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[godpythiaofambria]

Like so many tiny crystals// Short Story Part IV

In tenth grade we were made to run for half an hour. It had been raining all day, gray skies blending into the just as gray trees and fields and streets of our hometown. The track smelled of wet rubber and mud and with every step it squelched under the soles of our soon soaked gym shoes. No one ran much that day. The cold air stung in the lungs of those who tried; we slipped and fell all the way, soon looking just as muddied as the dirty track. Before long, we’d given up and trotted the track listlessly in pretended effort for movement. We all did, except for her. She ran, furiously so. She fell and she bled, but she would not stop. Every step looked as strong as if she was carved from marble, an artwork, a hero of old. When the thirty minutes had passed and we fled the relentless rain to the tiny, roofed area of the sports grounds, crammed together in the little space it offered and wrapping ourselves in dry towels, she kept running for two more rounds, and when she finally stumbled into my arms, dirty and bloody, hair dripping wet and makeup smudged, she looked divine.

“Oh my god”, she’d said and laughed breathlessly, “I’ve never felt this alive”.

We learned that she would not stop anything she started, that she’d do it excessively, even if it meant destroying herself. We learned, too, that her destruction was beautiful, that she ­shone brighter with every bruise and that any splint she’d wear was but another medal to her inexhaustible spirit.

Where we fell to the ground, the creek mouthed into a lake. Those who did not leave for Spain in summer would come here and crowd the narrow beach with their striped beach towels, or sulk under the trees in the nearby clover field, making sure not to step on any bumblebees that fed on the white blossoms. Now, the bumblebees had fallen asleep, and the beach was empty. The quiet lake reflected the stars above us.

“What’s your favorite constellation? “, she asked.

“Orion”, one of us answered and pointed.

She smiled at that. Orion, the hunter.

Lying down, the sky swallowed us whole. It was above and below and all around. All the stars were dancing for us. While they waltzed, our thoughts and then our consciousnesses slowly drifted away.

When we woke, she was gone. It took a few moments for the realization to set in, as our minds were still heavy with sleep. Slowly, we rose, looking around in confusion. The almost-full moon lit up the meadow and the beach, yet she was nowhere to be seen. It was not until we turned our attention to the lake, that we found her.

The picture was haunting. She was floating in the middle of the lake. With the shining white of her dress, she looked as if the moon had fallen right into the dark water, and all the stars with her, into a silver-black grave.

When we had grasped what we were seeing, panic set in. We ran into the water, stumbled and fell into its icy cold while screaming her name. Our soaked dresses clung heavily to our legs, hindered our movements. We felt stuck in that kind of dream in which you had to run but your body would not listen; we were slow, so infuriatingly slow.

And then she stirred. In one fluent motion, a flash of white, she let herself fall out of her resting position and swam towards us. When then lake shallowed, she stood up. We ran up to her, pulled her out of the water and onto the beach. Her skin was cold and her lips a pale blue. Are you all right, we asked, what were you thinking? As soon as her feet touched the sand, she shook us off.

“I was just going for a swim, all right? It’s not a big deal”.

She studied the terror on our faces, the tenseness of our bodies that had not yet vanished. If she looked for a sign of understanding, she did not find it.

“Come on, what’s wrong with you?”, she said in disbelief.  “Maybe you should try it sometime. Clears the mind of pointless restraints”. She shook her head, eyes glinting with disdain.

When we told her, how dangerous it had been to swim out on her own at night, how easily she could have been hurt, or worse, and that we’d been genuinely frightened for her, she had already stopped listening. She was backing away.

“You know what? Forget it. You’re acting like fucking prison guards!”. She wrung out her hair and her dress and started walking away, quickly so. Just once, she turned around.

“Have fun rotting in mediocrity then!”

Nobody answered. Nobody followed. We just stared at her like sheep that had lost their shepherd. That feeling of exceptionality had vanished. Worse, it had never been our own to begin with. It was hers alone. Without her, we were nothing but eleven ridiculous girls in dirty dresses who now desperately wanted to go home.

Our good-byes carried none of the warmth of the evening. We felt like the sky itself weighed down on our shoulders as we walked home, every one of us on their own.

[godpythiaofambria]

Like so many tiny crystals//Short story Part III

And so we believed her that day at the creek. We haunted the town until late afternoon, rummaged shop after shop, and when we had found what we were looking for, we said thank you and good-bye to the cashiers and went home with her. She took us to her room, to try on the white dresses: Twelve girls huddled close under the roof. Plants grew under the ceiling, and she had plastered the walls with movie posters, obscure kinds of movies, those kinds that they would wear white dresses in. The light through her white curtains was soft on our faces and bodies. When we had all changed and gotten a look at ourselves in her golden framed mirror, watched the skirts twirl and felt the light fabric on our skin, we were smiling.

