Flying and Falling, a General fanfic

AN: This is the longest original work I've written to date, and my personal favourite (though admittedly there are still parts that make me cringe, slightly). It was done over the year of 2004 for a major work for school, so a surprising amount of research went into it. In the old copy I had of this file the poetry (the sections that will hopefully turn out in italics, if fictionpress cooperates) was footnoted for each excerpt, but my footnotes have mysteriously disappeared... anyway, they are all from the 'Birdsong' collection of Rumi's poetry.

Barks, C. (trans. poetry). (1993). Birdsong. Athens: Maypop.

So full credit there. The rest is all very much mine.

PS - apologies for the incessant line breaks. They're supposed to be asterisks, but fictionpress formatting doesn't like them for some reason.

Flying and Falling

“Birds make great sky-circles

of their freedom.

How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,

They’re given wings.”

Another bulging suitcase. Another empty room to be filled with clutter. Another rainy day. Bare walls and the smell of cardboard boxes. Celia could never seem to call any place home. She had retreated a little too deeply behind blank eyes and now nothing seemed to reach her. She had the air of one who is permanently lost and even if she could find her way, would not know where to go. She would rather be certain that she was adrift than unsure about trying to find a way home.

But this room was what her physical self, at least, would call home for now. Her bedroom had a window that overlooked the valley, a rusty-green lake of treetops. When it rained and the gums became shrouded with mist, as they did now, she would sit on her bed and lean on the window sill, and she would tell herself she felt like the queen of the sky’s sadness. How she detested her love of that self-proclaimed title. It tasted bitter on her tongue, all the more so because she chose for it to taste that way.

Gazing out of the window she saw a golden glow in the mist. It came from another window, just across the street from hers, and there was a girl looking out from it at the rain as it steadily fell. Celia thought there must have been a mirror somewhere but she could just make out that the other girl was smiling. This struck her as unfair. How dare she smile when the rest of the world was crying? But smile she did. Celia scowled and turned away. How she hated this cursed rain. And how satisfying it felt to hate it, how good it was to feel that darkness in her mind. The rain made everything outside her window soggy, washed out, pathetically soaked. Celia felt a bit that way herself. She sighed in an overtly heavy manner and placed a notebook and pen on her bedside table. A blank page was the only thing she would ever allow herself to trust.

Tiny silver bells on thin silver bracelets. Different coloured polish on each fingernail. Smoky-sweet smell of jasmine incense. Flickering candle flame. Eyes like deep water looking out at the softly falling rain. Although she didn’t quite know why, Zoe loved the rain. She longed to be outside, tasting those little sky-blessings on her tongue. But she contented herself with watching. She was like that.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the depressing effect that rain seemed to have on everyone else. But she had learned to love the winter time. She had come to see the beauty in the cold air. In dead flowers. In everything she had ever encountered, really. She knew that when the rain cleared, there might be a rainbow out over the valley.

Her eyes drifted lazily over the tree tops to the road, where their gaze was caught by a lighted window in the house opposite hers. A blonde girl had evidently just finished moving cardboard boxes into the room, and now seemed to be standing back to examine her possessions. Zoe thought to herself that the girl had a sad face. Idly her mind reflected on the time in her life when she had worn that expression on her own face, and she felt a moment of sympathy for this nameless girl. But then she smiled, remembering more. The memories fell like a curtain around her, and she let herself be enveloped by them completely for just a few moments. Failure, she knew from personal experience, was just one necessary step of the journey, a journey without a destination. Rain must fall in order for the rainbow to form. The other girl, she speculated, just might be learning how to be happy through her own sadness. And though she probably didn’t even realise it, she was her own teacher.

Celia’s hands are always moving, always fiddling absently with her hair, the hem of her skirt, a scrap of worn, scrunched up paper, as if to reassure herself that yes, she is still here. Her hands are pale, and curiously square-shaped, with fingernails bitten down as far as they would go, covered over by slightly neglected purple nail polish in a light pastel shade. They were writer’s hands, forming an immediate symbiotic attachment to the closest writing instrument, bringing a pen to life and allowing her to survive at the same time. Sometimes when there was no pen or paper in front of her, her right hand twitched, skittering slightly across her lap, still feeling the nerve endings in its phantom limb that had been so cruelly cut off.

