps not as well as she thought. As for her, she was always under the impression that her bed was on the larger side. Partly due to her lack of sight making such things seem larger in perspective, and partly because she tended to curl up when she slept, which only made it seem worse. Not to mention she just wasn't accustomed to mattresses anymore.

Shyly, she offered, "You can have my mattress, if you want. It's too big..." It was like some kind of bizarre take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Except that the beds were all the same, and it was the people using them that were of different sizes.

"I was looking for you," she said in light surprise, as though it were obvious. She probably should have worried about whether or not he wanted her following him around all the time, but...she didn't make friends easily, so once she was attached to someone, nothing less than a crowbar was going to change it.

((Oh god that's terrible ): /pat pat this is why I stopped studying all together--))

"I don't think that'll help," He laughed lightly. "But I appreciate the offer. You can keep it-- the women get better beds anyways."

At the mention of how her bed was too big (was it somehow a problem for her?) a large grin spread over his features and he appreciated her blindness at a time when there was no way he could look like he was taking that complaint seriously. "I dont think that's it." He gently pulled one of her hands from her lap and placed it on his palm-up hand. "It's not too big... You're just too small." There was a significant difference in the size of her hand over his. Cosim thought about how the contact could make her uncomfortable but... Blind people Needed to touch things to see them.

She may have been wasting his sleeping time, but she had chased his nightmares away. But something about her-- without the burns, he realized he had dreamed of her more often than normal. In the oddest circumstances, too.

"Sonya-- if you want to find me... Please ask someone to get you there safely, or at least ask them where I am." They were out in flat wilderness, easy to get lost in, which, a blind girl with curiosity and no cane was probably apt to do. What if the truck she'd hit had been moving? What if she wandered into the crops and never came out?

Still, he'd never had someone looking for him for his company before. It was a new feeling, but equally as nice.

((lol, tbh, I never studied in high school. Ever. XD GET READY, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU IN COLLEGE.))

As if reading his thoughts and concerns about her being uncomfortable with the physical contact, she reached over and, using his knee (fumbling slightly when it wasn't in that place in the air where she'd thought it was previously) as a guide, eased herself backwards into his lap. Why not? She'd done it before (well, accidentally), and it had seemed okay. Positioned with her back against his chest, she sat up straight and reached up to measure the space between his chin and the top of her head. It was true: the difference was more significant than she'd realized.

Once finished, she probably should have gotten off (if she ever should have sat there to begin with), but now she was deep in thought. Occasionally, she had dreams about a very tall man--though they were hazy in their nature, so she never really got a concrete image of him. She supposed it was because, day by day, her memories of what things look like were growing ever dimmer, to the point where even her subconsciousness was struggling to fabricate images. His facial features, for example, were never quite clear, though she could see that sometimes he was blonde, while other times, gray-haired. This, among other things, confused her greatly. Sometimes he was kind, sometimes loving, other times over-eager, and sometimes even frightening.
It was a mystery, and she wasn't sure why this person kept recurring in her dreams when she was sure she'd never met him in real life. Now that she knew that Cosim was actually quite tall, it made her wonder what he really looked like. ...But what was she supposed to say? Cosim, is your hair gray? Laughable and rude. But mostly rude.

When his voice broke her out of her reverie, she blinked in surprise (having already forgotten about her literal run-in with the truck), "But I found you on my own..." The way she worded it was almost like a question, similar to a child who is unsure whether or not they have their parents' approval on a feat they feel proud about. Really, she just didn't want to ask someone for help because she was too afraid to.

((FFFUUUU-- BUT STUDYING RUINS MY RETENTIVE MEMORYYYYY :I i refuse lol))

When she climbed into his lap, he was surprised, to say the least, until he realized what she was doing. It was pretty clever, when he thought about it. Still, he had to fight not to instinctively wrap his arms around her waist, instead keeping them on his knees.

He kept waiting for her to say something. Or to get off, at least. ( Not that he wanted her to, he had a good opportunity to enjoy the smell of her hair from where he was) But she didn't.

