We don’t have friends.

            We pass as shadows – silent, swift – through bustling corridors our load, heavy on our shoulders, causing us to slump. We hear the chilly breeze as it ripples the lush leaves and grass of campus and sings

the old stories of autumn cold, inscribed within the rings of the trunks of forests’ ancient oaks. We run round the rusty red track and compare the hue to the blood coursing through our veins as our lungs, legs, and heart ache from exerting energy we don’t have. We make not-quite-idle conversation with our peers and perceived allies, reading beyond between the lines of every word and gesture, trying to definitively discern the nature of the human condition, knowing how we will fail and compromise our character in the process.

            But we don’t have friends.

            Friends are a memory that belong to the days of innocence and freedom. When books were the portal to wonder and learning, not strange permutations of letters that drove you insane with any encounter. When the mirror carried a friendly companion that copied with adoration and encouragement all you did, not the reflection of another world of depression, defiled by dirt and grime. When your mind was the curious place where soft voices sang and played colourful roles in creative dreams, not a rancid prison alive with harsh whispers that murmured eerie susurrations in strange imaginings.

            There are no friendships in such a realm. Yet, the best of them are found in our history.

            Our lives were all aglow at their beginning, for the myth that the laughter of a child births a fairy is born from more than ludicrous fancy – as any witness of a child’s chuckle knows. Souls are pure like the freshly fallen snow of winter, or the verdant green leaves summer trees teem with; eyes are wide, watching to see and comprehend all the exciting new ongoings of an extraordinary world; and minds are soft and inquisitive, like sponges that soak knowledge, like moths drawn to puzzles. We were, all of us, of such a nature, and although like charges repel, those are the laws for the physical, not the metaphysical – and so was it easy to make friends among a plethora of souls similar to ours.

            The thing that makes purity so profound, however, is it is a lost memory all people have; a vague impression of a once clean soul sleeping in the somnolent darkness of the vast reaches of one’s consciousness. But the state itself is discarded, squandered with every sin committed, until the soul is a sorry ghost of what it once was. There is one truth we are all born upon, but there are many lies we can grow into. So, after that primordial stage is passed, it becomes impossible to establish real friendship. Making genuine connections means traversing a war zone of confused morals and contradictory ideologies, hitting hurdles of torment and corruption along every step, we all become like quantum particles, in every state simultaneously, caught up in infinite collisions.

            They speak words to each other and think themselves acquainted; they pass time together and think themselves friends; they exchange smiles with each other and think they understand – though even they know they lie to themselves to make still the yearning of the heart they cannot justly satisfy. Even they know they are wrong.

            No one has friends…

*

The sky was crystalline azure, the white winter sun unconcealed, adding light, but not warmth, to the crisp autumn afternoon. It shone upon the frozen leaves scattered nearby, making each thin ice-coating sparkle as though enchanted. Tired eyes blurred the pages of my book. Frigid fingers lowered it as I lifted my face to the sights surrounding me.

            The tumultuous sound of dozens enjoying themselves echoed across the track, penetrating my sphere of seclusion with its ecstasy. A sigh escaped my cracked lips, my breath visible as a hazy mist in the otherwise thin air. For reasons quite unbeknownst to me, the sight called to mind souls. Two souls. Entwined within the womb, meant to be sisters and the best of friends. One was lost, dissolved, leaving the other with two years of yearning to be borne, in the confused and inarticulate way of an infant – but what’s meant to be will always find a way. And thus, two years later, was she returned to her sister, their love thereafter not of the kind to be broken.

            My sister and I, our thoughts a universal conundrum, yet innately realised by each other. My sister and I, crunching autumnal leaves of every rusty colour together in matching mittens and beanies. My sister and I, riding bikes up and down in a flurry of hot, dry summer days, falling and rising with the endurance of warriors that had each other for loyal comrades. My sister and I, in intemperate fights only to be laughing together as allies late that same night, under the cover of darkness and scintillant stars. And when all the people of the world seem lost and vain, the memory of her warm and preponderant love re-establishes my hope in each of them.

            soror mea; amica mea.

*

No one has friends… except for those who do.

            We are those who hear roaring waterfalls in ivy scaling burgundy bark, who sense our heartbeats’ rhythm in that of the pattering rain, yet we are all detached – isolated points scattered across the globe. It is because no intrinsic bond was made between us, and because feeble human facilities are inadequate to draw them through the storm of blackness besieging every living person. But those connections have been specified, and expertly made to endure through the hardships of this vale, by the mercy of the very one that placed these trials upon us; we have been given friends, and other than them we have none – therefore is it impossible to redefine them.

            They are those we share kin with, they are those we share pasts with, they are those we share truths with… but more importantly are they those whose souls have a rapport – and those who have them know, because they are a hearth for dank days; where memories and worries and laughter are shared. Where hearts are healed after being broken each day. We feel their pain and pleasure as acutely as our own, just as red connotes both blood and love. This is the companionship that has been given to us.

            These are our friends.