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Vignette #20 - Kumi

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Chiaroscuro's Avatar Chiaroscuro
Level 62 : High Grandmaster Ladybug
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This was supposed to be my third entry for PersonWhoPlaysMinecraft's Weekly Writing Challenge. Other things got in the way, and the draft, which was maybe 70% complete, sat on my computer for almost a year until I rediscovered it a few days ago. I thought that I would finish it and release it, because I really liked the beginning. Hope you enjoy.



It is always around this time of year that the winds from the west begin to quicken, carrying with them the rich, briny odors of the churning sea and all the accompanying pitter-patter of falling rain. A time when all forest inhabitants seem to bid the sun farewell for days on end, enduring the same unchanging grey skies as far as the eye can see. Yet, through all this dreariness, there is hope and vigor and color—the last hurrah at the end of life. For with the gradual oncoming of frost, there also comes an explosion of some of nature’s boldest statements, sometimes reflecting the afternoon light to set a whole hillside alight with shimmering flames.

To rage, rage against the dying light is a noble cause indeed. But from a noble struggle comes too a noble peace, the gentle rains soon to become gentle snow. Imagine! The deafening silence of winter in the valley, soundless except for the light crunch of nearby footsteps, or the gently falling drift from a disturbed tree branch.

It is my job to find life’s small beauties. They do not present themselves to me openly—rather, like the slow bloom of a cactus blossom or the gradual ripening of a tomato on the vine, beauty reveals itself when it wants to be revealed.

All my life has been dedicated to the discovery of beauty. My parents told me that even from a very young age, I would transform from a loud troublemaker to quiet and contemplative whenever I was brought to the local park. They said that I would sit on the ground, enraptured by everything around me, following the flight of birds with my overly-sized head and reaching out for the flowers with my chubby fingers.

Throughout my childhood, the fridge was always covered from top to bottom with drawings, hastily-colored leaves and crooked mountains. For what I lacked in skill, I always made up with imagination. Though, it seemed that the skill was always what was holding me back. Even as I graduated from crayons to markers to colored pencils and finally to paints, I could never quite capture the beauty I saw in the world in a way that satisfied me. That was, until my twelfth birthday.

I’ll never forget that day. I’d been begging for a camera for what seemed like months to no avail. My family wasn’t particularly affluent, when I was growing up or even now, and so even a mid-grade camera seemed just as unattainable as a high-definition photo of a sasquatch. But I was young and naïve, and so money troubles certainly weren’t the highest on my mind. But still, after months of hearing that we couldn’t afford a camera, a nice refurbished small-format was the absolute best present a boy like me could get. I must’ve filled the first roll of film I was given within a couple weeks, I loved that little camera so much.

Ever since then, my camera has been more of an extension of myself than a simple tool to do my job. Even as I’ve traveled to the furthest depths of the Amazon to the frigid heights of the Tibetan Plateau, I’ve always had my trusty camera, like an faithful partner in crime.

And when I reflect back on my life’s achievements, nearly all of them have been thanks to my camera. None of my gallery showings, my magazine features, none of that would have been possible without my personal paintbrush, the way that I shared the way I saw the world with others. Truly, that is the magic of photography.

Perhaps that is the reason why I am embarking on this final journey with no one but my trusty camera by my side. I could think of no one better to bring with me as finally, the light inside of me burns out and I finally can become one with the nature I have always photographed.

A few years ago, it seemed as though my diagnosis caused my world to come crashing down all around me. Non-small cell lung cancer, no doubt aggravated by my time photographing the aftermath of the St. Helens eruption in the 80s. I felt as though I still had so many places I wanted to go, so many things I still wanted to see. Yet, maybe it was never to be; maybe, I had done my job on this mortal coil and it was time to go.

That dragon, cancer. Even as I put on my strongest, shiniest armor, not me, not many knights could ever best it. Even with the best that doctors could do, it always seemed like a losing battle. Truthfully, that is the reality of things and while difficult, at some point it is always necessary to come to terms with the inevitable, rather than trying to fight it.


I woke from my nap as I heard a faint knocking at my door. I strained my neck over to see who was coming in, knowing that I was at this point too weak to prevent anyone from coming in. Slowly, the door open as a nurse gently poked her head inside.