Zoe’s hands are slimmer, but strong, graceful like a snoozing cat which could stretch out a paw in a movement as fast and fluid as the flow of water. Though her hands are mostly still, resting lightly and comfortably on her knees, they contain a sense of eagerness, of energy, ready to dance across the keys at any time; pianist’s hands. The nails are neat and medium in length, each one being a work of art in itself, with different combinations of colours and swirls of glitter. She often thought that one day she would paint her nails in alternating black and white. Then when she played her hands would blend into the keys and no one would be able to discern where she left off and the instrument began.

Celia found that the only way she could ever make sense of the world was to write. Between the pages of her notebook she could capture life and trap it where it could not escape her, in a prison made of pale blue, horizontal bars. Somewhere between the tip of her pen and the notebook, a miracle took place. It was the only way she had discovered to express herself, and so the miniature notebook beside her bed, though slightly scruffy-looking, held the very essence of who she was.

Often she wrote when everybody else was asleep, not even turning on the light, just fumbling for a pen in the darkness and writing by feel. The notebook seemed to call to her sometimes, as if the words within it were waiting expectantly for their silence to be broken simply by her act of opening the pages. Watching the sunset, she had the urge to do so now. Her pen paused for a second over the paper, hesitating as always to make the first mark on the pristine white face. Then she began to write.

At the dying of the day

As the crimson fades away,

I gaze in pensive silence

As the world begins to grey.

And I wonder what you’re thinking,

As the night begins its inking…

All now fades to darkness,

At the dying of the day.

The big old door creaks slightly as it is opened and then closed again, sealing the universe in and the rest of the world out. Footsteps echo across the huge empty space, and then silence. Dust floats lazily in beams of cold sunlight. The sky outside is a quiet grey. The shiny black piano faithfully reflects the fingers that gently caress its lid. The fingers stretch and distort as the lid opens to reveal the pearl and ebony treasures within, jewel-like. The keys are cold, and glinting with all the promise of beauty and music locked within their icy stillness. Brittle silence, waiting expectantly to be broken.

It was a cold, rainy-train-station sort of day. This was interesting to note since the sun was shining and Celia was nowhere near a train station. She was, in fact, sitting on the roof of her house in warm sunshine of the kind that seems to be unique to lazy Sunday afternoons. But inside her head, all was a cold, flat grey.

It was a cold, rainy-train-station sort of day. Zoe reflected that this was most likely due to the influence of her surroundings. The train station was a confused mess of dirty puddles, delayed announcements and soggy travellers. Zoe was one of the latter. She didn’t care. She knew that if she just closed her eyes, the only thing connecting her to the outside world would be her breath. She didn’t allow the cold, though it had seeped into her bones, to penetrate any deeper than that. The mind was a refuge; inside it was warm, and the air was the colour of a candle’s flame.

Celia lay under a sky brimming with grey-white clouds as the scent of wood smoke seemed to permeate the air and become tangled up in the strands of her hair. Gazing upwards, she thought the only thing that was stopping her from falling into the sky was her own gravity, her own unwillingness to let go of her fragile hold of the world, to sever the connections that held her down. There was nothing between her and the stars but clouds, and empty space.

As she watched, black, winged shapes materialised out of the whiteness above her and flew overhead, then one by one were swallowed up by the evening fog again. More and more of them passed over her, appearing and disappearing in an eerie silence, like strange, dark angels on an unknown and unknowable mission. Bats, on their way to wherever they spent the hours of the night. Their silence and their airborne grace made them seem to her somehow surreal. They had fallen into the sky; they were not just above the world but set apart from it, merely passing by the sphere of her existence, and once they had flown from her line of sight, they would cease to exist.

Such freedom, but the sky was not her limit. The only limit was her mind.

That afternoon, as Zoe sat on the roof of her house, contemplating her view of the valley, a flock of white cockatoos flew past. They moved at a speed that left her gasping, but they did not seem frightened; only exhilarated. Their huge white wings, angel wings, caught the last dying rays of sunlight as they swept down into the valley, crying exultantly. They were so free, it occurred to her – not just riding on the wind, but a part of it themselves. It was the blood running in their veins. All the earth and sky was ahead of them, and they did not look back. Zoe wished that she could fly like that. Sometimes she thought maybe she could.

