Her shadow did not answer.
"Wouldn't it be beautiful," she continued, despite her shadow's seeming disinterest, "if we didn't need jackets and hats and gloves. We could wear our feelings wrapped about us, and they would keep us warm. And everyone would know exactly how you felt, if you were wearing happiness one day and sadness the next. Then they could say to you, did you shrink your happiness in the wash? Is that why you're wearing blue? and then they could lend you a pair of joy because your hands were cold. Wouldn't that be nice?"
Her shadow was preoccupied with an ant that was crawling over it, so it did not answer.
"I wish that you would not always trail behind me like that," She said as she turned her head to face the shadow. But the shadow, also turned her head.
"You and I are not so very different after all. Why should you not want to walk side by side with me. Or even hand in hand with me. Why must you constantly try to trip my feet with your own. Why is it that when I lean over to get a better look at you, you hide yourself from me? It makes me feel as though you want nothing to do with me. And I am not about to try and force compassion from a being so disinterested. So I try to run from you and yet you refuse to leave me. You will not speak but you will not go. What am I supposed to do? What is it you want?"
Her shadow sat motionless across the warm concrete. She was embarrassed. She hugged the ground as tightly as she could, but something within her buzzed and tapped at the invisible space between a shadows mind and it's soul and would not let her be still. She was moved to answer.
Slowly, cautiously, she peeled her palms off of the sidewalk that had kept her grounded. She rolled her shoulders off of the earth and pressed herself to sit side by side with her companion.
She turned her head, and for the first time the two looked at one another face to face. And both began to cry.
The Shadow stood, walked in front of the girl, knelled before her, and took her heavy hand, burdened with blood and bones and flesh, with in her own translucent palm.
And then the Shadow did something very rare. In a faint and tenuous whisper, that was simultaneously angelic and haunting, the Shadow spoke.
"Yes. My dear sweet girl. That would be a beautiful place, and there is nothing I desire more than to walk hand in hand with you. I would love it if what was said was true always and for our hearts to keep us warm and I never want you to try to run from me, because I am you, and you are me. And a race in which one runs from themselves in a race that can never end and will never be won.
When it is dark, and you don't see me, I never go away. I could never go away. When it is dark, I meet with the other shadows. There are so many of us. And I meet them and tell them of the beautiful thoughts i've seen inside of you. Don't be afraid of the shadows. We carry all of the secrets you corporeals are afraid to speak. All of the dreams that you are to shy to admit to and all of the fears you think no one else shares. We shadows are the great unifiers in life. You dress yourselves up in fancy clothes and designer names you drive expensive cars and build great palaces. You are all constantly running, trying to be bigger and better and different and unique.
But everyone has shadow. And we shadows can not be changed. We can not be made up or broken down or taken off. We will be here, with you, because we are the purest parts of who you are. And in the light, I walk behind you so that I can protect you from the untruths that surround you. And so that I can look at you, and admire the person you've become. A person with beautiful thoughts of truth and joy.
But what is said and what is true are very different things amongst you corporeals. And although I know many things, I do not know why. Maybe, I think, it is because you are all still searching for something unnamed. Something you don't know, and so you can not find it. And so you make up things in hopes that what you create is what you are looking for. But in these creations, you become further and further away from truth.
Does that make sense?"
The girl did not answer.
"I'm sorry friend. Maybe I'm not being clear. We shadows are not the best at making sense of words. Because words, though powerful, are not always true. That is why chose ours wisely. In the silence of my companionship I offer you the only real truth that I know, and that is that, we are never alone."
And with that the shadow released the girls hand, nodded her head, and lay down across the the cement, waking an ant that'd dosed off between a crack in the sidewalk, who realizing the time and that he'd over slept, sped off into the earth with haste.
Everything else fell motionless.
The girl smiled. Stood. And continued down the street just as the sun began to draw its night shades, and the shadow, growing dimmer by the minute, trailed behind at her heels.
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