Too tired to argue with her, to do anything, really, he finally conceded to resting his chin on the top of her head. "Well, that's true..." He figured it was difficult for someone who was blind to get the courage to ask for help, dignity was a factor there, he was sure. But he would never have expected she'd be scared. "And I'm glad you did. Otherwise I'd have to go back to sleep." There was disgust in his voice, and a little fear. He'd have to go back to the tanks, the guns, and the darkness lit up by explosives.

((Hurr, we'll see. Talk to me next semester, bro. B) ))

Still mulling over her dreams, she found his left hand and compared hers to it again, trying to remember if the man she'd seen had similar hands. But it was just impossible to tell. Next time, she thought, she would pay more attention to the details of what she saw in her sleep. Absently, she held his hand in her lap as she stared straight ahead, as if looking into another universe.

She could feel his chin on top of her head, but had to reach up with one hand to check anyways, patting the side of his face. He sounded so tired, despite having just been napping (she wasn't completely aware that he wasn't getting enough sleep at the normal hours). Confused, she inquired, "Have to...? You don't like to sleep?"

She apparently wasn't objecting to still staying there on his lap. She was even holding his hand. He had to smile slightly; she was sitting alone with a man on his lap, and was acting like all was normal. Yet... A worried expression crossed his face. He knew what she considered him, then. Cosim told himself not to worry about those frivolous things but... Saying something and doing it are completely different things.

A man who looked and acted as he did was understandably loathe to admit to nightmares. But he also found it impossible to lie to her. Thankfully, middle ground was not hard to find. "My mind has just been too active while I sleep, I guess..." He shrugged, watching their hands. He laughed, trying to blow off something fearful he didn't understand. Not very convincing. "I have too much stress in the daytime. Sometimes I just wish i'd dream of sleeping."

As a person who was afraid of many, many things, she didn't pick up at all on his apprehension of admitting to having nightmares. "Bad dreams?" She thought about it. Being a deep sleeper, she didn't always have dreams, but when she did, they were good just as often as they were bad. Though, they often felt rather strange, but in a way that she couldn't put her finger on--just as with her dreams about the mysterious gray-haired man, they were so distorted that she couldn't usually completely make sense of them.

But if he was having nightmares so often that it was becoming a problem, then that was probably a sign of something bad.

Intertwining her fingers with his, she asked softly, "Do you want to tell me about it?" She wanted to do something--if he was hurt, she wanted to make it better. But she didn't know how, or if it was even possible, to make bad dreams go away.

((lol, I just looked up causes of nightmares: stress, excessive alcohol consumption, snoring, post-traumatic stress... Transi, I think there is no hope for you, sir. XD))

(( /bob Ross voice WELL THAT PUTS HIM IN NIGHTMARE CITY. Fffff I had no idea XD))

Maybe it was only dreams, but he would feel bad for dumping such a burden on her. Still... Who else would he tell? Itakshir, or Güzäl, or Arash, maybe-- but it wasn't something he told friends like that. He'd only get strange looks. "I'll tell you about them if you promise not to gossip," He squeezed her hand, and smiled a little. Her offer to relieve his problems had already lightened him up.

"Usually they aren't dreams-- only a few, and those I can't understand. There's always a man in them. Sometimes he's young. I don't recognize him, but... Somehow I know it's me." He tried to gather everything similar about his dreams. "I'm... I guess I can refer to the guy as me, I don't know... When I'm not a child, I'm in a kind of uniform. Dark green, red, lots of medals... And I look so proud. My hair is different... In those... I don't know why. But I always feel hopeful. Stable." He paused to try and organize his thoughts, rubbing her palm gently while he tried to keep his memories from coming out in a jumbled mess. "I think I'm in a military. The flag is well... I don know how to call it... But there are other ones. There's always a symbol in it... A sickle with a hammer running through it." It had always struck him as powerful.

His hand went limp in hers. He had reached the point in his dreams where it seemed the sky was falling, that all life was ending. "And then... Suddenly I'm not the person I was." there was no other way to explain it. "And now whenever I sleep the sky in my dreams is black, and all I hear are tanks and explosions and bullets. And I'm crying, and can only think that I don't want to die... That there's too much I have to live for..." Then he just stopped talking altogether. He couldn't say another word of it. It was only a dream-- why did it affect him so much?

