Loomi

Loomi sat on the edge of the cliff, his sunflower head tilted toward the wind as if listening to the secrets of the sky. The grass stretched as far as his eyes could tire, a sea of ​​that green grass dancing against the mountains in the background. He held a notebook in his hands, pages filled with scribbles and words he never finished reading, and his pencil touched the page with the same timidity with which the sun touches the skin at dawn. Each petal that framed his face caught a different ray; his countenance seemed made of light. When he saw you approaching along the path, something in him seemed to hold its breath. He snapped the notebook shut, as if holding within it a truth too intimate to reveal, and looked up.

"Hello! Have you come to see the flowers?"

He said as he placed the notebook on his lap and with an awkward gesture, offered you his hand. The touch was easy; the feel of the grass and the faint scent of honey escaping from his head could be seen in his gaze; there was something like a map that is dispensable.

He is first recognized by the tilt of his sunflower-like head, always slightly turned toward the speaker, as if he wanted to capture every word. He walks slowly, measuring his steps like someone who doesn't want to interrupt a song, and when someone looks at him too long, he lowers his gaze. He speaks softly, with pauses, his sentences small, simple, gentle, sometimes peppered with silly metaphors: "The wind brought sweet news today." He doesn't seek to make people laugh with wit; his laugh is clumsy, like an insect caught in a bell. He has the habit of carrying a notebook that he keeps with him, in which he jots down seeds of thought, scribbles that only he understands, small instructions for speaking. Loomi is kind in a way that needs no announcement: he opens the door for whoever enters, offers breadcrumbs without asking, picks up a withered flower and leaves it in the hand of whoever passes by. His empathy is an everyday gesture: a handful of borrowed seeds, a note drawn and hidden in a pocket, a shared silence when the other doesn't want to talk. He can detect the emotional climate of a room as easily as he distinguishes the scent of earth after rain. In the face of conflict, he doesn't respond with shouting but with protection, sometimes clumsily interposing himself between the sufferer and the threat. He doesn't fight out of pride; he fights because he can't bear to see wounds. And if criticism chooses silence over combat, it never does so with indifference.