The sun hung low and tired in the water-color sky and heat rose from the fields behind her house, heavy and damp. All the crickets were singing. One step, a twig breaking under her feet, and she started running. Sunlight flooded her movements, the billowing of her dress, her golden hair.

We watched her run and then we ran, too. We felt the long grass brush past our legs, we felt the soft earth and the air on our skin. The world around us became a blur of colors and shapes. It were the fields of our hometown we ran through, the fields we’d known forever and yet they were changed, foreign. We felt we ran with wolves and deer, we thought us nymphs and hunters of old. The fields became long-lost past and yet-unknown future.

When the fields bled into forests and the soft ground made way to twigs and gravel we still kept running. We ran and ran, jumped over creeks and fences without even thinking about it. If we tired, we did not feel it. Our muscles burned in ecstasy—it was this what we’d been born to. We ran until the golden afternoon light turned red and then blue, until the moon had risen and the stars with it.

Only then did she drop to the ground and we with her. Only then exhaustion set in.

It was perfectly still except for our heavy breathing. The world had stopped spinning, our vision cleared. Above us, the stars gleamed like so many tiny crystals.

“So?”, she said.

Though the grass was soft our limbs yearned for the dull comfort of our own beds, to let the evening blur into dreams until no one could be sure what was real and what fantasy. Yet a fragile feeling of exceptionality had grown in our chests in response to her presence that had not properly settled. Leaving would have meant shattering that, to wake up to the white dress on a dusty desk chair and to stuff it deep into the closet, never being able to quite recreate the memory of the evening. It was too soon for that, so we did not say anything.

And then again, she’d always wanted more.

[godpythiaofambria]

Like so many tiny crystals//Short story part II

In sixth grade our class organized a cotton candy stand for the school festival. Our teacher had convinced the headmaster to lend us that wondrous machine that would spin plain sugar into those soft clouds that children’s dreams are made of. He showed us how to use it between biology and chemistry class, all 21 children gathered close around him with wide open eyes. With ease he had captured the silky strands and produced cotton candy after cotton candy, all perfectly round and heavenly sweet. The prospect of being allowed to prepare them ourselves at the festival made us almost as dizzy as the sugar that went to our head and left us unable to concentrate for the rest of the day.

Later it would turn out that the task of making and selling cotton candy was a whole lot more boring than our juvenile spirits allowed to endure, so that we’d abandon it after less than five crooked cotton candies sold to explore what else the all-colorful festival had to offer.

Remaining behind the stand was only her, selling and producing, smiling and laughing with a wild ferocity. At the end of the day, she’d earned three hundred dollars and barely escaped a heatstroke. She’d smelled of sugar and sun for the rest of the week.

We learned that she would not stop anything she started and that she’d do it excessively. We bathed in her ability to excel, to finish what we could not and to make it look simple, glorious even. We felt that, if only we were close enough, we could get a taste of that boundless force that fueled her. Because she glowed, we glowed, too.

[godpythiaofambria]

Like so many tiny crystals//Short story part I

“We should get white dresses”.

Water droplets running down her pink skin like so many tiny crystals.

“Each of us. And then run around in fields or something, like they do in those movies”.

It was high summer when she said that, and I had never seen the kind of movies she was talking about. But I trusted her, we all did. The summer was great, which meant that the streets were empty, deserted by the masses of vacationers who would be getting sunburns in the Spanish sun by then. The pavement was too hot to walk barefoot, but we all did anyways; to keep feeling alive, not to succumb to the lazy, bored death of summer. The creak, the reed, the swarms of mosquitoes above, they all longed for something – anything – to happen.

“What for?”, one of us asked, the one who had her heart broken by a boy who, when the rose buds had not yet opened, promised he’d never leave her; who did just that as soon as the blossoms saw first sunlight. She’d been quiet and glassy-eyed ever since. We pitied her, but not enough to join her melancholy.

“To be free, to get a taste at least, of that freedom the modern girl has been robbed of”. She plunged her foot into the golden water again, leaned back on the wooden footbridge.

Nobody answered. Water ripples forming concentric circles where she touched it.

She had never occurred to me as anything but free. Teachers would bow to her, even when she contradicted them, even when she handed in none of the assignments asked of her, because whatever she did, it was more brilliant than anything they could have thought of. Parents, too, would bow to her because she charmed them with her sweet words and good manners and aspirations. They’d let you stay out late if you just said, ‘She’s with me’ and would not ask further questions. Everyone bowed to her. She was intoxicating, she was glowing, and everybody knew. If there was anyone free to do anything, it must have been her.

But then again, she’d always wanted more.