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Shivers slivered down Dimitri’s spine as he opened the creaking gate. The coolness of the autumn night, although nearing its end, never failed to surprise him. The sleepy air left tired dreams on his neck, its cold puff a fresh reminder of dusk.

The young man hurried forward, almost tripping on the uneven gravel. He was in a hurry; his tardiness always got the better of him. Eventually, he stopped, panting, his breath condensing into swirls of steam. A quick glance around confirmed that he was on time, and he punched the air in a silent victory.

“Hiya!”

Adèle’s cheerful voice rang out behind him, and with it Dimitri’s breathlessness disappeared. He turned to greet her.

“You’re nearly early for once, Dee!” she teased. “Sorry I kept you waiting.”

“No problem,” Dimitri reassured her. “I’ve only just got here.”

The two friends met every year at the same spot, under a withered willow tree that had been worn down by time and tears. They would walk until dawn in that moment suspended between night and day, too late and too early at the same time. Exchanging their usual introductory words, they set off, hopping over a wall of crumbling stones. Ahead of them zigzagged a narrow path of damp, sticky dirt, winding between fields gleaming with silvery frost.

“So,” said Adèle in her familiar mischievous tone, “have you made any progress since last time?”

“Progress on what?” replied Dimitri, wilfully playing dumb.

“You know very well what I’m talking about, Dee. Your big project, your great revision of modern literature, your mind-boggling masterpiece! Or have you decided to abandon it after all this time?”

“Oh, that! No, no, of course, it’s…” The young man struggled to finish his sentence. “It’s, you know, ongoing.”

A thin grin stretched his lips. Shame and guilt dried his mouth up, oozing from the gloomy memory of his notebooks and pens drying up under a fine film of dust, biting the inside of his burning cheeks. The sight of his blushing cheekbones inspired a crystalline chuckle from Adèle. Dimitri knew he couldn’t hide anything from her.

Around the two young folks, trees had sprouted, turning their surroundings into an uneven forest. The bare branches swayed in the wind, carving austere figures in the blueish mist. The dry leaves crackled under Dimitri’s hard soles, so many summer remnants joining the muddy soil of the approaching winter. The stillness of the trembling countryside enveloped the companions in an opaque, heavy veil. The whispers of the wind in the treetops suggested the reality of a world that never stopped, not for one second. For a brief moment, they were alone, dangling between eternity and evanescence.

Dimitri wouldn’t have missed his annual get-togethers with Adèle for the world. She gave his life meaning, piercing through the dark fog of his existence. But why couldn’t he talk to her, tell her things in earnest? He wanted to tell her about his crushing loneliness, his complete inability to write a coherent sentence, to get out of bed, ever since, since…

“You’ve got some new wrinkles there,” Adèle observed, brushing his forehead.

“‘Scuse me?” choked Dimitri.

“You do!” laughed the young girl. “Sorry, that wasn’t very nice of me.”

A sudden seriousness had crept in between her words. Adèle stared at Dimitri, stoic. He could feel her eyes on the corner of his forehead. She brought her hand to her pale face, whose smooth, taut skin almost glowed in the darkness.

“I wonder what it feels like…” she muttered to herself.

“It don’t do anything at all!” exclaimed Dimitri in an effort to snap her out of her frozen rêverie. “It’s the privilege of age, that’s all, a mark of great wisdom.”

“Oh my,” gasped Adèle, her wince melting into a smile. “Always bragging, that one…”

“Yeah, yeah, alright. Careful, it’s steep up here.”

Dimitri let her pass in front of him, the path having become too cramped for two people side by side. Adèle chatted away, a new-found lightness peppering her words; he enjoyed listening to her talk. She always had the right words to shake him out of his worries, to make him soar above the world like a tightrope walker drunk on the thrill of the void.

Listening to her, Dimitri forgot all about the bills that had piled up on his doorstep and the constant, cruel reminders from the real world. He could barely feel the pain in his tired muscles, the pressure in his lungs and his erratic breathing. He let himself be carried away by her cheerful chitchat, the autumnal colours, the forest bursting around him. Little by little, they climbed the hill and emerged from the forest, stopping to admire the scenery.

Catching his breath, Dimitri moved towards the edge of the ridge, Adèle stretching out behind him. In front of them lay the sleepy plain, covered in tattered bundles of indolent mist. Miles of woods and leaves, bearing a weathered reddish-orange hue, carpeted the sides of the valley. A little town slumbered at its heart, a tiny borough nestled in a pittoresque and frosty oasis. Its weary streets followed the tumults of a small, energetic stream, shimmering with iridescent reflections. The sky was painted indigo and starry blue, lilac clouds spread across its infinite canvas.

Dimitri stopped, dumbfounded. Seeing the world at his feet was breathtaking. He stifled a giggle when he noticed the same astonishment in Adèle, and slumped onto a bench, repressing a pathetic grunt as he bent down. His cold hands reached into his jacket pockets and pulled out some paper and tobacco scraps. After rolling a thin cigarette, he lit it, drawing a long puff that nearly choked him.

“You still haven’t given up that stuff?” Adèle’s tone had become harsh, tainted with a twinge of cold reproach.

Dimitri knew that she didn’t like it. She’d been trying to dissuade him from smoking for years, to no avail.