Her body felt heavy, listless, languid, like her veins were filled with murky water circling sluggishly around her limbs. It was an effort to hold her eyelids open. All she wanted to do was sit and listen to the sound of the wind brushing insistently through the trees and some wind chimes tinkling aimlessly somewhere down the road. Aimless, aimless, swelling and then dying away, always moving, changing, but never going anywhere. Unmoving, she stared at the ceiling. A hollow promise; that’s all the wind was, really.

Zoe opened the window wide. Sweet sound of chimes in the wind. Scent of wide open spaces. Of dusty bushland. Fresh air, acres and acres of it. The smell of trees and starlight and the empty atmosphere. A sense of purpose unknown and obscure to the human mind, as the wind moved back and forth across the darkened land, like a practised hand on a musical instrument. She let her lungs fill up with that wild, cold night air, bringing her to life. Music of the night; that’s all the wind was, really.

“The moon stays bright

when it doesn’t avoid the night

A rose’s rarest essence

Lives in the thorn.”

Midnight.

Suddenly unable to bear staring at the flickering shadows on her ceiling for another moment, Celia sat bolt upright in bed, fumbling for her notebook and pen. She did not bother turning the light on. She just sat with her notebook leaning on the window sill and scribbled into the darkness, letting the point of the pen guide her thoughts across the paper, writing into the night.

“How long is too long? When do you realise the essential difference between existing and living? When will you see that there is more to a day than dawn? Why are you hiding, fading?

One day it’s going to be too much, isn’t it? We all have our breaking points. We have to break so that we can fit more and more of the world inside of us. Let me break, let me break free…”

Midnight.

Pianist’s fingers reach through the darkness to trace the ‘play’ button on the discman beside her bed. Zoe lies still and lets the sound wash over her. It was like sinking into the ocean, becoming submerged in the shifting, shimmering layers of music. Her eyes were closed. She loved this nightly ritual. All of the senses of her body drifted away except for her hearing. It seemed like a small miracle to her that music could slip from a smoothly spinning disc, through two thin black wires and into her ears to caress her mind. She let it carry her away from her body and as she floated closer to the border of sleep, images flitted over her eyelids; music made into colour and motion. A small girl, laughing, chasing a kite along a beach underneath a humid grey sky. The same girl, a few years older, sitting alone in the school playground. Her face once again, this time tear-stained and buried in her shaking hands. Ink splotches on paper. Hands resting on piano keys. A girl sitting alone in the school playground, smiling. A girl lying in her bed at night, surrounded by darkness and music and memory. A hand reaching out to gently stop the flow of sound to her ears and disentangle earphones from silky dark hair. A girl, a woman, dreaming in music notes, in a place where there is nothing else and time does not exist.

“Words throng my soul, but none come out.

A traveller meets his joy

And his despair at once.

Dying of thirst, I stand here

With springwater flowing around my feet.”

Celia could still taste salt water on her tongue when she awoke. Her alarm clock was persistently shrilling away into the chill morning air. She wanted to burrow her head under her pillow and never come out. Tired, so tired… too exhausted to try again, to face yet another day.

Yet somehow, she managed to force herself up and out into the morning once more. Her skin shuddered as the warm comfort of her bed was left behind. She looked out the window to see the treetops wreathed in a damp, clinging mist. It had poured into the valley like dull liquid silver and was now lapping at its edges, a creeping inland sea. Celia felt she might be swept away. She wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes tightly. After a moment she reluctantly opened them again and with a movement born from long habit, reached for her notebook.

There is more

To a day

Than dawn.

She stared at the page, wishing to write more, but not knowing how. The words had never deserted her before. Sighing, she closed the notebook and reluctantly began to prepare herself for the day ahead.

Zoe awoke to the light of a soft, grey, translucent morning. She stretched her arms luxuriantly, shivering a little, and tried not to dwell on the fact that she would have to get up soon. She was not a morning person. Occasionally she wondered, with a sense of bemusement, whether such beings did in fact exist. After some stern mental urging she pulled herself upright so that she was sitting against her pillow. Yawning and brushing her hair out of her eyes, she caught sight of something that glittered outside her window. Blinking to clear her mind of the echoes of last night’s dreams, she saw that it was a spider web, with droplets of mist clinging softly to its silken threads. She thought sleepily that they were like tiny beads on a delicate necklace, if such an exquisite piece of jewellery could ever exist.

