Angels' Dares: Interlude

This is a slight alteration of my original structural plan for this series, but the narrative opportunity was too tempting to ignore. I got the idea for this post while walking on the beach on Saturday and wrote most of it on the bus Monday afternoon. I had intended to finish and post it yesterday. Alas.





Gray upon gray, textures and layers of clouds render this colorless world majestic. I seek upon the concrete below; the sensation of weightlessness lets me believe I fly among them. A glance here--charcoal through a fence; a look down--stone, cement and grime. Up I search again--a shift of nimbus; retreat but not surrender. The sky is a swirling cauldron of the formidable.

And then the boy. Hugging his knees, huddled on the floor, nestled by the fence. Scraped knees, scratched elbows, blood. He wipes a wet cheek with his forearm, dirt-smear on his angel skin. Perhaps he is ten years old. A steady voice and a traitorous tear--absorbed into the cotton of his t-shirt with a quickly raised shoulder. His watery water-eyes never stray from mine.

"What took you so long?"

And then I'm on the ground beside him--but the ground's not the ground, it's sand, packed and damp--my hands to his face, thumbs to his cheekbones, sloshing the tears--and I worry maybe they're cold, but no, he is warm, the tears are warm, it is the rain that is cold, the rain that has come, the rain that falls from the textures of clouds--now lavender, now amethyst, now aubergine.

And behind us, not a fence, but a field of open, a far horizon--dotted with towers, strung with wires, defiant in the coming storm. At our face, no longer urban bleak, but ocean, foam, tide. Beating, battering salt. Far thunder when his eyes glisten, lightning when the sobs begin.

I pull him close and twine my arms around him; lay his head upon my lap and let him heave. Lightning stripes the sky around us. I shield him from the slaps of rain.

Ocean, electricity, ocean, electricity. Ever closer both. Soaking, I hold him closer. Determined, I stroke his hair and imagine blue. Blue blue blue blue blue.

Cobalt, cerulean, aquamarine, azure. Indigo, beryl, sapphire, blue.
Blue blue blue blue blue.

Quiet. Quiet. A lullaby of low tide. He breathes. We breathe.

He stirs, he shifts, he turns his face toward mine. He opens his eyes, and I see it: the vast, the blue, the open. All around is blue. Horizon, sea, industrial landscape--nothing disturbs the sky.

"You made the lightning," I whisper.
Quiet assurance, this boy has. He smiles and breathes "I know."

"You make lightning," I say.
"That's okay," he tells me. "You color the sky."