Dramatine -- a short story serial

He was staring at the clouds when he sees her face, smooth and oval and young and soft and sweet. She was as the vast sunset sky which frames her slender silhouette.

“You won't save him if you pump breath after breath,” Quon tells the CPR-ing man◊. He glances at her with a raised eyebrow – and the audience stands bewildered.

He says, “What are you telling me for? Lookit, this guy ain't breathing. I got to save him anyhow—” and presses on the shopkeeper's chest. “Ungh ungh ugnh—”

The shopkeeper is far from a person of admiration. Lying on the concrete, surrounded by onlookers, he suffers from a swollen eye, bruised cheeks and a sharp jab at his jagged nose. His head drowns in a pool of red. If you were to come and ask why, you would think bicycle accident, which is far from the case.

Quon kneels by the shopkeeper's chest, just as the CPR-ing man blows air into his mouth. He looks up at her.

“Oh hell,” he goes. “You take care of him for a bit. How long until the ambulances arrive?”

(“Shouldn't take too long.”)

“What's their fuckin' holdup?” He waves his arms around. “I don't know what else to do here.”

Jonie is currently casting this scene for all of her friends to see. She tells them she's excited, she can't believe this horrible event is happening, and they're replying their regards within a matter of seconds. When their replies get boring, she turns her attention to the shopkeeper's body. Right away her smoothie comes back up her throat. What's Quon doing? She's not doing the CPR (Clean, Pretty, Reliable) right. She's like staring blankly at the shopkeeper's head. Does she even know what to do? Gosh, she's hopeless.

Jonie wants to screech out and yank Quon out by the shoulder – such stupidity is intolerable. Like dude, he's gonna die now. Say something.

“Quon!” Jonie chirps.

Quon is steadying herself. With her focus she gazes at the shopkeeper's brain, within his thick protecting skull and the fibres of muscle which encompass it. His nose has become jammed in, denting the arteries to bleed. The doctors call it a haematoma. When his bleeding grows severe the brain won't receive the air it needs.

4

So she will save him.

“What're you doing?” Jonie says.

“I do what I do,” Quon replies. “I am born a child of this World, and so is he.”

Everyone is silent. Only music plays.

With her hand smothering his head, Quon feels for the clotting blood. It is like soft gelatin when she finally grasps it, and

she pulls the excess blood from his nose – it spurts out between her palm like an unclogged pipe.

Quickly she seals his arteries. But he is still suffocating beneath the ocean, and she must pull him out.

It hurts, doesn't it?

“Wake,” she whispers heartily to his ear. “Thy slumber be over.”

She is smiling now, and keeping his head still, leans in to give the breath of Life. A beat, and out!

the shopkeeper gasps like a newborn as his eyes pop wide open and his body quivers and shakes. He keeps at this for a second, and then he's looking all around, as he still trembles trying to breathe.

“Oh God!—” he ejaculates. “Oh God!”

The crowd is awestruck by the event, like it has been God himself who descended from heaven for this miracle. Immediately a couple of them go to molest Quon – as if hoping to share with her power. “Our saviour!”

She holds onto the shopkeeper's numb hand as firmly as she can help it, to anchor him here in this reality. All the while she still smiles, and the shopkeeper turns and sees her face, soft and sweet; and they never break gaze. Even as the audience cheers.

Even as Quon feels herself weak, her own self weak, hiding this fact.

Even as the sirens do arrive.

She is facing a terrible dilemma. What would she do after she has made undue self-attention in public? She had only done a good act which now brings her the trouble of disappearing from the spotlight. But weighing the choice between a Life and her undue foolishness, the choice appeared obvious.

Foolishness— what's in a word? A mistake, deviating from the correct course, which harbours consequences such from little as wasted effort, to the very Grave. A trite rage, from within her book – a single page, made a thousand Lives die to premature graves. (It wasn't her fault, she would protest. She was just sad that they had killed Alphonse. But there's no excuse for rashness.)

She does not wish to recall that grave day. This cost she has borne heavily, now it is only her own, the blood still stains in her memory. And she shelters it even now.

Now, as the red and blue sirens blare atop the ambulance van – the medics have carried the Shopkeeper inside on a stretcher. They're asking her how she has fixed him where the others have failed.