“It’s going to kill you, you know,” she insisted. “It’s going to kill you, and it’s going to kill you hard and slow. You’re going to struggle for years, only to end up choking on yourself. You do know that, right?”

“I know,” retorted Dimitri, calmly. “But I don’t think I really care.”

His last words rippled through the breaking dawn. A dark look from Adèle was enough to make him realise that he was in for a lecture.

“I don’t care,” he continued, trying to break the dead silence, “because dyin’ doesn’t scare me.”

“How can you even say that?” articulated Adèle. “You’ve still got a whole life ahead of you, but no, you’re not scared of anything, you’re a big man, a real tough guy!”

“Everyone ends up dead anyway! And, uh…” He held back his tongue, unsure of his next words. “I kinda wanna see what happens next.”

Adèle glared at him; he knew he went too far, but he didn’t want to apologise.

“You can’t even begin to imagine how scary it is,” the young girl protested in a dull voice, “how horrible it is to say something like that! No, I don’t want to die! It scares the hell out of me, and there might not be anything afterwards! You know what’s going to happen? You’re going to end up all alone, like an idiot, freezing out in a vacuum of nothingness!”

Adèle’s emotion surprised Dimitri. He wasn’t used to seeing her in such a state. He stubbed out his half-consumed cigarette and moved closer to her, softening his tone.

“You know,” he mused, “I’m not saying that just for kicks. For me, life, death, and all that? It’s a cycle. You need both to find yourself, to give yourself a reason to go on. Look over there, the dead leaves on the trees,” he continued, pointing at the other side of the valley. “They fall every autumn, and they’ve been growing back every spring since the dawn of time. They can’t survive winter, but we can’t do without their shade in summer. It’s cyclical.”

Beside him, Adèle stared at the landscape, her gaze plunged into the purple clouds occupying the stellar meadow. Dimitri knew she wouldn’t say anything else for a while; he’d gone too far.

“Look at the valley,” he pressed on, refraining from biting his lip, “look at the people who live down there. Almost all of them are sleeping peacefully, and they live with this truth inside them, more or less. They get up in the morning and go about their lives, and then they go back to bed at night. They know they’ll wake up the next day and do the same things again. But they also know that it all ends at some point, that everything stops, that there could be nothing afterwards. Maybe. That one day it’ll be their last hurrah and they won’t even know it. But there’ll be other people to enjoy the sun that warmed their skin, the coffee that grazed their lips, everything that made their life theirs after them. It goes on, and on, and on. It always —”

Dimitri was cut off by Adèle, who burst into a bolt of laughter.

“One last hurrah…” she snorted. “Where do you get these ideas? I mean, if you really want your cigarettes, you do you. But don’t smoke as much, okay? You barely managed to catch your breath on the way here.”

“Alright, I’ll try, Adèle,” smiled Dimitri. “I’ll try.”

There was a strange weight between his words, each syllable echoing in the autumn air as it slipped by. They stayed like that for a moment, bathed in a harmonious immobility, each of them revelling in the tranquil quietude of the moment.

“Come on, get up! Time to go back.”

The two set off again, retracing their steps and leaving the groggy plain behind them. Up above, the shy rays of the rising sun made their way through the foliage, reflecting off Adèle’s almost translucent face. The two companions moved at a brisk pace, driven by a renewed spring in their step. The trees lessened beside them; a few rustles of wings swished between the high peaks. The indolent countryside was waking up, filling the autumnal atmosphere with peeps and vigour. Soon, the wood gave way to a field of frozen earth, abandoned by the promise of a new harvest.

Dimitri listened intently to Adèle, drinking in her words like ambrosia. In the nebulous ink his life had become, the young girl stood strong, a blazing lantern full of warmth and joy. She always seemed to float above him, pulling him back to the tumultuous surface of his existence with a firm gentleness. It gave him the strength to keep going, to keep existing, to survive the insatiable onslaught of the outside world.

Soon, too soon, they caught a glimpse of the low wall they had climbed a few hours ago. The worn stones were still shimmering with morning dew, sparkling under the tired rays of the early morning. The harsh light whitened the empty spaces, preserving them from the relentless march of time.

“Shall I walk you home?”

Dimitri’s deep voice was greeted by a faint nod from Adèle. They had withdrawn into themselves, soaking up the solemnity of dawn. Their footsteps were lost in the carpet of dead leaves, humus and damp stone slabs. They moved slowly, relishing these suspended moments. Dawn coursed through the scene with its clear gaze, intertwined with the harsh coolness of the wind.

They stopped, two lonely silhouettes among the naked trees. Dimitri didn’t dare look up at his friend; a storm of tears was rumbling in his throat, letting only a trickle of his voice escape. The young man hated these unbearable goodbyes. He could feel Adèle’s tender gaze on him, and could only guess the sadness overwhelming her.

“Thank you,” the young girl whispered in a final breath. Her tone was warm, as always, but her voice already sounded so distant, disembodied. When Dimitri finally managed to raise his head, she was fading with the dawn. We could’ve made out the countryside through her transparent body. A gesture, a silent word, and Adèle evaporated in a fine rain, a broad smile on her lips; and all that remained was Dimitri.

Slumping against the gravestone, the young man struggled to hold back his sobs, glistening like stars in the daylight.

“See you next year.”