And so, you decide to cast the lavender envelope aside, your heart stinging with the fear of an unknown, untamed world. Each day, the face in the mirror taunts you further with the crushing weight of what might have been, and the shadow of the invitation looms, tantalizingly out of reach. The soothing murmur of rainfall against glass becomes your earthly symphony, echoing somewhere between dreams of dirt and bark and the metallic reality of skyscrapers.
Rattles and roars, like the final breaths of a wounded beast, the city wails around you with lustful abandon, staking its claim, binding you with chains made of neon lights and smog. Its grasp may be as cold and unyielding as the damp cobblestone beneath your feet, but, in that chill, there is a familiarity. The din of a thousand faceless voices assail your senses, overwhelming you with their magnitude, and there, too, you find comfort—in the knowledge that you belong to this cacophony of suburban sorrow.
Toes numb and bone-tired, you continue to walk the path of daily exile, smothering the wild flames simmering beneath your skin with the bitter whispers of resignation. Every gesture, every blink of existence chokes on the silken threads of monotony, but it is monotony which grants you safety; safety from the merciless perils of a world that has no place for you within its feral embrace.
It is in these moments, lost among the pulsating hive of voices and souls, that you find solace, that you find the stark inevitability of a life without rain-kissed leaves or the piercing morning cries of the avian songstress. In these moments, you become indistinguishable from those who wander the same familiar paths, losing yourself in the monochromatic labyrinth of everyday life.
Your dreams are filled with that one choice, haunted by the fearsome howl of the wind tugging at the corners of the pale lavender envelope, its delicate scent lost among the acrid fumes of your relinquished ambitions. But you endure, forging a delicate balance between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the desire for sunshine lost between the veil of tall, imposing buildings scraping the heavens in their relentless pursuit of worldly opulence. Yet you know, deep inside the maelstrom of this tormented city, that the whisper of the wild will forever linger, an phantom to the choices of the past, the cruel, unyielding harbinger of what might have been.
The End