The sun was already melting away the fog with its golden fingertips. Clambering out of bed, Zoe made sure her right foot was the first to touch the ground; she always liked to start the day off on the right foot. Smiling a little at her own childishness, she began to prepare for the day ahead.

She stared at the page, unable to breach the gap between the noise in her mind and the silent white paper. The hand holding the pen opened and closed a few times, uncertainly. The next instant she was ripping, tearing, clawing the pages viciously from their spiral-bound prison. Some of them were blank, but many were stained with her own handwriting. That’s all it is, in the end, she thought. A waste of ink. She held them all in one trembling fist. Ignoring the curious sideways glances from the travellers around her, she passed through the ticket gates and started down the stairs to the platform, her bag in one hand and the mutilated pages of her notebook still clutched in the other. Halfway down, she stumbled, and her hand opened up reflexively to help her keep her balance.

The wind grabbed the pages from her palm and tossed them through the air. They twisted in the wind with the awkward flutter of maimed birds. Some were thrown against the barrier beside the stairs and pinned there, rippling and twitching. Some passed through the bars and fell dead on the cold, grey train tracks. A few were blown further along the platform for incurious passers-by to glance over once, then look away from with a careless glance at their watch or the sky or their feet.

She could not move. And so she stood there in the rusty afternoon light, halfway down the stairs, her hands empty by her sides, listening to the lonely sound of pages rustling in the wind as they scattered around her.

She stood beneath the twilight and she felt sad and sweet and melancholy and happy and beautiful and tired and elegant and messy all at the same time, with her hair all done up and her heart slightly down. The sky was the palest turquoise around the horizon, deepening at the zenith to the purest blue Zoe had ever seen. It was that gorgeous time just after the sun had set, but before the sky had turned to black. Above the trees there was a crescent moon, and shining through their branches like a glittering, celestial fruit, the evening star hung in the sky.

The trees whispered. So did her heart.

Celia dreamed she was falling. Falling slowly, then faster and faster, through air that seemed to dissolve her as she fell. She was frightened by this coming-apart feeling, this sensation that her arms and legs were not her own and nothing was really holding her together. As she fell the air seemed to be full of the rustle of ripped paper. It seemed to form a voiceless whisper. You did this.

She hit the ground with a bone-shattering impact. At that same instant the reaction of her body awoke her with a jolt. The early morning sun glared into her eyes with a surreal brightness. She blinked, disoriented. It was as though someone had collected all the pages in her notebook and stuck them back together in an order she could not even begin to decipher. Her bed sheets felt strange against her skin.

Zoe dreamed that she was flying. She had been running along a beach on the edge of the waves, her bare feet sending up spray from the shallow, frothy water. Her strides became longer and faster until, with a burst of adrenalin that flooded through even her sleeping body, she propelled herself into the air with a huge bound. She felt the powerful pull of gravity against her skyward flight. Flying was nothing like the effortless sense of weightlessness she had imagined, but this was somehow more real. She skimmed across the surface of the ocean and flew towards the rising sun.

The same sun was shining on the street outside her window when she awoke.

The wind was hot against Celia’s skin. Its warmth filtered through her light clothing between the buttons of her shirt and sneakily crept up beneath her skirt. There was no escape from the heat. It pressed in on her like the pressure of water against her skin; she was drowning in dryness, as sweat trickled down the back of her neck.

She struggled to keep her head above the surface and her mind clear. She could beat this day, yes, she could take on all the flames of the sun and still emerge from this day victorious. She would not wilt like those sad yellow flowers beside the road. She would shield her eyes and keep moving forward.

She reached home and stepped into the light, cool bliss of air-conditioning. A splash of cold water to her face, and oh, what was she thinking of? She could never take on the sun. It was cold and dim inside.

It was one of those golden afternoons. She thought perhaps her window had been covered over with yellow cellophane. Her house was singing its sleepy afternoon song of lazy chatting voices and background television noise. Outside, a million cicadas hummed their own summer tune. Everything seemed to be lit from within with that dusty golden light, gentle in its radiance. The smoke and scent of citronella candles drifted past on the murmuring breeze. Somewhere, a kookaburra was laughing. The sky was a sleepy colour, the sunlight filtering through shifting leaves. The world was winding down, settling to the rhythm of sunset and the peace and quiet of the twilight which was to follow.