Some of the people proclaim divine light has shone in her action, who graciously compare her to the mythical Jesus of Nazareth in his healing ways.

Quon tells that she has performed Clean Pretty Reliable (C.P.R.) correctly. All she would simply like is to find her missing parasol so she may at last relax. Or if not that, then the promise that she could go home without fuss and celebrity.

Alphonse said this parasol belongs to her for “some reason.. I don't know how to put it, but the way you carry Grandma's parasol.. it's as though I see her in you. You know this feeling? Bah, what am I talking about— you two just go together. It's yours now.”

She was happy.

Then he was shot and she grew mad, at those who had taken him away from her. And then.. and then.. she has forgotten. It's fuzzy after that. An old television tuning to static. There was Death, she knows. And maybe Light.

Alphonse is alive now, in this World, at the least, and so are his friends. She knows this.

“Mademoiselle?” the medic goes. “Shall I check you out too? You don't look so well yourself— you look pale.”

Quon looks at her and says she is fine. This mademoiselle needs no taking care of other than a safe ride back home, for a good nap. It so chances that her own apartment is on the way to the hospital. So she boards the ambulance's back, leaving these people at the store. Little Jonie too. Jonie who thinks wildly with convictions. Quon forgot to say goodbye.

The ambulance goes its way, and she sees the streets pass by and get left behind. It is dusk outside. The purple hue looms over everything not lit like a great big shadow. Soon the street becomes bright from the colourful lights. The ride is rough and nervous. The wheels rumble on the road.

Then she turns to the shopkeeper – lying strapped to the stretcher. The medics have cut open his apron and they stick buttons on his chest, IV into his veins, and a breathing tube in his mouth. His eyes are open, glazed, looking at her.

(ping.. ping..)

staring at her.

They exchange a hundred unsaid words.

It is the more troubling of times when you have to face a wounded other. You feel their pain, and it would make you wince. But you would endure it, if only it gives them relief in doing so. Quon holds the lain shopkeeper's hand in hers, fingers entwined.

“What is your name?” she asks, “so I may remember it later.”

Of course, you won't speak under the breathing tube. She feels the ambulance rattle, and the lurch of a turn on the road. Still she holds on.

The Medic shakes her shoulder. “Madame? Would you let him rest?”

Quon glances at the monitor, echoing tenderly his slow pulse recorded.

“Yes,” she goes.

And she joins the bright streets soonafter, where she watches the carrier depart into the traffic, until it is gone. The lampposts blind with their white light, as garish and flashy they are by the prominent flashboards, which advertise the use of new seducing odeurs. Gaudin promises the satisfaction that, if one does not pique the woman enough, then one may bathe anyway in its sweet complexion – forever and ever and ever.

The air feels crisp to walk home in. The sort of sober, calming coolness after the day's heat to wash through the fabric of your being. Flowering trees line the sidewalk, and the lamps' glow highlight the leaves' contour, shadow and green flickering with the sways. Underneath the sky are the aesthetic white lanterns, mid-air, floating freely like lost balloons. As if to make up for the stars which you no longer can see from the violet and orange hues of this city. Colours outcast like a false evening perpetuating the night.

And a wooden bench, glazed wet with water, to the side.

Come, the night is still young. The streetplayers dance and sing, and they hopscotch upon imaginary squares – their loud, brazen chatter like a lively crowd. But she is utterly spent. Her knees are weak and needy. It would only be until she collapses onto the ground entirely, and woe will be her.

She has spent her energies wisely, she feels, and her bed is like a fluffy pillow waiting for her tired head. To dream. To wonder. The only prayer is that they dismiss her act out of common sense.

Along the path she walks into her apartment alleyway, the stretch of the narrow street alone with the nightly lights – hung from the alcoves beside lit curtained windows. There is an awkward feeling, to see a place once bustling, and now empty. She dislikes saying her goodbyes for the same reason. But she has to. Or the 'Hellos' forget their significance.

She can hear from above the jovial laughter of a card game played.

The playground beside, still bright. The lamps' eyes ever watchful over it. The swings and slides and blue monkeybars to hang on.

Hello?

And one of the swings, just rocking back and forth, a little squeak on each passing. The wind, she first imagines it to be. There she sees it – the young who sit there. Would somebody help push me up? Up – higher than the sun, and the skies? My legs are too short and stubby, and I don't know how to swing myself.

