(Strange little stories written in the early morning on a Saturday… beware slight shounen ai, and possible shoujo ai.)

When the sun rose this morning, it was ghost-blue.

I imagine that once it was white, white as the lightning on the inside of an eye, and maybe warmer.

But this place makes its own warmth.

Usually Sly doesn’t come out ‘til sunset.  He sleeps the days away because he loves the glow of the yrameia leaves.  They’re golden at night and if you them you’ll glow too, except that some of them are poison.  Sly knows which ones are and which ones aren’t.  He tried to tell me once how to tell, but I forget.

This morning Sly is up, watching sun rise.  We sit on top of an old church, on the steeple.  His hair gets caught on the jagged edges of the cross and then parts like water, if water were a strange shade of golden-gray blonde.  His sun-blue eyes dance at me.

“Do you think the birds will show?” he asks, holding tighter to the steeple as he stands.  He’s not as comfortable as I with heights, but he’d never admit that.  Not Sly.

I don’t answer him.  If the birds fly by, heading for a distant sun, then let it be a miracle rather than a prediction.  Sly accepts my silence as a matter of course.

“Maybe we should go to the ocean, you and me,” he says.  “We could watch the birds all the time down there.”

The thought brings joy and pain to my heart.  I’ve never been to the ocean, but I’d heard all of Sly’s stories- sometimes twice, or three times.  I wanted to see the crashing velvet surf.  I wanted to taste the tears of my world.  But I’d never make such a trip.  I could never leave my home.

Sly climbs down the steeple, down the ivy-covered walks of the church.  Sunlight is in his hair.  He looks up at me to wave, then heads off to wherever he will sleep today.  It is enough that he watched the sun rise with me.

It’s colder now, strangely.  Maybe the wind has picked up.  Natalie is walking into the square.  Her long hair is streaming, black reaching rivers.  Yes, the wind is here.

Honey-colored eyes look up at me.  She never has any trouble finding me.  Somewhere out of my sight a crow calls to her.  She smiles and then she is here, standing next to me up on the steeple.

Heights are Natalie’s home.

“We should burn this place to the ground,” she tells me, looking around our home with disdainful eyes.  She doesn’t say it to upset- no, Natalie means what she says.  But she would share the pyre she built for our home.  She could do no less.  I think she wants to die.

It’s strange that she also wants to live, with an aching fierceness that laces my soul in its fire.

“You should sleep,” she says, looking at me.  “Your eyes are shadowed, love.”

She wants to take care of me.  Lately, they all have.  Except Celeste… but Natalie doesn’t know about that.  She knows something happened, but she won’t ever know what.

Natalie tosses her hair to the wind again.  I wonder if this old church’s bell still chimes.  It hasn’t in ages, but if I could get inside, if I could find it, could I sound the hour?

Thirteen o’clock.  And all’s not well.

“You should get down soon, and get warm,” she tells me, pulling off her delicate black shawl and leaving it on my shoulders.  Before I can thank her she is gone, another shadow amidst so many.  She would never accept my thanks.

The trees are dancing in the wind.  It’s almost dark as night out here.  It’s dark as day.  The only light is the cool blue of the sun and it’s not enough anymore.  The hopelessness makes me want to embrace the night, to hide myself in its golden glow.  The day brings us nothing but sorrow.

And fear.

I see the others now, Jordan and Cle and Celeste.  Jordan walks into the square with the posture of an old man, bowed by pain and time, then straightens and throws that weakness away, dancing like a shaman into the center, to the fountain.  He raises his arms and his shadow shatters itself on the face of the water.

He catches my eyes in his brown eyes; I see my face reflected there.  Sly is beautiful, Natalie is powerful, but Jordan is wise in secrets and truths and the things that aren’t secret, but nobody sees.

He told me the dreamer will one day wake.

Cle sits down at a stone bench and weaves light into shadow.  Craftsman.  Creator.  His hands are long and delicate; his face is scrunched in concentration.  I watch the light respond to his coaxing and create a tiny, glistening bird, which he releases to fly up to me and bear their greetings.  The bird lands in my hand, trills a soft song, then silkenly splits into light and shadow over my lips.  A kiss from a god… or simply a skilled magician.

I look down at him, doll-tiny in the square, and he has turned to watch Jordan dance with his heart in his pale gray eyes.  His heart to Jordan, an imagined kiss to me.  The day brings only sorrow.

Celeste looks up at me, and I remember: it also brings fear.

We are all so pale in the fading sun, all except Jordan, who remains warm brown and vibrant life, but Celeste is a heavenly corpse.  She is the sun behind a thin gray cloud.  She is our ghost.

No one speaks to her.  She haunts their steps.  She looks to me with hatred in her eyes- oh, she knows as well as I that the dreamer will wake.

She can follow warm, living footsteps, so I hide on the steeple and relish the cold.  The cold of wind and half-hidden sun is different from the cold of her hands.

If I looked in the mirror mounted on gravestones, carved of obsidian and covered in blood, would I stare into her colorless eyes?

She followed Sly once.  She waited until he left and traced his footsteps, and I had never seen her before.  I waited to know what manner of creature this ghost girl was.

And she said, in the whisper of the end of time, “The dreamer will one day wake.”

And her hands ad her lips were cold as ice and I would have screamed but her tongue left me mute and my tears left me blind.

I shiver to remember it, and she smiles and licks her ivory lips.  Her hands caress Cle’s hair and I want to scream for her to leave him alone, to stop it, to go away and die-

But ghost girls can’t die.

Cle’s eyes are still filled with Jordan and if I weren’t so relieved that she couldn’t touch him, not for real because he won’t feel it, I would burn in shame and jealousy.  But I am the lonely one up in the tower, and Jordan is the dancing shadow, the hidden light, the vivid alive reminder of a memory we shouldn’t have.

I wonder if our sun were ever golden and strong, warm enough to burn our flesh and sear our nightmares away.

I remember her hands tangled in my hair, her ghost body cold but beaded with sweat against mine.  We were exhausted, but she was triumphant.

I asked her why.

She smiled and her eyes were graves.  “The dreamer will wake, but I won’t be forgotten.”  Her tongue danced over my throat and I shuddered.  “I took your innocence.  You are mine.”

I cried later.  I tried to cry her ice cold touch from my body.  It didn’t work.

But tonight I will dance after eating yrameia leaves and I will drive her spirit from my flesh and I will find myself in Cle’s warm eyes.  Maybe.

Or maybe I will dance until Sly takes my hand and we fly on our soul’s wing to the ocean.

Or maybe I will be safe in Natalie’s power, here in this shawl she gave me to flee the cold, or maybe Jordan will give me his wisdom to save me, and I will dance like white lightning and I will never need anyone ever again.

But I will drive this ghost from my memory.  When the dreamer wakes, she will be forgotten. 

And the golden sun will sear this nightmare away, leaving only the bright.

(Sound interesting to anyone?)