Celia sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, beside the window. It had been a long, hard day. Every day seemed to be that way recently. She felt more than just physically exhausted. She felt like burying her head in her pillow and setting up permanent residence there.

“Argh.” She informed her pillow. The pillow had not much to say to this.

Through an extreme act of will, she kept her chin up and looked out the window instead. At first glance the gums were dead and brown, their leaves rattling listlessly in the hollow wind. But she looked closer. Tiny, fresh green shoots were emerging from the rough bark. She put her hands on the window, pressed her nose against the glass, and stared.

Shells and feathers, candles and matches, were scattered over the windowsill. The sound of piano music flowed from a battered cassette player on the other side of her room. Zoe looked out at the evening sky without seeing it. Her fingers danced on her knees, in perfect time with the music. It was one of Chopin’s Nocturnes, pure and sweet as they often are, soaring like aching birdsong and trickling like water over pebbles. Her mind was far away, drifting somewhere among her memories of the past. Drifting like the kite over the beach on the breeze. She remembered the ocean. She remembered the warmth of the sand and the cool salty spray of the waves that left her gasping in the wake of their strength. She remembered the kite floating on the surface of the water, tossed and battered, growing smaller and smaller until it was a mere coloured speck far out to sea…

She was brought back to the present by the tickle of a tear sliding down her cheek. Slightly surprised, she sniffled a little and licked the teardrop from the corner of her lips. It tasted of the ocean.

“Are you jealous of the ocean’s generosity?

Why would you refuse to give

this joy to anyone?

Fish don’t hold the sacred liquid in cups.

They swim the huge fluid freedom.”

The delicious strangeness of it all overcame her, and Celia closed her eyes and savoured the bittersweet taste of the sunset on her tongue, a glorious dusky pink flavour over a pale, restful blue. She licked her lips. A thousand little sounds from the outside world washed over her at once. She had not just stopped to smell the roses; she was swimming in rose petals. There was a world waiting for her beyond the window pane. A world inside of her brought into existence only when blank ink flowed across white paper. There, there, where everything was infinitely more real than reality. That was the place from which she watched the sky as it darkened into evening.

She stopped to listen. There was music drifting in through her open window. Night-Music. She drifted too, closer to the window where she could feel the cool touch of the night air upon her cheek. The music seemed to be wafting down from the sky somewhere, notes like falling stars, brushing through the tree-tops and leaving them swaying gently in the wake of their descent. She had always liked music that came from the sky. If stars could sing, she thought whimsically, it would feel just like this.

Celia felt like writing a message with a scrawled “help” and throwing the bottle into the ocean. She felt like running outside onto the street and begging the first stranger she met to help her. She felt like climbing on top of the roof of her house and screaming “I don’t want to be like this any more, help me!” But the stars always glimmered like they did not notice her desperation. And anyway, she knew that she had to help herself. No one else could possibly take that responsibility away from her, no matter how unwanted it was. She was the only one who could start to change.

The funny thing about music is that it’s intangible, untouchable. It’s a wave of vibrations that stimulates a response in the brain. But for something corporeal, it is incredibly powerful. It is like writing. One cannot touch the words, locked away as they are in their two-dimensional prison, but the words themselves can creep into us and touch the very core of our being.

Writing is silent music.

Music is writing’s melody.

Words like ‘never’ and ‘forever’ kept echoing around inside Celia’s mind, and her throat ached, and her eyes burned from trying to hold back tears. And yes, she knew she was being melodramatic, and even a little stupid; some small part of her mind had acknowledged that, and quickly brushed that knowledge aside. She snatched at her notebook and pen and wrote i don’t care i don’t care i don’t care, but did not feel better afterwards. Only slightly angrier. Her hands were shaking and there was a voice which sounded remarkably like her own whispering and hissing in the back of her head. For God’s sake, you’re pathetic! Look at you, you don’t even know what to cry about…

She covered her face with her hands and lost herself to the blackness behind her eyelids, and she did not even notice when all the lights of the world went out.