I will gladly help you up, she says.

You have to push them gently, on their back. A light tap. And as they get used to the motions, ask them how everything looks from where they are. Do I look tiny, like a figurine? This figurine still pushes you, you ought to know. One day I shall teach you to use your legs, when you grow old enough.

Wave hello to the trees, and the clouds for me. But never let go of the chain. please.. I don't want you to fall and hurt yourself. Did you wave hello? I'm happy you did.

This is the highest I can help you now. The swing won't go any higher. So you have to swing your legs, and keep yourself high. And once you tire of the limit, I hope you find your wings. Your angelic wings. Everyone has them, but they are invisible to the naked eye. Only the heart can see.

So fly. Fly away. Away from here, from where I stand. Fly until you are as the magical birds you've always envied. And do remember for me, I once was.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

She waves at the swings. Then she enters the lobby of her apartment. The red carpet at her feet, and glancing at the golden-lit leather couches around a space. Men with their grey suits in discussion.

“Enjoyed your night, Quon?” Mme. Hilde (the Receptionist) greets.

“I have. And you?”

“Oh— it's just fine. Running smoothly.”

“Good.. ..goodbye.”

“Good night?”

“Good.. night.” Quon hangs her hands upon the counter, gazing at Mme. Hilde's bewildered hazel eyes with a kind of heartfelt sincerity. A beat, or two, and finally Quon departs for the elevators.

In the slow jazz beat, feeling the upward lurch, she tries pursing her lips – and whispers, “Hello.” There isn't anyone else with her. It is an unheard “Hello.” (Heard only by her, the voicer.) And with the word made she tries recalling the related images in mind.

Hello is said, to the ones you meet. Familiar and strange faces. A greeting. With which you ease open their ego-barriers for conversing. And once that's over, do you say goodbye? we'll meet again someday. Goodbye? I'll always cherish you in memory.

Sometimes the memory outlives its realities. Sometimes the memory is all you have to know they lived, once upon a time.

(The doors ding! 9th floor reached.)

What would you do, to chat with a memory whose answer speaks obviously? Relive that moment again and again? Masturbate with your melancholies? Why yes. It isn't fair you won't find something like it ever more. To grasp and feel it at hand.

And Quon finds her room. She enters the unlit darkness of it, locking the door behind her. Hello, home sweet home, how have you been? Her beret goes on the top of her wardrobe, and her parasol.. if she can wish it back in her hands. To find its knobby handle along her fingertips, and lay it at the corner. What will she tell Alphonse? He won't be happy.

She walks into her kitchen. Out the balcony windows, she sees the city in its incandescent splendour. The distant high rises, lamps and traffic in their swirling, fractal layouts. Ever shifting, ever moving. It hypnotizes her to stare out for so long; all the light blossoms inside, making silvery silhouettes out of the furniture and her.

The great moon by the horizon waxes towards fullness. It moves her to a relaxed stillness, and she softly breathes the quiet air in.

Eventually, she wanders down her hallway into the little washroom, where she flicks the ivory light on. Rubbing her eyes to the sudden brightness, Quon comes to her washbasin – where she can see herself reflecting in the mirror.

She finds herself modest in her frilly lace-trimmed dress, trailing to her knees. Her face oval and complacent, if tattered with the wearings of the day. When she undoes her hair, it unfurls down her shoulders like a wreath. As if you expect yourself to suddenly act in the mirror, spontaneously reciting a Shakespearean sonnet. Or tap dance. Flash a seductive wink, and become entranced like Narcissus of the pool. Hehe. How amusing.

Putting vanilla mint toothpaste on her brush, Quon goes to give her mouth a once-over. Spit. Rinse. Gargle. (What if itty bitty bacteria are hiding back there?)

Then rinse her face gently, and scrub away the dirt from her pores.

She stands in front of the mirror, to look at herself, and then she pulls up her dress to leave on the porcelain floor. Oh, her. Such naked, revealing skin on her, hid only within the black bra and undies. Clasped round her tender self. Her heart is so full, and then on the laces she starts to pull. It is tight on her, and soon she loosens them away - drop them down too.

A heartbeat.

