Chapter 9 — Blue
And thus begins Chapter Nine.
Now, children.
There we were.
Blue and Green.
Two idiots who had met because horses existed.
The council nods.
A powerful foundation for friendship.
We sat near the shore.
For a while
silence.
Not awkward silence.
Not:
What do I say now?
Just the ocean doing enough talking for both of us.
Waves came in.
Pulled back.
Came in again.
People moved around us.
And eventually,
conversation returned.
The usual questions first.
Where are you from?
Why are you here?
How long are you staying?
Things we had technically already discussed on the horse.
The council pauses.
Technically?
Children.
The horse had begun sprinting halfway through the conversation
and immediately deleted several files.
So we began again.
This time,
ground beneath us.
No galloping.
No emergency waist holding protocol.
No man slapping a horse and converting friendship into a survival exercise.
Just two people sitting beside the sea.
And because we had nowhere particularly urgent to be,
the conversation had time to settle.
To imprint.
Mostly.
The council opens the archive carefully.
I told her about wandering.
Not everything.
Children.
Nobody deserves the complete Unbegun lore dump without preparation.
But enough.
Why I travelled.
How I travelled.
How sometimes the weight inside became louder than everything outside.
How roads helped.
How unfamiliar places made unfamiliar versions of me possible.
Kasol.
Rishikesh.
Maybe fragments of Goa.
Kodaikanal.
The highlights.
The catastrophes.
The dogs.
Obviously the dogs.
The council nods.
The Unbegun Crash Course.
Blue listened.
Asked questions.
Laughed at some parts.
Looked at me strangely during others.
Which is the correct response to approximately sixty percent of these archives.
Then
she gave me hers.
The council grows quiet.
She had never travelled alone before.
Not properly.
She lived relatively close.
Varkala was not some great distant expedition for her either.
And somehow,
just like me,
she had never come.
The council notices the symmetry.
Children.
Two people from nearby places
who had ignored Varkala until suddenly deciding not to.
But her reason was different.
She had been hurt.
The council grows still.
A breakup.
A long relationship.
Gone.
And now everything felt gray.
The world had continued,
which children,
is one of life’s more insulting habits.
Something inside you collapses
and outside?
Buses still run.
People buy snacks.
Dogs bark.
The sun rises.
Nobody consults your grief before continuing existence.
The council listens.
She talked about the emptiness after.
The confusion.
The part where you’ve spent so long imagining another person inside your future
that when they disappear,
the future itself looks badly rendered.
The council nods.
She said things about losing the desire for much of anything.
Life becoming dull.
Heavy.
Hard to want.
Children.
Thoughts I knew.
Not theoretically.
Not from some inspirational quote.
I knew the terrain.
The council turns toward me.
And suddenly,
I understood Blue differently.
Not:
Girl from the horse.
Not:
Pretty stranger with blue hair.
Not even:
Temporary friend.
A fellow wanderer.
A few chapters behind.
The council grows quiet.
She was standing somewhere on a road I had already walked.
Not the exact road.
Nobody gets the exact same one.
But familiar terrain.
Heartbreak.
Loss.
The strange exhaustion of continuing to exist after something you thought permanent becomes past tense.
Children.
I knew that language.
And so
I smiled.
The council pauses.
Smiled?
Yes.
Not because any of it was funny.
Not because heartbreak is small.
Because I knew something she did not know yet.
The chapter ends.
The council listens.
I reached for her hand.
Took it.
And said,
roughly:
“Yeah.
That shit happened to me too.”
The council nods.
Poetry.
Children.
I never claimed all wisdom arrived elegantly.
Then:
“You’ll get over it.”
Now.
That sentence can be terrible.
The council raises a finger.
Spoken carelessly?
Awful.
Dismissive.
The emotional equivalent of:
Have you tried not being sad?
But that wasn’t what I meant.
And I think she understood.
Because I wasn’t saying:
This doesn’t matter.
I was saying:
I know it matters.
And I am still here.
The council grows quiet.
There is a difference between someone standing outside a storm saying:
It’ll pass.
And someone soaked through,
standing beside you,
saying:
Mine did.
The council listens.
So I told her.
Heartaches.
Breakups.
Loss.
The stupid ways I had tried to deal with things.
The roads.
The weight.
How sometimes I thought I’d never feel light again.
How I had been wrong.
Not permanently wrong.
Children.
Let’s remain honest.
Pain comes back.
Old wounds occasionally remember they have jobs.
But the world changes around them.
You change.
The thing that once occupied your entire sky becomes one constellation among many.
The council nods.
And I told her about wandering.
How sometimes I left because I couldn’t stand still.
How sometimes I left and learned that standing still was exactly what I needed.
How strangers helped without knowing they were helping.
How a place could hold you for a day
and return you slightly rearranged.
Blue listened.
Her hand tightened around mine.
The council grows quiet.
Not romantically.
Not destiny.
Not Laia repeated in another colour palette.
Children.