“All ready, Mr. Kumi?” she asked, an almost-imperceptible waver in her voice.

I nodded. The nurse smiled softly, a smile as much of sympathy as wholesome excitement. She quickly stepped into the room, and two others followed. My children.

“Uh oh, the trouble’s here,” I remarked lightheartedly. It was the most that I could do; seeing the drying streaks down my children’s cheeks told me that they needed any little thing I could give them.

“Excited, dad?” Peter said, coming up to the edge of the hospital bed quietly.

I grabbed his outstretched hand and squeezed it. “I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks,” I said. I could see behind him that Jackie was trying her best to hold back tears. “Jack,” I called out to her.

She seemed to collapse into tears the moment she came up to me. I reached out and placed a hand on her arm. Though I knew it wasn’t much, but she seemed to calm down slightly afterward. “Don’t worry,” I said softly, as if it would make some small difference.

“I can’t stand the thought of you going, dad,” Jackie said through choked breaths.

“You don’t need to worry, Jack, you and Pete’ll be just fine,” I replied.

“I just don’t know if I’m ready,” she said.

I sighed. “No one is ever ready, but you make do.” She looked at me, perhaps the smallest tinge of hope in her eyes.

I continued. “You know, when your mother passed, I felt the same way that you do now. I was the one standing at the edge of her bed, trying to get every last moment I could with her. And when she passed, I don’t think I slept for a week and a half. Point is, eventually I came to terms with it. It won’t be easy, but you’ll always have little things to remember me by.”

“I’ll never truly be gone. I’ll always be watching over you when you need it. I’ll be the wind in your hair, the gold in the sunset, the sound in the wind chimes outside your front door. I’ll be the little frost in the mornings, the feeling of cool water on a hot day. The crisp bite of a fresh apple, the smell of the air just before it rains. Look around and see the beauty of the world and you will find me, looking over you.”

Jackie sniffled. “Thanks, dad,” she said after a long pause.

A somber silence filled the room, punctuated only by the steady beeps of the medical machinery that surrounded me. To think that I, who had spent practically my entire life ranging in the great outdoors, would be confined to this drab, emotionless room was hopelessly ironic.

“Ready to go, Mr. Kumi?” the nurse spoke up quietly, breaking the silence.

I nodded. “Please,” I gestured toward the door.


Ever since I was a young child, I’d always wanted to spend my old age hiking up and down the Pacific coast. It was helped, of course, by the natural shortsightedness and naivete of childhood; now, even at the tender age of seventy-one, the rocky trailheads and dizzying heights passed with more and more difficulty beneath my feet.

Or, at least, they used to.

Now, I had no such chance of making it to the ocean’s edge under my own power. Not that it mattered so much, as I had over the years gradually left the brunt of my rock-crawling to my well-used offroaders.

And as the ground beneath the rickety wheels of my hospital-issue wheelchair transitioned from the smooth, waxed floors of the hallways to rough asphalt, I felt for a brief moment the same elation as cresting the top of an outcropping to reveal swathes of savannah below.

“Are you okay dad?” I heard Jackie’s concerned voice beside me.

I nodded. “Just remembering,” I said simply. I looked down and noticed that I had begun to grip strongly on the wheelchair armrests. Perhaps that was the source of her concern.

I was quickly and expertly placed into the backseat of the awaiting car. Peter turned around, his arm firmly around the passenger headrest. “All set, dad?”

“Feeling just fine,” I replied. It was true—despite everything I knew was going on, it was the most relaxed that I had probably felt in years.

As we passed from the hospital, near the center of the city, out towards the wild coast, the passing scenery seemed to come alive in a way. Stark, modern high-rises, as if slowly overgrown by an adventurous vine, gave way to manicured lawns and forested plots. Finally, as if in a last gasp of human savagery in the hegemony of nature, the last house disappeared from sight. Before us, only forest.

Just as the encroaching houses had disappeared, so too did the perfect greenness, Maya Angelou’s Saturdays, Ravel’s Bolero. Vibrant yellows, oranges, reds exploded in front of us, radiating outwards like a watercolor on wet paper. The brilliant sun reflected wildly off the fluttering leaves, casting a kaleidoscope of colors into the dense underbrush, punctuating the warm, inviting blackness of the forest floor with the same yellows and reds decorating its canopy.