Touch

She wonders why the way she is, her fullsome rosy hair, on her head, and below her belly button. In a bout of curiosity, she decides.. to run her fingers

Open the curtains of your being

gracing her eyes, stroking her nose, touching her lips so light as to make her quiver with an inner tickling,

To clothe you in a further nudity

tracing the curve of her neck, finding petite strands of her hair, and sliding down her shoulders to the breasts, the rosy areolae,

And uncover the bodies of your body

reminding her warmly: is this her always?

And wandering to her bedroom, she finds her little nightgown and slides into it. Now she is Quon, the Dreamer. Where is M. Alphonse?

She awakens to see M. Alphonse's yellow eyes, blinking right back at her in the light of her room. His is a pleasant face, and his light whiskers add a delicate touch to his languid smile. He sticks his little tongue out and licks her by the very tip of her nose.

“Ahh, how've you been?” Quon asks him, sitting herself up from her bed. “Have you dreamt anything wonderful?” She lays him on her blanketed lap.

The cat narrows his eyes, as if pondering for the moment. A twitch of his ear and he nods. Quon gives him some pats just below his stout neck – it's M. Alphonse's favourite spot, which he purrs contentedly in kind. You can tell where it is from how soft it feels.

After a while, Quon raises the furry creature in her arms, cuddles him close, and with a kiss on his eye she lets him run free on the floor.

Her room she's likened to a private sanctum of her own liking. Her collection of memorabilia; from paintings and masks hung on the violet wall, to bottled odeurs and facial makeup in a cabinet, to the many novels aligned on her bookshelf, to her desk by the West-facing window - her scribt, laptop and album over there,

and her bed, with the gentlest mattress to rest on and blankets that let your body breathe.

Yesterday still haunts her. In the night prior before sleeping, she thought of talking with Alphonse over the phone. An urge which took her so sudden. It was the night's dim, insurmountable darkness she could not bear waiting for to die – and strange how it was morning there where he lived. She would be dead tired, while he was freshly awake. What would it matter then if she had anything to say to him? Her words would turn to babbles.

For breakfast Quon enjoys a nice bread, with salad, cereal and cider juice – giving her pet some milked kibbles in a bowl. The news say the referendum to economically unite Quebec Nouveau with Canada has passed, so that trading tariffs disappear. A local report on a (speculated) miracle worker who'd healed a downed Le prix est juste shopkeeper; eyewitnesses describe a biblical sight, of a glow emanating as she kissed him on the lips. She was beautiful. The manager of these stores refused to comment on the incident.

“Fish,” she says. If only there isn't an ounce of compassion in her, she can continue to live in peace.

Her day passes without grandeur. She meditates in her room, her spurring thoughts passing into the void. Chopin's piano concerto makes M. Alphonse purr into sleep, and a saintly halo over his ears. Yet she cannot push away his parasol from focus, her guilt over it – as much as she distracts herself in the act.

An inhibition stops her from calling Alphonse though. The fear he'll be upset keeps her silent. A selfish act at heart, if the truth only does harm.

The afternoon sun glares through the curtains, when she sits to paint her imagery on her tablet scribt – her fingers laid out on the surface. First the art sprouts from a feeling. She centres her brush cursor, and by instinct does she let her fingers freesketch the scene.

As the image forms coherent, Quon becomes more and more frightened of her two autonomous hands, they scratch and claw like a madman tearing apart the yellow wallpaper, and there it is – her parasol in its lowly state. Its blue cloth shattered and smothered under grit. Lain among the rotting garbage in the alleyway, waiting to die.

Her first thought is abject horror. The second and third disintegrate into mourning, weeping tears drip onto the glassy plate, and that is all there was.

She throws her scribt slamming against the wall. In her sadness. And then she picks it up with her fingers and sees its surface cracked, the parasol still painted. She's sorry she did it.

If she never left it alone yesterday.

“Alphonse?” she speaks into her phone. She weakly leans against the kitchen fridge. Her back grows cold and it doesn't matter. Why would you let him see your sadness? It's selfish of you to spread bad feelings around.

A pause, and he says, “Hello, Quon!” The elixir of his voice. “I'm very happy to hear you talking. It's been a while, how're you doing?”

Her eyes glance at the empty, white stove.

