Mordicai looked over the ledge of the marble stair case as the rush hour crowds streamed back and forth across Grand Central Station's stone floor. Matthias, in his typical pin striped grey suit, joined the older man against the rail. The two men, mentor and mentee, standing in silence as companions and equals for this one brief moment.
"Look at them... scurrying so busily from place to place. " Mordecai murmured softly, "So intent on their destination, so unknown of anything else around them. I would liken them to bees or ants, but that would be a disservice to insects."
"Oh? How so?" Matthias questioned curiously as he turned to lean on the rail with folded arms well used to his mentor's moods.
"Insects, the entire natural world in general, the scuttle is for survival. To create a home and a purpose. Man's scuttle is to devour, to devour the world around him, to strip it bare, to pillage first before there is nothing left because it's been razed to the ground by others."
"That is a dark view of things. I don't see it that way."
"How do you see it then?" Mordecai said, quirking one immaculately groomed eyebrow in Matthias' directions.
"I look down and I see humanity at its finiest. Is it the flow of people traveling to their loved ones. People who have left them behind for hours so they can provide food, home, shelter — they are all now hurrying home. I see love below. People driven by love. Sacrificing for love, running for love, fighting for love."
"The classic thing for me to say is that youth colors your eyes and one day, with age, you will come to see it my way — "
" — The old born a democrat die a republican parable — "
"Except that's not you. Your world hasn't been touched by the blackness of humanity."
"I've had my share — " Matthias protested.
Mordecai held up a staying hand, cutting Mattias off effortlessly.
"I'm not saying that you haven't been touched by loss or sorrow. No one goes through life without that. But you haven't stared into the blackness of the human heart either. You haven't seen a murder's glee, or the screams of a tortured child, or watched a soldier tea the flesh from bone to extract a traitor's name from a spy's lips, you haven't seen how evil people truly are, so you carry — hope. I wonder if you would still have that hope if you knew...." Mordicia drifted off, pushing his thing gold spectacles in place as he let his eyes drift over the constellations painted on the hall's ceilings. Constellations that had been painted backwards, an inattentive artist's mistake to the casual observer, but a time traveler's map hiding in plain sight. Like so many other things. Hiding in plain sight.
"So I take it, you're not a fan of the Beatles then?" Matthias rejoined, interrupting Mordecai's revere with a grin.
"Eh?"
"All you need is love. It's a Beatle's song."
"You always have been a cheeky bastard." Mordecai sniffed as he pulled an immaculate hankerchief from his pocket to clean his already spotless spectacles.
"It's the only way to keep your doom and gloom from drowning us all, Professor." Matthias clapped his mentor on his shoulder causing the older man to wince and fumble his glasses momentarily.
"I see Henry down on the floor. He's waving at us. Isabella must have our trajectories ready to go. Shall we be off?"
Mordicia gave a delicate nod, picked up cane which had he left leaning against the rail, and sauntered his way down the stairs as Matthias bounded down in front of him.
©2020 by Leila Ghaznavi. All rights reserved.