Knocking on Heaven's Door | 𝐒𝐀𝐌 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑

8 - A HEART WITHOUT A HOME

From the beginning of time, humans have always had a home. Even the most destitute of humans - men and women and children with neither brick nor mortar to live beneath - would find themselves with a home if they simply looked. If they looked for a hand to hold, perhaps, or for a voice to whisper words of affection in their ear as they closed their eyes at night.

It was strange, then - an idea contrary to all societal realities - that the wealthy who owned many mansions should have no home. But this was a reality that went deeper than societal logic. It was human reality, and so, though it was strange, it was the truest reality Bellona had ever come to know.

This was because, Bellona was sure of it, homes were not houses with archways and vinyl and a skylight that opened the ceiling up to multicolor oblivion. Homes were human. Homes were the hands of a friend wiping away warm tears, and the vulnerability that was offered up freely between lifelong lovers. Home was a tapestry, thread that wove itself among anyone that would risk being punctured by the needle that sewed the home together. It was the very thing that many spent their lives in seclusion from.

Just as Bellona knew the true definition of home, she also knew that she was sprinting down the path to homelessness.

She could see those that chose seclusion in the distance, each one isolated from humanity's majority yet still not unified, standing meters away from one another as if repulsed by the mere idea of companionship. Her hand was reaching out for them. For the vacancy among them, the place in the barren ground that might as well have had her name written on it.

Even as she realized this, she couldn't find it in herself to turn around and head back to where she'd come from. To her home. To Summer.

"He's always so thoughtful," Summer was saying. The words trickled from between her lips among scattered giggles, and Bellona thought she might as well have been melting for all the gushing she was doing over her boyfriend.

Bellona nodded, gaze not on Summer but on the project in front of her. Not on her home but on the fleeting activity she would likely forget in a week.

"Like yesterday," Summer continued. "I was in the library all day, working on that thesis I was telling you about, and...Bell?"

Bell made a humming sound, lazily lifting her gaze to meet Summer's.

The other girl sighed. "You haven't listened to a word I've said, have you?"

"I, uh..." Bell gnawed on her lip, searching for a coherent explanation to give. It wasn't that she didn't care to spend time with Summer; she did. It'd just been difficult to focus over the past few weeks, even on something as simple as a conversation.

She'd thought being with Summer would help. After she'd disappeared for weeks, giving her friend no notice of why or that she was even going to in the first place, she had finally decided to respond to Summer's endless array of text messages. One in particular had caught her eye - an invitation to paint pieces of pottery at an art workshop, an activity the two of them had once participated in on a weekly basis.