“I'm fine..” she says. “I went shopping for another pot to cook, and I met someone nice at the store. Her name was Jonie.”

“Jonie, eh?”

“Oui. She found me when I was walking through the shoe aisles.. I was also shopping for some nice sandals. Turquoise colour. I couldn't find a style which I liked. She helped me look on the shelves, and picked up one where you can tie it with a red ribbon. And..”

She trails away.

“I'd love to see you wear them,” Alphonse says. “Anything looks good on you. Send me a pic when you can, I can wait always.”

“I will too.”

“Too? You want to hear something nice? I'm going competing in a marathon bike. It's tomorrow. The Leterrier march. Five kilometres on the road, and the main prize is a free supply of bottles for the week, and a statement you get to say to the news. I'm so stoked for this, I'm weaning off the desserts to keep fit. Paula's offered to let me use her biking machine even. I want to try. My hardest.”

Quon's breath shudders, and she has to put the phone down to keep herself together.

“I know I've signed up for it at the last minute,” Alphonse goes, “I want to see how I do, for the record.”

She begins to speak. “I shall eagerly be watching.”

“Yay! Well I'm leaving my vroggles public. If anyone asks, I'm entertaining.”

Forgetting to laugh, Quon slides down the fridge door, her bum on the floor. Definitely she has to keep tight-lipped, and yet it's difficult. Hold my hand. Someone. Lying makes me false. Her hand's on her pounding heart, and her IV armlet is flashing caution.

“One more thing, Quon,” he says. “I heard it may also rain tomorrow. I wouldn't try to let it drench my spirits. The bike I'm taking though, it tends to slip when the ground's wet. It's a bummer. But if I have to, I'd like a prayer to whoever's managing the clouds above. Ask that it be sunny when I go.”

“Pray. Sunshining days. Burning asphalt.” With a light sing-song. “I pray to you Ehecatl to keep the skies safe for my Alphonse on his day. I hope this works for you.”

(“How could you do that, Quon! My parasol's ruined. I'd had it for eight years! And my grandmere before.. I don't want to talk anymore. I have to go.”)

“My regards to the weatherman. Amelia's telling me, I should be catching lots of sleep.”

“Okay.”

“So I'll say goodbye to you, until next time. Night. Enjoy your dinner.”

A beat. “Good night.”

Click.

The phone she holds coldly by her ear to the dead line, expecting an answer from him to blurt out her guilt. He doesn't speak. The silence stifles her. Quon is by herself, low upon the ground, whole body stuck in place as a cold sweat breaks over, and she shudders as her chest convulses and she lets herself go.

Where?

M. Alphonse is dilly-dallying over to her, and she looks at the cat. He's climbing onto her knees, and licking her hand – making her clatter the phone to the floor, the sound of it jolting. Then she closely holds M. Alphonse to her face, and she kisses him mournfully by his whiskers.

Who has seen the wind? Neither you or I. But when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.

The bustling people chat among themselves, unaware of the shame the wandering Quon bears upon her shoulders. They swarm over the streets, a block party, crowding the fire escapes and windows or stand by cannisters filled with ice and drinks. The children are playing a game of stickball by the fence, where the boys play hard with bandanas wrapped around their heads and pant legs rolled up.

She is alone. No one will offer a kind word if she asks. If she meets one of them in the eye, she has to gaze away or they will see. They will see. Quon calls it the demon of suffering. It latches in your chest like a tapeworm tenaciously sucking life dry. It's invisible only to those who don't bear it. Whether it is for the best, she only wonders. Like an illness, like loneliness, it cannot bear to die alone. You can feel its lust always, awaiting an opportune time to lash against the ones who provoke you.

So she hangs her head low to stare at her shoes and the ground. She feels nothing from the warm sun, but the same pervading coldness - like the whole outside has been chilled with air conditioning turned to extremes.

Where is she going? Anywhere she can find. The alleys especially, maybe to stumble upon the very scene she'd painted and bring the dead parasol home. The high rise condominiums cast sharp shadows upon the graffiti-covered concrete walls. The grass and dandelions peek out from the cracks of the forsaken, by all chances surviving, when the garbage trucks shift the rough gravel by in routine disposal.

In the alleys where no one is, she is alone. The only lifeform who stands taller than a hundred fifty metres. A plastic bag caught underneath a dumpster, wavering, trying to escape being trapped.