((It just made me laugh so hard at how like, half of the list fit him. XD Poor guy, lmao))

She smiled, "I promise." If only he knew that she had no one to gossip to. The others were nice, sure, but Cosim was the only one here she even felt comfortable talking to on her own.

At first, she followed along just fine, squeezing his hand with hers for support. But the further along he went, the more and more her eyebrows started to furrow as a very strange feeling washed over her. She wasn't sure how, but...something was adding up in the wrong way here. In a way that shouldn't have made sense.

"And I'm crying, and can only think that I don't want to die... That there's too much I have to live for..."

His last words were so sobering, however, that she forgot momentarily about the unsettling feeling. Cradling his hand, she kissed it before turning around to embrace him tightly. She cried so easily, over so many of life's inconveniences, but when a grown man, so much stronger than her, said that he cried (even if just in a dream), well...it made her want to weep, too.

Reaching up to kiss the side of his face, her lips pressed against the fringe of his hair, and she remembered again-- Pulling away slowly, she hesitated, then breathed apprehensively, "Cosim, what...what color is your hair?" It was going to sound like such a stupid question, but she wouldn't be at ease until she knew.

((Some nightmares are legit, and then other times he just goes to her and is like, "There was a cross dressing dolphin chasing me-- /sob" and I'm finally getting a sick day because I'm actually sick B) it's a good feeling /shot))

There was something so comforting about those kisses from someone who seemed to have been through so much yet had sympathy for him and his visions that weren't even real. And, something in the meaning of the kisses themselves, but he was too preoccupied by his own control of his emotion. He knew it was never okay to cry, being someone like he was. But... The slightest of sniffles could be heard as she embraced him and he buried his face in her shoulder. "None of it felt fair..." It seemed too simple a thing to peg onto such complicated visions, but it came from a man who valued justice above all else. Skewed justice, but justice all the same.

He stayed that way for a while, just for once being able to lean on something (emotionally, that is) that wouldn't crumple under his weight. His face became red as she kissed it, but quickly went away as she asked her... Rather odd question. Had someone told her that? Did she think, now, that he was some sort of deceiving old man?? "Well... It's... Gray... but I mean..." He stumbled over his words. "I'm only 23, so it's not like..." He forgot to finish the sentence. But there really wasn't an end to it.

((Hurr, I got yesterday off because I woke up a half-hour late, drove up to school and ran all the way up to the third floor where my class is... Only to realize I'd forgotten my notebook. TYPICAL. So I skipped and wandered around aimlessly in H.E.B. instead. :I XD))

She stroked the back of his hair, rocking gently--as one might do with a child. She supposed the instinct came naturally, though it felt vaguely familiar, comforting someone who was looking to her for some sort of support. And yet, this seemingly would-be heartwarming notion only left her feeling sad. As though she'd lost something--or someone--important. The person she was supporting. But maybe that was what Cosim was here for, now...

"Gray..."

With that one word, she heard none of the rest of his verbal fumbling, for she was in too much shock, the breath caught in her throat. "And...in your dreams, what color was it before...?" She couldn't stop herself from blurting out, "Was it blonde??" There was something that was making her heart race--hope? Hope that he would say yes? Fear that he would say yes? Fear that he would say no? Confusion, because she knew this was significant, knew this was strange, but was still missing a major piece of the puzzle? But she was sure, so sure, that this meant something.

((See I am afraid that will happen every day when I get to college :I XD ))

He hoped no one could see him like this, but at the same time he didn't want her care to end. He couldn't remember when, if ever, he had been treated with as much care. Not from his family, for sure. He felt like a child in the arms of a caretaker, feeling so small, protected by something so stable and warm, when in fact it was the opposite.

It all ended too quickly though, and he struggled to keep up with her interrogation. Not sure why it was important or why she seemed so distraught over it, he answered her calmly, but apprehensively. "Yeah... It was..."

