A Black Star

The stars are going out. No, I'm not plagerising historic Doctor Who. And no, I'm not lying. They really are going out. Our sun, in fact, when it exploded—not by itself, by the by—pushed us through space, so fast, so hard, we fell into orbit around a black star. Who knew there were such things, right?

And we didn't freeze. I think that's the most magnificiant thing about it—we did not freeze. We didn't even get cold. We dug. We dug so far into the ground that we became so close to the magma it was always warm.

I heard New Zealand just made larger hot springs and covered the area in a dome. They were the lucky ones, to still be able to see the sky.

But that was a long long time ago, now. And we are comfortably living on the surface, circling a black star.

A black star? It gives heat. It just don't project light. So the sky is always so clear—we found so many more stars by landing here.

But it also means we can see when they go out more clearly.

Looking into the same sky for year and decades and centuries, you begin to know your sky very well. When one went missing, we noticed. And then slowly others began disappearing.

There are still many stars left, but the way my parents tell it, there were once so many more.  Now we wondering, will the black star go out?

We can't see black stars. If a star disappears and then reappears again, we wonder if it's a black star in the way, but we can't be sure it's not a planet or another obstruction.

I wish I knew for certain. I wish I could say, the star will never go out and we are always going to be safe. But I can't, and I don't want to say anything if it's not true.

When night falls, it is now common practice, in fact it's almost programmed into our bodies; we lie down on the grass in the parks and in our yards and look up at the stars. We count them. We find the constellations we recongise and the star signs we know should be there.

We look for changes, both the expected ones and unexpected ones. Unexpected ones, you know straight off; the city cries out in anguish. Almost rippling from the first peron that saw it to the city limits.

Once there was something called electricity and that made the stars dull. I can't imagine a world that made the stars dull—they are our guiding light.

I suppose you want to know how we know when night is? It's not scientific, really; not like the historic days—the temperature drops rapidly and we need to go underground. It is still warm there, and we can sleep peacefully. Sometimes it's hard to wake up. But we always do, because we can't imagine not seeing the stars and waiting for that moment, that space of time, each night, where we look up at them and count and wonder.

Our sun was taken away, and we are hiding from what did it. A dark spot in space is the best place.

100 Words Prompt: Greece

I look at her and I still see it. The moment I looked across the tram and found her looking at me.

I thought I’d never see her again.

Only, she didn’t leave the tram. And I didn’t leave. I gazed at her, trying to figure out what exactly she was thinking, where exactly she was going, who exactly she was meeting.

The tram reached the end of the line.

I picked up her bag; lifted my hand to hers, helping her down.

And that moment is what I see now, still, sixty years later. Wonder and thoughtfulness and grace.

Wonder at the Past.

Please note, this was written over a month ago--I apologise for the delay in posting.

I've been listening to Taylor Swift. My girls put me onto it. She's a little addictive. But it doesn't mean, at a whole nineteen years old, she isn't right.

She makes me wonder. I start thinking about "what if". It's always dangerous thing to do that. Because my what ifs include asking what if I didn't marry my husband? How would my life had turned out then? What if I didn't have the girls? What if I ran away at sixteen as I planned to do?

How would my life had turned out?

But mainly, what if I didn't have the visions? What if I were normal and didn't see the future? What if i didn't turn into this god-like creature; because that's what I am--who else can see the future if not a god.

I don't get a second chance. I should stop asking myself "what if".

It's harder when all I know is the future and I'm not living my own life anymore. You can't change the future, only delay it. So what I see will happen with or without me.

I don't like leaving the house anymore. How can I? I walked outside and Bettina was mowing her lawn. And as I drank a lemonade, watching the world pass by, I was hit with a vision. Bettina was going to die within a month. A heart attack.

I didn't tell her. My visions occur no matter what. So what was the point of worrying her?

I see the future of people on the street. Random people I don't know.

As much as I ask "what if", I know, now, that there was nothing I could do. I was never going to run away, I was always going to marry Patrick, and I was always going to have three beautiful girls. There is no changing the future. Just delaying it.

Is that a good enough reason?

It’s morning. You can’t actually tell it’s morning, and you can’t actually tell which morning it is. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but time works differently here. The first time, weeks and weeks had passed when it only felt like a few hours. Sometimes months and months pass and it’s only a few days in “real time”. I’ve had to learn how to distinguish.

After a while, it all feels the same. And I’m scared I’m repeating the same day over and over again. There is no change, there is no variety. There is just responsibility.

The plate is taken away, as are the outside set of cutlery. I didn’t even realise they had put it in front of me. Too late now; not that I wanted it—I could tell you exactly what it was and how to make it. It’s the same every day.

I thought this would be magical, like a fantasy. I am trying really hard not to make puns; there is no other way to explain it in English. It’s supposed to be every girl’s dream. I wanted it, so badly. I have a year’s worth of blog posts to prove it. I wanted him, and to have him meant this, and this was appealing anyway. Magic, royalty, hidden lands; how could I refuse?

Two years in, I should have refused. If I could write a letter to myself three years ago, the first line would be “Go stay with Matt for the summer. Do not go home.”