There was one huge clap of thunder. After a ponderously silent second her bedside lamp fizzled out. The fluorescent glare of the streetlights went too. Only Zoe’s candles were left. Slowly, all down the street, windows began to glow with the warm, playful flicker of fire as people lit candles of their own. Zoe liked the world by candlelight. Electricity made her feel worn away after a time, faded. It was nice to escape the relentless buzz of power through the cables. Things had been wired a little too tight.

And the candle flames seemed to leap up to welcome their elemental partners as the storm rolled in overhead, threatening to dump its airborne ocean in a voice that boomed and crackled. The lightning was reflected in Zoe’s eyes and she felt that spark to be inside of her somewhere, buried in her core. The earth beneath the tumbling clouds was the strength of her bones and the wind that was beginning to tear violently through the trees was her breath.

Water began to flood from the sky and she felt her blood rise up in her veins as it flowed to the rhythm of the torrenting rain. The candle danced in her window.

“Rain fell on one man.

He ran into his house.

But the swan spread its wings and said

‘Pour more on me of that power

I was fashioned from.’”

All of a sudden the storm was there and Celia put her cheek against the glass to feel the wild, violent, biting cold of the outside world. Rain poured down her window in sheets. What with that and the blurry tears in her eyes, on her eyelashes, cheeks, tongue, the world beyond the window pane was lost in mist; a white, hazy fog that seemed to be within her somewhere as well as without.

And the rain kept falling outside her window. The girl in the other window faded, losing outline, and then she was gone with the howling wind that was flinging itself against the glass, making it shudder. She was alone, and so she cried silently, the only way she knew how.

Zoe could not help but wonder at the grace that accompanied all of the storm’s immense power. The floor of her room trembled slightly with each roll of thunder. Heavy grey clouds made the sky opaque and the light dim. Storms seemed to blur the lines of reality, blend them together in a collage of power and nature that cared not at all for its wide-eyed spectators. The rain kept falling outside her window, and she smiled.

It was late, but there was a light on in the other house. Celia stared through the darkness and the other girl stared back with her deep, deep eyes. A connection seemed to pass between them. They seemed to recognise each other in a way that was profound and slightly surreal. And then Celia’s eyes shifted focus and where the other girl had been she could see only her own reflection, staring back at her from the impersonal sheen of black glass.

A silent house. The steady sound of a clock ticking. The meandering thoughts of a young girl awake in the early hours of the morning. It was beginning to dawn on Zoe just how much looking at the girl in the window of the opposite house was like seeing a reflection of her own past. She still remembered the person she used to be. She didn’t hate that person, because she knew that she was essential to the life she led now. That other Zoe still lurked inside of her somewhere, prowling like a beast on a chain; she was not naïve enough to believe she was gone forever. She was just confident, now, that she had a tight hold on the other end of the chain.

Zoe could still see the other girl in the window. On an impulse she tried to think in her direction, wishing the girl would somehow hear and understand her words.

Don’t worry. There is a part of you in me. I am with you.

Celia opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling with a mild sense of shock. Somewhere in the darkness between midnight and dawn, without the expressed consent of her conscious mind, she had come to a conclusion. She was going to change. Breathlessly, she explored this new determination, this new knowledge that had sprung to life over the night. And suddenly it seemed so obvious, so simple, that she wondered why it had never occurred to her before.

She would change. She would draw power from the person she used to be and shape it into someone she could love, like an artist draws clay from the earth and shapes the slimy, mud-like substance into an artwork. She would be the rainbow after the rain. A strange sensation welled up inside of her, until she felt she was overflowing. She suddenly realised that it just might be the beginnings of happiness. Inexplicably excited, and unable to help herself, she began to laugh.

“Don’t analyse this enthusiasm!

The wheel that lifts some up

And drags others down,

We’re not riding it any more.

We’ve jumped off that

Good-and-bad.”

It was a summer dawn. Silence was so thick in the air that you could almost hear it. A girl wearing light silk pyjamas sits cross-legged on the floor in front of the glass door that leads out onto her balcony. Her hands rest smoothly on her knees and her face is uplifted to watch the last pale rays of the moon as it hovers, perched above the horizon, saying farewell to the world and welcoming the sun as it beckons to the new day. Everyone else is still asleep; this exquisite moment is hers alone.