Was she having dreams, too? Ones like his? She wouldn't have known otherwise. No-- that wasn't possible. She would just hear him agree, and laugh about how she had a dream about a gray haired man who had done something silly and dream-specific. Nothing like the ones he had.

But then again... Hadn't he been dreaming of her in unexplainable ways, too?

((Nah, you stop wanting to miss school when you're in college. XD))

It couldn't be. It just couldn't be. But wasn't it too much of a coincidence not to be?

Without much warning, she ran her fingers over his face frantically, straining to remember what the one in her dreams looked like. But it was like recalling an image smeared with vaseline, and even if it wasn't, she doubted she could have connected it to something she could only sense through touch. But when she ran a thumb over the crooked bridge of his nose, she had to wonder if there was a reason it had jumped out so much to her at their first meeting...as though it were something familiar and recognizable...

And then she remembered: there was another distinguishing trait of his that she could only know through her dreams.

Letting her hands fall away, they went to his hand instead. No one had ever said so to her, but she knew that tattoo was there--she found the place where his wrist was printed, rubbing it with slightly trembling fingers. It was impossible to tell by feel alone, but it was there. Something made her so certain of that. Opening her mouth as though to speak, she suddenly stopped herself as an almost crippling feeling of tremendous loss struck her. Rendered silent by it, she dropped his hand, looking terrified.

He was getting worried by her sudden excitement. What was going on? Was she mistaking him for someone else? Someone so awful she hurried to reevaluate his features so that if he wasn't who he was supposed to be, she could run?

Her hands moved to his wrist, and themanacle was pulled back. He didn't even like to look at the tattoo; it was as if one look burned it into his corneas for days on end. Her fingers felt like fire over it, and he remembered an earlier dream he had... The one of the emaciated blonde boy ankle deep in mud, gripping a fence like if he could only get close enough to it he would pass through it. His hands were bloody from barbed wire. He was looking at something... Someone, he remembered...

A sad girl with blonde hair and intelligent blue eyes. On the verge of tears, like sky before it rains.

A lump formed in his throat. Not only was he realizing that that boy was him, but... "You were the girl by the fence." He breathed quietly, not sure what he was feeling. He didn't need to explain himself, he knew. He just worried what it meant. She knew the tattoo was there, for starters. No one knew that except him.

Things were coming back to her. A few images, but mostly the thoughts and feelings that permeated her dreams. Even more than being like a vision in her sleep, it was like a very foggy memory...

Being just a farm girl, going into town one day--a town that was once thriving--only to find it almost deserted. Feelings of confusion, panic...where was everyone? Looking for them...following the signs of where they'd gone...fear...apprehension... Then she saw the fence, the figure behind it... And there was the loss. Unspeakable, horrible loss. The kind that robbed people of hope, of faith, of anything good there was to believe in.

The tears that sat in her eyes in the dream spilled over in real life as she choked out in a shuddering voice, "The boy standing in the mud--" She felt as though she would be crushed under the weight of all of the sudden emotions that she couldn't understand.

He immediately caught her face in his hands, wiping her tears away as he tried to comfort her over something even he was having trouble keepin himself together over. There was no way he could tell her it was only a dream.

Gathering her into his arms again, forgetting any inhibitions ha had previously about wondering where he stood with her, he kissed her hair and whispered he didn't know how many times, "Don't cry... It's over... We're here now..."

He wasn't sure why or how. But he intended to figure it out.

((FFFFFUUUUUU--I am so so sorry, I'm just now realizing that my reply to this didn't go through, and that I never resent it. :'I /shoots self in the foot))

Trembling violently, she only managed to calm down slightly after he'd been soothing her for several moments. She felt so safe when he held her, but even that could not completely detract from her distress.

The sheer amount of different feelings she was being bombarded with was one thing, but then there was also the fact that something very unexplainable was going on here, and it was putting all sorts of questions in her head. Questions that she could not answer. There was, however, one thing she'd figured out.

Wiping her eyes dry for the upteenth time that day, she put her arms behind his neck and used it to pull her lips to his. As though he were about to go back behind the fence and disappear forever. She understood now that he didn't feel like someone she'd only just met, but rather, someone she hadn't seen for a very long time.