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. the blue sun .

- aka

those irreversible changes

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The sun was blue. We were both staring up at it, watching as the icy orb sat in the sky in its unnatural state. Through my bedroom window, the sun boasted in the sky, yet. . . it was blue.

“That’s not normal,” Teret commented from beside me. I clutched my book in my arms and shrugged. I walked over to the table in front of the window and set my books down on it. Teret took a seat on the windowsill beside the table and squinted as he peered at the sun through the see-through blinds.

“That’s not normal,” he repeated. I rolled my eyes—of course it wasn’t normal for the sun to be blue.

Teret was only a guy in my class who seemed a little. . . dull, if you caught my drift. Although his bright blue eyes, pretty much the same color that the sun was now, perceived him to be very clever, he really wasn’t. At least, not in school, anyways. When the teacher would ask him a question, his answer would be silence.

He pushed aside a strand of his blond hair that constantly covered his left eye. That one strand never seemed to cooperate with him. He carelessly cast a glance at me as I opened my book and shot him an expectant glare. I was waiting for him to open his own book. Currently, it was resting in his lap while he sat on the sill. The two of us were supposed to be working on a group project for school, but Teret didn’t seem too intent on working.

I had the keen suspicion that he would talk for the entire hour that he was here. He never worked—just always talked.

“Scientists will have a new task open for them,” he said offhandedly, talking about the sun. I glowered in annoyance—did he have to talk about this? Couldn’t we just get to work? Despite my dim look, he continued. “I wonder how they’re going to explain this? And research this? It’s odd. . . the sun doesn’t just turn blue over night.”

I decided to humor him. “Obviously, it did.”

He grinned. “I wonder how the people are reacting? I bet they’re all standing on their porches, watching as the sun glimmers like ice instead of fire.”

I sighed, then decided to mock him. “And. . . the news. Flick on the television and guess what you’ll see?”

He took off from my sentence. “ ‘The sun is blue! What is happening? So and so offers a hypothesis for this phenomenon’. . .”

I cracked a smile despite myself. “And the headlines in the newspapers. . .”

Teret nodded. We were bathed in a comfortable silence, which was odd, because normally, we were sort of. . . fidgety around each other. We didn’t know each other. I wasn’t sure if he liked me or not, but I sure as hell didn’t like him. He was too. . . stupid. Too crazy. Too. . . unpredictable—and he never shut up.

I shook my head. “Get your book open.”

“The sun is blue,” he said with a hint of wryness to his words, “and while everyone else is outside, looking up at the new sun, we’re sitting inside your room doing. . . homework.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Stop trying to get out of doing work, Teret.”

He flashed a catching grin in my direction, then looked back at the sun. “I wonder. . . is it still hot out there, now?”

“I’m sure the color hasn’t affected the heat of the sun. . .”

Teret shrugged. “Maybe it has. I mean, I’m certain you weren’t expecting the sun to turn blue, either.”

I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms insistently. “I think it’s boiling outside. Blue fire.”

Teret set his book down and smirked at me. He didn’t say anything. I blinked at him, then raised my eyebrows challengingly.

“You know,” he began quietly, and I sensed a complete change in his mood, “it’s kind of scary, if you think about it.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “What is?”

Teret indicated towards the blue sun. “That.”

“Of course it is.”

“No—the significance of that, I should say.”

“What do you mean?”

He leaned back slightly; passively. “It’s change, Natalie.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Change is everywhere.”

“I know, but the thing is, you never know when it’ll come.” He paused to lick his lips. “You’ll be waiting in line to pay for a magazine, and the next thing you know: you’re dead.”

I regarded him dryly. “You’re an optimist, aren’t you?”

He laughed softly. “That was only an example. Here’s another one: you wake up in the morning, and the sun is blue. Before you know it, your whole world has changed. Literally.”

I paused to think over his words. I had thought he was stupid—why was he suddenly evaluating life?

He reached up and pushed the blue-tinted curtains from the window. The sun returned to normal—the flaming ball of bright yellow that sat in the sky, cushioned by clouds.

“We won’t be able to always just. . . turn everything back to normal,” he told me. I stared at the sun while I listened to him. He looked back at me. “I wonder. . . when will my next blue sun be?”

I looked down at my book. There was no response to his words, really. I looked back up at him. “Let’s get to work, alright?”

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A/N: inspired by a question on an english test. the question read: "write a paragraph about: you wake up one morning and find that the sun is blue." I wrote something similar to this.