As it draws nearer to that line where the earth reaches up to brush its fingers against the sky, the moon changes. It took her breath away. Touched by the rays of the dawning sun, the orb blushed pink, pale and shimmering as the inside of a seashell. The tiniest of breezes tickled the leaves of the gum trees.

She sat there and gazed at the glorious scene, drinking in with her eyes all of the beauty she thought she could contain within herself, like a cup which was slowly being filled to the brim. The delicate vision slipped slowly out of a sky that was a deep, fresh blue.

And then it was gone, and the sun tinged everything with gold. A new day had come. Zoe rose and prepared to leave the house, and she marvelled, because the day was just beginning and the whole wide city was beyond her.

As Celia walked along the platform she was struck by an indefinable sensation, gazing at the guard selling tickets from the window. Sitting behind his protective pane of glass, only able to see what was directly in front of him. The whole world out there… and to only see that one slice! She waited in line and was soon face to face with the man behind the glass.

“Return to the city, please.”

“Three dollars twenty.”

She slid a five dollar note through the hole in the glass, and told him:

“Keep your coins. I want change.”

She slipped her ticket into her pocket and walked away, leaving the man behind the window to stare after her, a slightly baffled look on his face.

The train was like a live metal creature, wriggling its way into the core of the city. Zoe was listening to music again, and peering out of the grimy window like an eager and unrestrainable child. She liked gazing at the other travellers waiting on the platforms as the train passed through, watching all the human lives tossed together in unique combinations. A stern looking man wearing a business suit and tapping away on a lap top computer sat next to a bronzed 20-something year old with blonde dreadlocks and a surfboard. The journey stirred up a cocktail of human lives for her delight, each one a single note in the song of the city itself.

Zoe had always loved travelling over the Harbour Bridge, a joy that she had not quite grown out of since childhood. On a fresh morning like this the sun glinted off the water in a dazzling display of light, almost as if the water itself was on fire. The city, inviting, provocative, intoxicating, lay waiting for her.

Yes, she thought, it’s going to be a beautiful day.

Losing herself would be easy but she had been doing that for far too long, so she kept moving, walking on through the crowd as best she could, with a determination in her step that was strange and new and wonderful and exciting. She hesitated outside the park and almost entered, but then, no, keep up the momentum and just keep going, her feet told her, she didn’t want to lose this sense of direction now that she was on the move. A light rain, the left overs from last night’s storm, started to drift down from the sky and she merely noticed how the miniscule drops clung like gems in her pale hair, and had they always been that beautiful? Ahead she could hear the sound of the waves in the harbour and smell the murky salt of the sea, and she marvelled because the whole wide ocean was beyond her, and she kept walking.

“As essence turns to ocean,

the particles glisten.

Watch how in this candleflame instant

Blaze all the moment you have lived.”

Trains burrowing their way into the heart of the city. Smog. A multitude of lives tossed together. Flashing lights. Blurred shouting and the noise of traffic. Hundreds of feet trampling the unyielding ground. The smell of helter skelter. One pair of feet entering the large, deserted park. A green sanctuary. An emerald nestled among the dirt and dust. Watching trees. A pair of shoes left by the wooden seat. The bliss of bare feet on soft grass. A tinkling fountain drowning out other sounds. The caress of silvery water slipping between idly dangling fingers. The relief of being alone while business suits and briefcases streamed past outside. Even at the heart of the city, peace is still to be found.

The rain had left everything washed clean. The Opera House glimmered beside the harbour like a seashell stranded on the beach by the ocean’s waves. The clouds had moved on, leaving the sun to warm the puddles on the footpaths, and the skyscrapers’ windows were left sparkling like bittersweet teardrops caught in the eyes of the city, waiting to be blinked away. Celia leaned over the railing to watch the water slap playfully against the side of the harbour. She breathed it all in until she felt the freshness of the day fill her up inside. A new day, full of new beginnings. The whole city was spread out around her, just waiting for her to bring it to life. She noticed that there was a hazy little rainbow forming in the sky over the water.

Sensing a presence at her side Celia turned, although she already knew who it was that she would see. Black clothes. Deep eyes. It was Zoe.

“Hello,” said Celia.

Zoe smiled.

Return to Top