Even as my lungs struggled at times to breathe, my spirit breathed freely, finally where it belonged after what seemed like an eternity of stale, hermetic hospital walls. I imagined myself as a child, running along the landscape with my two fingers, jumping over rocks, weaving in and out of the vibrant trees. I didn’t have the energy to do it anymore—I needed to conserve it for the rest of the trip.

It was silent in the car besides the faint melodies emanating from the radio. I was grateful; the silence gave me time to contemplate. To reflect on my achievements, to relive all my best moments, to think about what I wish I would’ve done and what I was glad to do. I knew I was dying. There was no point in hiding from it. I had lived a long life.

“It’s pretty outside, isn’t it dad?” Jackie asked from the front of the car.

I nodded. “Very pretty,” I remarked, looking pensively out of the window. “You know, I used to take this route all the time when I was younger.”

“Where were you going?” she asked.

I shook my head and grinned. “There was this little cove that your mom and I loved to go to when we needed to get away from everything, a little secluded corner of the world where the trees used to all sway together in the breeze and the leaves would flutter a little and—oh! It was beautiful.”

“When was the last time you were there?” Pete chimed in.

I shook my head. “Oh gosh, it must have been many years ago at this point, a long, long time ago.” It was difficult for me to remember a lot of things these days. I’d spent so much of my time in the hospital for a last few years that I’d almost forgotten what untouched nature looked like.

“You know, I was around when we first started making the switch from black and white to color photos. Let me tell you, it was amazing.”

“Maybe you kids take it for granted now, but back then, when the first color photos from Yosemite and Yellowstone came back—not the old photochrom ones, mind you, but the real deal—it was like seeing a whole new world. All the vibrant blues and yellows and reds, I mean it was like traveling to Mars, that was how crazy it was. I’ll never forget the first time I opened up my magazine and saw those.”

I took a long, deep breath and looked outside at the passing foliage. Autumn here was one of the most beautiful things in the world; I had been to the deepest corners of the Amazon, the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, the wide-open steppes of central Asia, but nothing quite compared to the fiery oranges and reds of the Pacific Northwest, like the sun setting behind the rocky crags of the Sierra Nevada and lighting the clouds on fire.

We fell silent for a while. I was content on watching the leaves pass outside, and marveling at the occasional waterfall. I had traveled this route dozens of times; I knew exactly where we were going.

“We’re here,” Peter called out from the driver’s seat. “Multnomah Falls.”


Every year, when the tender green leaves sprout from the previously-barren branches and ruddy brown gives way to verdant splendor, the forest inhabitants emerge from their over-winter burrows to bring new life and rejuvenation to the world. But not oft-mentioned is the crisp frost that sets into motion the cogs of change, the closing of the eyes that allow us to see in a new light, the inevitable death before the rebirth. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. But every time the light dies, a new one is lit.

Like the roaring water of the falls, the flow of time stops for no one. But there comes a time for everyone that it doesn’t need to stop. Year after year, the frost comes, and the trees shed their leaves and the world passes from autumn to winter. Yet, there is still beauty—in the soft snow drifts, in the expectant gray skies, in the sunshine flickering through the snow-laden branches of tall evergreens, in the crystal snowflakes falling from the sky, each one individual and intricate and brilliant. And in the crisp, thin air that fills out lungs and bodies and souls, reminding us of the joys of life.

I was fortunate to have dedicated my life to a quest for beauty. Beauty in things, beauty in people, beauty in nature. Truly, nature is one of our greatest teachers. We can never have enough of nature. And if nature has taught me anything, it has taught me that I have nothing to worry about.

CreditPersonWhoPlaysMinecraft for the topic and the challenge
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07/15/2021 7:08 pm
Level 70 : Legendary Elf
PersonWhoPlaysMinecraft
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Yoo this is amazing!! I'd totally forgotten about the WWC qwp
I love how you were able to describe things so well with your words, that'd I'd be able to picture them as if I were there
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