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Fire and Ice
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 Created on 11-5-07
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The ground crunched beneath our feet as we walked on, ignoring the cold wind and staring ahead, each avoiding the others thoughts. They swam around us, almost tangible, always not quite. Whispers that seemed to come from a distance too far for us to hear them from.
"You're not taking the china?" he asked. His eyes met mine for a short moment and then went back to their place in the distance ahead of us.
"No."
"You wouldn't mind if I…"
"I wouldn't."
We walked on, steps in tune from years of walking together, our breathing even and expelling clouds of white mist with each exhalation. Our footsteps made a melody that I had heard a million times before; One that used to comfort me when we walked this path by the creek, but now only saddened me.
"You don't have to go, Anna." His words came out slowly, as if he was trying to hold them steady. His footsteps stopped. Our old music stopped and died.
"Don't do this now… please." I begged quietly, turning to him and settling my gaze somewhere to the right of his shoulders.
"Do what? Try to save it at the last moment? This isn't right and we both know it."
"Please…"
He looked as though he might say more, but at the last second the words seemed to go out of him without being spoken. He turned away from me, giving me his familiar back to look at. I looked at the dead tree limbs hanging down over the creek instead as I waited for him to turn around. The icicles hanging from the limbs looked like they were slowly trying to disappear, drops of water melting off of them and falling to the slush of the creek below. The only sound in the world was the plop of them meeting the ground around us.
"So this is really it." He said after a moment, turning back to me. We stood farther apart than what is normal for two people walking together.
I couldn't help meeting his ice blue gaze with my own warmer one. A tear stood frozen on his cheek, and another seemed about to escape from his eye. He didn't try to brush them away or make any excuses. He just stood there, his tears reminding me of the dripping, dying icicles. Soon he too would disappear, like them.
I nodded in reply, looking steadily back at him. I could feel my own tears gathering, but I did not let them fall. I would not be disappearing slowly like him and the ice.
There we stood, each staring into the others eyes. Fire and Ice, one shrinking and the other growing, each of us changing in a different way. We could not continue forever. Fire melts ice. Ice turns into water. Water puts fire out.
"We're too different." I whispered. He barely heard, but I saw the ice in his eyes melt a little more, a little faster, the salt water tears coming to crush my fire.
He started to move closer, as if to maybe kiss my cheek or give me one last hug, but at the last moment he hesitated. One slow second more of his gaze, and then he gave an almost imperceptible nod, his hands clutching at each other to stop them from reaching out to me. Then he turned and walked away, along the path by the creek. I didn't follow like I had so many times before, but stood instead silently watching him fade into the distance, getting smaller by the second.
When I couldn't see him anymore I turned in the opposite direction, heading up to the house to finish my packing. I would be gone before he got home. I didn't want to be there to see how the wind would have frozen the tears in his eyes back to icicles. I didn't want him to see how the fire had gone out just a little.
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