Apothecarium

Do you ever wonder what life would be like if it was possible to put our feelings into bottles? To distil emotion. To be able to carry them outside of ourselves and experience them as intensely as we choose. What would that be like?

Imagine that, instead of writing a love letter, you could simply spill a drop or two of your love on to the paper. That, on opening that envelope, the recipient would experience all the colour and warmth and musical cadences of your feelings that words could never put across. Imagine that.

But imagine too, what someone with a pitcher full of hatred and anger could do. Imagine dousing someone in emotions so strong and so bitterly dark that they make you feel physically sick. Drowning someone in fury, making them choke on the fumes of greed and jealousy. Imagine the harm it could do.

The innocent happiness of children, the frustrations and fears of parents. The ignorant hatred and misguided anger of those who intentionally harm others. The quiet joy of creating something truly unique, and the fierce blazes of triumph when goals are met and limits surpassed. So many colours and scents and textures arrayed in bottles and jars.

Do you understand the opportunities?

Do you understand the risks?

Will you step forward and take a look at my wares?

I see you already have your eye on one.

Yes, I think some curiosity is just right for you...

Pierrot

“You should smile.”

Whenever she was feeling sad or lonely, somehow, there he’d be, and that’s what he would say to her. And it always worked, even if it was only a little twitch at the corner of her mouth at the familiarity of the words. But that was enough; it was still a smile to him.

“That’s better,” he’d say. “Now, see if you can do it like this!” And he’d stretch his mouth into a grin so wide that she was sure it must hurt his face, using his fingers to push it out as far as it would go, until she could do nothing but dissolve into giggles at the sheer ridiculousness of it.

He said he liked it best when she laughed like that.

~*~

The day he learned to juggle, he rushed to show her. When she laughed and applauded him, his grin stretched ever wider.

“Now I have something else to make you smile,” he said, and she couldn’t help but match his grin as he tossed the three juggling balls even higher in the air.

~*~

“What happened?” She blinked back her tears and shook her head.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” He tilted her face up and looked her in the eye. “You aren’t smiling anymore.”

“What difference does that make?” she asked. His expression seemed determined and she didn’t understand the way he was staring at her, the other layer to his gaze.

“Because as long as you can smile, I know that you’re alright. Now come here, I’ve got a new trick to show you.”

And she let him take her hand and pull her to her feet and lead her away from that place. When she asked him again why her smile mattered so much, he told her that her smile was a beautiful thing, and that beautiful things shouldn’t be hidden away. She told him that it wasn’t nice to lie, even to make a friend feel better, and he smiled and told her that he had never lied to her.

At those words, she started to cry again.

~*~

He taught her how to walk a tightrope in his back garden, holding her arms out at right angles as she wobbled along between the two small poles.

“I don’t understand how you manage this,” she’d laughed as he stopped her from falling yet again.

“It keeps you smiling, doesn’t it?” he said simply. He walked along it after she finally gave up, and she was sure that he fell off on purpose, but she would have laughed either way.

“But you shouldn’t hurt yourself just to make me happy you know. Wouldn’t that make me the worst kind of friend?”

He only laughed as he dusted himself off, and she wondered, if he could laugh at his own hurt like that, how could she know if his smile was genuine?

~*~

“Why didn’t you say anything?” He didn’t meet her eyes until she made him, her fingers pulling at his face until he finally met her gaze. He was still trying to smile, but when he saw that there were tears in her eyes again, it slipped away.

“It didn’t matter, as long as you were happy.” She shook her head angrily and tightened her grip around his wrist with its myriad scars and marks.

“How could I be happy about something like this? Why should I have been happy when you were hurting so much?”

“Making you happy made it easier. Seeing your smile made it better.” She stared at him, speechless, before pulling him to her, her cheek against his hair.

“Don’t pretend anymore,” she told him. “From now on, if you’re sad, then cry. If you’re hurt, be in pain. Share it with me. I’ll cry for you if I have to.” She forced a small smile onto her face. “And then, when you smile, I can really believe it.”

She stood up and brushed his hair away from his face and smiled for him one more time.

"No more Pierrot, okay?" He caught and held her hand against his face for a moment, and his smile returned.

“Okay.”

Keep It For Me

The first time he saw her, she was sitting on a dead tree that was half submerged in the lake.

“I think it’s sad, don’t you?” she had asked. “When I saw it sitting alone out here, I thought I should sit with it. Nothing should just be forgotten.”

He said nothing. She just shook her head and turned her gaze back out across the water. He watched the ripples spreading outwards from where her feet touched the surface.

He heard his heart beat.

~*~

The second time he saw her, she was swinging her legs on top of an old stone wall and she gave him a photograph she’d taken of a bicycle.

“I found it by the roadside. I think whoever owned it must have loved that bicycle, don’t you?” He said nothing. He handed the picture back to her.

She took it and looked at him with sad eyes that he didn’t really understand.

“I hope they loved it. I think it’s sad to be thrown away without at least being loved first.”

He watched as she tucked the photograph into her pocket and then walked away from him along the top of the stone wall.

He felt himself take a breath.

~*~

The third time he saw her, she was standing in the darkness and staring at the sky.

“I used to be so scared of the dark. It felt like being alone, being small and alone with no one standing beside you.”

He said nothing. She closed her eyes and spread her arms.

“I don’t think I’m so afraid of being alone anymore. I think if you’re alone for long enough, you get used to it. You learn to stand beside yourself.”

He thought he heard her start to cry.

“I just hope I don’t end up alone like that tree in the lake. I hope no one throws me away like the bicycle.”

He watched her run away into the darkness until his eyes strained with trying to see her.

He felt himself start to move.

~*~

The fourth time he saw her, she was sitting on a rock with a paper aeroplane in her hands.

“I thought that maybe I could write my feelings down and let them go, and maybe that would make things easier. But they won’t go in the right direction. They just end up crumpled on the ground.”

He said nothing. He took the aeroplane from her and smoothed it out so that he could read what was written on it. Then he folded it up and put it in his pocket and watched her smile.

“I’m glad that they reached someone. I’m glad that someone will look after them for a little while.”

He watched as she stood up and turned to go.

He felt himself grab her hand.