Different chapter.
Different role.
This wasn’t about what I could receive from Blue.
For perhaps the first time in the Wanderings,
I knew what I wanted to give.
The council leans forward.
A lighter hour.
That’s all.
I couldn’t fix the breakup.
Couldn’t erase history.
Couldn’t manufacture the will to wake up tomorrow.
Couldn’t promise that grief would obey a schedule.
But I could sit there.
Hold her hand.
Make stupid jokes.
Tell embarrassing stories.
Make her smile if possible.
Make her laugh if the gods were generous.
Help carry the weight for a little while.
The council grows still.
Children.
There is a strange thing that happens after you’ve carried something heavy long enough.
You begin recognizing the posture in other people.
The way they speak.
The pauses.
The little sentences that sound casual but aren’t.
And sometimes,
because you know what weight feels like,
you can put your hand beneath someone else’s for a moment.
Not take it.
You can’t.
But lift.
Just enough for them to breathe.
The council nods.
That became my mission.
No quest marker appeared above her head.
No dramatic vow.
Just:
Make Blue smile.
And slowly
she did.
The council smiles.
A little at first.
Then laughter.
Actual laughter.
Not politeness.
Not the tiny socially required exhale humans perform when someone says something mildly amusing.
Real.
The kind that changes the face.
Children.
Victory.
The greatest quest reward of the day.
Better than the bone tag.
Better than the jet ski.
Certainly better than launching myself from the jet ski.
The council agrees.
We sat.
Talked.
Sometimes about pain.
Sometimes about complete nonsense.
Because grief conversations need nonsense.
Children.
You cannot stare directly at sorrow forever.
The eyes need somewhere else to go.
So I gave them places.
Stories.
Idiocy.
The council.
Well
the proto council.
She didn’t know about you people yet.
The council looks offended.
Eventually,
the light began changing.
The council turns toward the horizon.
Sunset.
Varkala had been bright when I arrived.
Then rain.
Then clearing skies.
And now the sun slowly lowered toward the sea.
Red.
Orange around the edges.
A burning little circle descending toward the horizon.
The council grows quiet.
We stopped talking as much.
Didn’t need to.
The ocean took over again.
Blue leaned toward me.
Her head settled on my shoulder.
The council remembers.
That position.
Children.
Apparently the Wanderings have standardized seating arrangements for emotional conversations.
I rested my head lightly against hers.
Put an arm around her.
Held her close.
Nothing strange.
Nothing expected.
No silent calculation about where this could lead.
Just warmth.
The council listens.
She had told me life felt cold.
So for a little while
warmth.
That was all.
The sun lowered.
Waves caught its light.
The water turned red in places,
gold in others.
People became silhouettes against it.
And there we sat.
Green and Blue.
Names neither of us had been born with.
Probably never to be used again after that day.
Watching the sun leave.
The council grows quiet.
I thought about how strange Varkala had become.
I had come here because I was tired of saying:
“I have no idea.”
No weight.
No healing quest.
Just curiosity.
And somehow,
because I arrived without needing help,
the road had placed someone beside me who did.
The council notices.
Children.
Again
do not make destiny out of coincidence too quickly.
Perhaps it was simply two people.
One horse.
One conversation.
One sunset.
That is already enough.
But I remember feeling
useful.
The council pauses.
Useful?
A rare sensation.
Historically.
Children.
Nuo is usually the liability.
The one being driven.
Guided.
Rescued.
Fed.
Dragged toward the correct bus stop.
Prevented from piloting Carlos off mountains.
The council laughs.
But here?
There was nothing to fix mechanically.
No directions required.
No competence test.
Someone needed kindness.
And that,
apparently,
I could do.
The council grows soft.
Maybe because I had needed it too.
Many times.
From strangers.
From tea vendors.
From hostel owners.
From an old woman tying relics to my wrist.
From children on trains.
From people who never knew how much one tiny act mattered.
The Wanderings had been giving me small kindnesses for years.
And on a beach in Varkala,
I finally had one to return.
The council listens.
Blue’s head on my shoulder.
Mine against hers.
My arm around her.
Sun dropping.
No promise that tomorrow would be easy.
No promise she would wake up healed.
Just one evening that hurt less than the morning had.
Children.
Sometimes that is enough.
We watched until the red sun nearly disappeared.
And I remember hoping, not that she remembered me forever.
Not that this became some grand chapter in her life.
Just that when the gray returned,
as gray often does,
she remembered there had been colour once.
Blue.
Green.
A horse.
A sunset.
A stranger saying:
I know this road.
Keep walking.
The council grows quiet.
Thus concludes Chapter Nine.
The Unbegun Crash Course.
The Fellow Wanderer.
The Weight Shared.
And The Sunset.
Children.
I went to Varkala to find out what Varkala was like.
By evening,
I had found something else.
A person a few chapters behind me.
And for once,
instead of asking the road to carry my weight
I sat beside someone
and helped carry theirs.
