One late afternoon, she walked along the bay with a friend. It was the fairest of days when the wind was gentle and the skies were beginning to be painted with streaks of gold, red, orange and yellow. The clouds looked no more like thin feathers laying upon an abstract piece of painting.
In front of them was a clear paved walkway, a bench waiting at the end. It was his first time to have stepped on Philippine soil. It was his first time breathing the air she always breathed in. It was his first time to ever hold her tiny hands in his.
"There has always been something I wanted to show you..." said the girl with a smile.
"What is it?"
"It's not yet here..."
"You never told me your ring size."
Quietly, she ripped off a piece of loose thread from her shirt, and tied it around her left ring finger. She held up her hand with a smile she was always fond of giving him and replied,
"...there...that should do for now...hmm?"
She looked over his shoulder and added, "oh wait...there it is... close your eyes."
"Why? I don't want to!"
"Just close them..." she said with a laugh,
"Make me."
"Fine." She stood behind him and put both her small hands over his eyes.
He did not understand why he needed to be told to close his eyes when all he had to do was turn around and look. He kept tugging at her wrists, asking her to take her hands off his eyes.
"Just wait." she said calmly.
He kept his hands clasped at her wrists even after she took them off. In front of his eyes, laid the first ever Philippine sunset he has ever seen...that of which looked more like a magnificent painting breathed into life. Before his eyes was an image of what seemed to be a depiction of perfect symmetry, as the perfect roundness of the sun was clearly visible, in yellow and orange hue that did not in any way hurt his eyes, about to lay on a bed of cerulean waters. It seemed like a portrayal of the sun leaving behind a trace of light for that one moon he has often sought but seldom reached.
In the sky flew the flocks of seagulls, and the steady shifting of paper thin clouds...
He pulled his hands down causing her to move her head closer to his, and in the softest voice he heard her whisper... "Isn't she beautiful?"
Leaning his head back to look up and into her eyes and see a reflection of the sunset from them, he replied:
"Yes. She IS."