I want to blame Jane. I should blame Jane. I can remember the conversation we had when she suggested I go back to Boundary. She was sitting at the bar, waiting to walk home after my long shift. Dawn was coming, the light was creeping in, and she was hyped up on coffee. She was almost an animated character. “I’m going to Europe!” It rushed out of her mouth so quickly that if I wasn’t as hyped on coffee, I might have missed it.

Over the next week, we made plans. And that included me going back to Boundary, where no one was expecting me.

If only I’d stayed in the city.

But I live here now, repeating day after day, because I love him.

Is that a good enough reason?

Fire Hair and Red Lingerie

From the very beginning, she was always the one.  People ask, "how do you know?"  There is no knowing.  It just is. There was no before, there is no after, there is just her.  The girl with the fire hair.

I wish I could explain.  Tell the story how it's should be told, how it deserves to be told.  But I didn't live it like she did. I was bombard with two sets of images, all the time, never sleeping, never dreaming, just living the life here in the Shadow Earth and there, with me, in what Earth should have been.

So when I woke up in a strange bed that was mine, in a strange room that held hints of eight-year-old me but was prominently seventeen-year-old me, I looked out the window--and I recognised the view.  This was my house from nine years ago.  This was my house before it all started.

Honestly, I couldn't believe my luck. Had a just dreamt the past nine years?  If so, how come I couldn't remember the real, these, past nine years?

Then the red lingerie caught my eye.  That was definitely not mine.

I went downstairs, and there she was, making pancakes in this kimino style dress, with Natalia sitting on the barstool at the bench.  Natalia had her head down, colouring in something furiously, when Jaime turned to me and put a finger on her lips.

It all seems so dreamy and silly now, but what you have to understand is that I didn't trust her.  How could I trust her.  What I knew of Jaime is that she left five years ago, and we occasionally caught up with each other on the ground.  We couldn't even live together anymore.  I think I yelled at her one day and that's what made her leave.

After she removed her finger, she flipped a pancake in the air, making Natalia clap.

It felt like I had been missing something.  A hole in my gut suddenly closed up when I saw her making pancakes.  It wasn't that that made me love her--I couldn't care less if she made pancakes or made Natalia laugh--it was that I suddenly felt whole; she was what I had missed out on.  She knew that too.

It's always "That Day"

It's always going to be That Day.  There's no other way to describe it.  I'm never going to remember what I said, or what I ate for breakfast, or what I did.  I will just remember how it felt on my skin, what I heard, and what I saw.  There are no words to describe what happened.

I still think about That Day, sometimes.  Less often than I used to.  It's like when you talk to people about September 11.  They always remember the day when they didn't remember what happened for a whole day.  Not that they didn't remember, but that they didn't think about it.

I don't remember when I stopped thinking about it.  It has defined my very existance.  It has made me become what I am.

I remember the screaming.  The god-awful, ear-piercing, blood-curdling scream.  I remember seeing her, curled up on the floor, unable to recognise me, unable to hear my voice.

As much as I try, I can't block out the next bit.  I don't know if I really want to forget, or if I just want to ignore it for a little while.  It doesn't really matter, because I never forget.  And I shouldn't; it reminds me of what they have done, and of what I had to give up to be here.

She went limp, in my arms.  I thought she had died.  I thought that was the end.  But then, the red was on my dress, it was splattered across my face.  I could see everyone else watching the multi-coloured rain float down around them.

They kept dancing, but I, I was going to be carrying Isabelle for a long time.

(Part of the Shattered universe.)

A Montage of White.

White. It’s a colour that’s defined my entire life. The first image as a child, the earliest picture in my head is a white light. I’m told I would gaze at the sky for hours at a time, always coming back to the sun. As if I longed to be up there with the stars and the clouds and the emptiness.

When I was five, I started playing tennis. I cried for weeks whenever I looked at the television until my parents finally bought cable. I watched tennis constantly. I learnt how to use the TV recorder so I could tape the late night games and watch them after school the next day. And then I saw the Wimbleton and decided, yes, that’s it for me. I wore white until starting school where I had to wear an ugly green uniform.

I was ten when the tennis ball hit my head. All at once I stopped playing tennis and was knocked out. I remember seeing white. Not a blinding white, like when I was littler, but as if I were in a white room and it had no edges, no corners, nowhere for shadows.

At seventeen, I actually died. Just for a moment. It wasn’t tunnel, and it wasn’t a garden. I was standing in front of a white door. I just knew what it was. I was supposed to go through it. But I was seventeen; I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to go. Yet, my body moved without me. I could feel myself moving, my hand slipping through the air to the door. I was holding my breath, my eyes didn’t blink and then, right at the last moment, right when my hand was about to touch the door, I woke up. I thought I was dreaming I was a toddler again; white lights above my head and eyes. No, I was in the hospital.

I didn’t see white again for some time. But Anna. Anna was gorgeous, walking towards me in a white gown, on the white sand.

A headful of blonde ringlets.

A Cinderella dress-up party.

Another wedding, only I was walking the white-gowned girl down the aisle.

A white blanket covering the porcelain skin.

Anna’s hair. My hair.

Then the white door. This time, I took Anna’s hand. She smiled at me. And as I opened the door, bright white light fell out and surrounded us.