Page 103 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
“Yes!Flowers.Flowers.What aneasyword. And it kept slipping.” He harrumphed.
“Sometimes I lose track of stupid-simple words too,” I said. “I think they’re theeasiestones to lose. Big, complicated words tend to stick in your brain, but the simple ones blend too much and get lost in the crowd. So…flowers? She grew flowers?”
“Yes. Flowers. Indigo loved them. Loved making them grow. I used to pick them for her. From different places. Different flowers…ones that didn’t grow where we…our home. I’d pick them. And she’d care for them. And they’d grow.” A soft laugh burbled through him. “I used to…j-j-joke that she got as lost in her flowers as I did in my dream. And she said the difference was…she was a woman. Women got themselves less…unlost better than men.”
“Oh, yeah, she’s not wrong. Women generally multitask better.”
“Multi. Task. Yes.” Alistair laughed. “I don’t do it well. Indigo did.” He stopped for a moment. And then in a sad, broken voice said, “I miss her.”
“I’m sure you do. She sounds wonderful.”
“She was.”
He didn’t say anything else.
Maybe rooting through the crevices of his brain, hunting for words, had left him weary. Or maybe he wanted to keep these scars to himself. We all had wounds other people would never truly understand, and trying to explain ripped those cuts back open. Left them bleeding. Raw.
So for several moments we silently watched the stars. Listened to the ocean grumble and splash. Absorbed each other’s company and comfort.
“I’d love to see a shooting star,” I said after a long stretch. “I’ve never seen one, except in movies. But people swear they’ve as much magic as the Sorcerers. That even a Standie can ask something of a shooting star and have it come true.”
“They are,” Alistair said, “magical.But they don’t come here.” His head shifted slightly as he tilted his chin up, eyes drawn to the sky. “I’ve never seen one. And I come here often. Ilikelooking at the stars. It’s…p-pe?—”
“Peaceful?” I finished.
“Yes.”
“I think so too.” I lay down between his horns, pillowing my hands under my head, so I could keep staring at the sky without getting a neck crick. “Sometimes life gets turbulent. But even when everything’s flinging around and flipping upside down, the stars are always there. Always steady and quiet. Alwaysshining.Clouds and fog might cover their light, but nothing snuffs them out. They’re eternal.And steadfast. And assured. Everything we’re not.”
Alistair made another one of his purring sounds.
“I used to sneak out on the roof when I was a kid. When my parents argued into the dead of night. And I’d watch the stars until I fell asleep. I even made up a story. When I was in, I dunno, middle school? Maybe a little older. It was before my parents split—can’t remember if it was before we moved—their last-ditch effort to save their marriage. Anyway, I wrote this terrible story. A romance. About a human boy who was lonely and sad. He saw a shooting star one night and wished it would bring him a friend. And the star sympathized with him, so she came to him herself. Offered him companionship and love and lost her heart to him in the process. But in answering the boy’s wish, she trapped herself on Earth. And she thought she’d be happy there, with this boy she loved. But he didn’t love her back. He used her, taking more and more of her stardust until she had none left to give him. And?—”
Oh goodness.
NowI remembered why I’d blotted out this story from my memory.
Theending.
“What happened?” Alistair prodded.
“She…well,she lived a while on Earth, despairing more each year,” I said. “Eventually she took her own life, thinking death would bring her back home. But it didn’t. She just became dust.”
Alistair gasped and grouched, “That is awful.”
“Yeah, kid me was a little emo.” I smiled. “I was superunhappy at that point in my life, though. Which was why I started writing. To escape my own life. Occasionally I got vindictive and made my characters suffer. It’s therapeutic to do that. I should probably do it again.”
“You don’t write anymore?”
“No. Haven’t for a long time. I alwayswantto, but there’s never really a good time to sit and work a story out.”
“If you always wait for a good time…” Alistair started.
“I’ll always be waiting. Yeah. You hit me with that sage advice already tonight. It’s goo-goo-goo—” A jaw-cracking yawn split the word.“Good.”
“You’re tired.”
“Yeah.” I dragged a hand over my raw, heavy-lidded eyes. “Lying down was probably a bad idea.” But I didn’t have the strength to get back up. Not when my muscles had turned into a big, goopy puddle.
