Second place short story: Rabbit and dragon

You have two options, Arni.

You are level-headed, yes, but there is this fervour that runs through your veins and kick starts your heart every morning. I’ve seen you hold back, strategically maintaining the balanced rhythm to your voice, but then, there are these raw glimpses of something more. I’ve seen it when you ask for the potatoes on the dinner table—the rough exchange from my hands to yours. I’ve seen it when the green light abruptly shifts to yellow and you speed up a little too much to avoid the red.

But the red is a part of you, Arni.

When we were younger—so young that our hair twisted into perfect pig tails and our realities existed within the confines of a sandbox—we would share stories with each other. These stories were fantastical. They were roaring with imagination and life and daring prose. I would tell you about the “Adventure of Rabbit and her Friend” and you would tell me about the rainbow dragon that would escape its cage every night to fly in the cloud-speckled sky. And we would laugh at these stories and cry at these stories and ponder the futures of our beloved friends, Rabbit and Dragon. When the sun would go down, we’d run inside and greet your mother who awaited us with chocolate cake. And when she’d ask if you wanted an extra slice, you would reply, “More. I want more.”

Young Arni was never one to mince her words.

But as you grew up, you began to hold back and grit your teeth into white, fine powder. Your soft hums would melt in the white noise, but I could still hear the salt in your music and the ridges in your harmonies. I soon realized that your level-headedness was much less leveled and much more varied: there were peaks and mountains and valleys and fjords. But it’s beautiful. In this landscape, life grows: fields, flowers, and trees; your voice is loud and your words are cosmic, overshadowing the sun and the moon and the stars that all share the same sky.

But in this life they would tell you, “your voice is too loud, Arni.”

“Another piece of cake? That’s a bit much.”

“Can you wait here for a second? Oh, and can you hold my coat?”

Arni is a storyteller, not a coat hanger.

Arni is friends with dragons.

Arni is Red.

Remember that time you and I went to that party behind the carpet factory? It was the weekend before you went away to university in Vancouver, so we decided to celebrate your last days with a bit of adventure. We caught the last train out of the city and then flagged down a strange car and hopped into the backseat. You were nervous at first, but I reassured you that “hitchhikers are the last people to die in movies, anyway.”

The man who drove us was actually heading to a party and extended a rather warm invitation. “It’s going to be wild,” he insisted. Before I could reject his offer, you screamed, “YES.” I turned to scold you, but then quieted down when I saw that look in your eyes, and recognized that you, Arni, are fire.

“Remember, hitchhikers never die,” you said to me before we entered a dimly lit row house. That night, we ended up dancing and laughing and becoming temporary friends with a lot of people we would never see again. There was a woman who sang opera for a living. There was a guy who saw spirits when he ate too much ice cream. And then there was the man who drove us there, who really liked the way you danced and wanted to get to know you more upstairs and was a “good guy, I promise.” You disappeared with him and I waited for you on the dance floor. You reappeared soon after and grabbed my hand and ushered me to the kitchen. You confessed that you were scared of leaving home, but even more scared to stay.

We fell asleep on the kitchen floor, and then caught the first train back into the city.

You called your mother and she picked us up from the train station. The car ride was long and silent—apparently, your mother wasn’t expecting you to smell like smoke and beer and strange men. “Arni, you need to quiet down and be smart,” your mother whispered to you when we were at a red light. She thought that I wouldn’t hear, but I was accustomed to deciphering whispers—the language that we soon learned to adopt as our own.

The next Monday you went to Vancouver. I didn’t see you for a year. But you came back in the summer, and the summer after that. At one point though, and I’m not too sure when, you stopped visiting all together.

Sometimes, when I think about you, I feel a kind of sadness. At times, I forget the way you look and start drawing conclusions about whether you’re a redhead now or a daring blonde. I pretend that you’re still sitting in the back of cars with me and spend my day crafting the stories of adventures we’ll never have together.

Arni, you have two options.

I don’t necessarily know what these options are, or if they even exist—perhaps they are a culmination of my twisted imagination, the same imagination that paints you in all of my pictures and saves a seat for you at the dinner table. But, regardless, you have a choice. You have a choice to be who you want to be. You have a choice to scream or whisper or say nothing at all. You have a choice to be red—not pink, or purple or grey or blue. Red.

I just hope that wherever you are, and whatever you decide, you never stop asking for another slice of cake.