college – Page 4 – A Piece, of the Sky

Alli was sitting at the house in the field, burnt out, twisted out, more than thirty years ago. The moon floated overhead; the flowers tossed in the evening’s gusts. A little lantern sat on the porch between them. Page, the Thunder Avatar, sat in the adjacent rocking chair.

She was dressed like a young professional. Her tall, lanky frame was graced by a slate pants suit and an obsidian blouse. Her raven hair flowed like silk and caught the deep blue of the sky, the spinning, sparkling stars – like a kindly, modern Morgan le Fay. Clear water had nothing on her almost translucent blue eyes, bright and burning in the dark.

“Aro didn’t tell me you would be this humble, this small,” Page began.

“Well, I am very short,” Alli admitted, embarrassed.

“So, you went to Dartmouth,” Page said, leaning forward, peering at her in the darkness.

“Well, you did go to Yale,” Alli answered, heat rising in her cheeks, a substitute for a blush.

“Yes, I went to college around the same time as you,” Page said in a soft voice, turning her drink on the armrest of the chair.

“Your mother served as the Lightning Avatar, the diplomatic head of the Atevars. What was that like?” Alli wondered, in awe.

Alli heard her smile, “It wasn’t that immense, really. I thought about going to the State Department, in this world, but I just became a lawyer.”

“This is the first time anyone in my family has even heard of Atev, much less became any of the Three Avatars,” Alli confessed, spreading her hands wide – a placating gesture.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Page murmured, reaching across the divide – the gap between their wooden chairs – her hair falling into her face, her right hand sporting a gold Yale ring, “You’re not going to be out of your depth. And I am sure your parents knew about how permeable this world is with Atev.”

Alli sighed, with Page’s hand resting on hers, breathing in the Thunder Avatar’s perfume – a heady feeling. The woman was a snowy pale, accentuated by her bright, red lipstick. Alli, by contrast, was folded into a warm, comfortable, pearl fisherman’s sweater.

She glanced up and knew Page was looking into her eyes, in the night. She squeezed Alli’s hand, “I know it sounds trite, but whatever comes our way, we’ll face it together.”

Wind rustled through the grasses and crickets chirped in the underbrush. The odd firefly winked in and out, working its way back to the main road. The two held hands, staring out into the void.

Song

F O R E C A S T – Conscious Thoughts

Alli was in the attic of her house. She came up there to study, to read the articles in the green leather-bound encyclopedias, with gold letters on their binding. She was a freshman in high school. Her dream was to go to Cambridge and stroll across the fiery, green lawns, which only graduates could walk across.

The sky groaned under the weight of the rain, morose and the color of graphite. The attic had a wide semi-circle window that gave her a panoramic view of the town, its squat little apartments lining streets, that went downhill. The attic had no carpeting. The wooden boards were soft from years of damp weather. Other than the light from the window, the attic was quite dim, almost foreboding, but Alli was used to that. What she wasn’t used to, was the red-haired girl now curled up in her perch.

“Hey,” Alli said, “What are you doing up here?” She tried to hide that she was startled. Hardly anyone ever came up here. Alli’s voice seemed to have awoken the girl. She jumped and then struggled to get up. “How did you get in here?” Alli asked again. How had she gotten in? Perhaps, she was homeless or a petty thief. The back of Alli’s neck tensed; she was ready to run back down the stairs if the intruder lunged at her.

The girl looked frightened too. She was dressed in ancient jeans and a jacket frayed at the shoulders. “Hey, don’t rat me out,” she whispered, “It was just so cold out there last night. I was going to catch pneumonia out there.” Her voice was more delicate than Alli thought it would be, soft and immaterial, like satin curtains, trimmed with lace.

Alli lowered her shoulders a little and came in, off the landing. “Alright, come down with me later and no one will suspect anything.” The girl nodded and sat back down, her face a little calmer. She couldn’t have been more than a year older than Alli. The girl went over to Alli’s pile of books. “Are these your books?” the girl ventured, with a light smile.

“Yes, they were my cousins’ and now they’re mine,” Alli plopped down cross-legged and picked up the ‘R’ volume.

The girl nodded. She turned back to the window, glazed with rainwater.

Curious, Alli looked up from the book and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Nealy,” the girl said. Alli later found out her real name was Elizabeth, but she didn’t ask then.

“I’m Alli,” she said. “Hey, if you want something to eat, I have some odds and ends that I can throw together.” Alli didn’t feel too bad about offering, since they both looked about the same age.

Alli took Nealy downstairs and made her a sandwich. The linoleum was a shade of pea green, the table old, its wooden legs pockmarked. Nealy tried not to wolf down the rye and salami.

“Where are you headed?” Alli asked.

“My aunt’s place in Rochester,” Nealy replied

Alli wanted to fix Nealy some lemonade, but she didn’t have any lemons, so she just gave Nealy a soda. Nealy turned the can around, on the faded tablecloth, with her long, thin fingers, before opening it.

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