How many more steps must she take? In the Zen teachings they mention the way to absolution begins with your legs, and ends with your pristine emptiness.

The places come and go. She crosses a long bridge, the river is alight in orange and yellow, moving, flowing, disappearing into the horizons. Through the labyrinthine downtown she walks. She doesn't remember where the high rises end and the industry begins. Her thoughts are ghostly bees buzzing in a faraway bonnet.

Soon the road she walks degenerates into uneven pebbles. There is the steam hissing from the metallic, utilitarian constructions, and the low hum of the many motors reverbing inside their cylindrical shells, drowning her out.

When she notices how amber everything seems cast from the sun, suddenly she realizes how far her legs have tired. A great ache spreads up her knees, it weighs her down.

Gurgle.

Sensing her sweat over her skin, Quon glances around for anyplace to rest. It is no place for anyone to be as there aren't any benches nearby to sit. She imagines slouching on her knees to regain wind, but the sun will roast her the more she stays out here.

Thus, walking haphazardly, she soon finds a ladder reaching up to one of two tall smokestacks – it isn't smoking as she can tell. With no question, Quon decides climbing. The ladder's metal is corrugated in her hands, going up the uneven rungs. Her pinky gets scraped.

She sits atop the thick edge, alone. The trees and the city and glittering waters before her. She sees a landscape doused with the orange of the sun. These white and purple-hazed clouds scudding over the sky. The oblique rays of the sun etch organic contours in the clouds – underlining their orange-tinted wisps. If you look above them, the heavenly dome is streaked with overbearing redness. You are silent in its presence.

It reassures her, the sight, and it embraces her as no person ever shall. She smiles now, beginning to feel that oceanic peace eternal in life. It is there. It is there. It makes her heart drop and her eyes cry, and she does not wish to resist at all. Both beautiful agony and happiness entwined in the sunset glow, that thing you thought lost in time since life began.

When she closes her eyes, the tear downs her round cheek. The pain in her completely recedes and all there is at the end, is her breath and the wind, and..

Muffled tones of music find her ears, from beside her. The outpourings from Dr. Dre's Beats headphones.

Something.. something.. somethin'. Faraway there's a bird gliding across the streaked sky. Tre can see it. Its flapping wings he wishes he can possess. God the bird has a splendid view which he can only vaguely imitate from up the smoke stack.

These idle thoughts pass in him as he listens to Justice's classic album † the bass turned full-blast to assault his eardrums. He taps his feet dangling the edge. What would happen if one of his laces manages to fall down? Maybe he'll climb down later and get it, if Steph hasn't come back yet from her gatherings.

His name is Tre Styles. The navy-blue vest he wears over his green t-shirt offers him what little confidence he can afford, and coupled with his big-ass, cupping his ear soundblasters he maintains his aura of coolness. This is one of the times he lets his shades up from his eyes to viddy life as it should be. Nobody else can be watching him. He just sits here, up above, his own personal space and sanctuary dignified. A rarity nowadays.

And then he notices a glimmer of violet in the corner of his vision, moving in the breeze. He slowly edges his head to turn. It's this girl's curling hair. She's sitting to his right on the stack right beside his.

Intrigued, Tre puts his shades on and turns back straight— only to slowly glance again to the girl, behind lenses, so she won't notice him looking and get creeped out.

Her eyes like melancholic grapes and her hands pressed down by her sides. It is the best poetic description he can conjure about her. But she seems kinda sad. Upset. She's so focused on the horizons – and he doesn't have a clue where she's really looking. It reminds him of those tragic lovers he'd see somedays, where they are separated and empty and incomplete. Yea. It's almost like they put it in the movies, except only you realize they're not acting. And then it strikes you in a way that you get a glimpse of.. that. That – being this funny feeling he can't put.

How old is she, he must wonder. She looks so young as to be around his age (he's fifteen), and he'd very much like to try talking with her. Yet her eyes, with that sadness, they also have a depth – the heaviness beneath her eyelids, and that glinter like a reflective lake where you can't see its depths. (Is that even right?)

Then he looks down at himself, averting gaze, unsure who she is and what she's doing up here. His legs tremble leaning on the concrete, and he clasps his sweaty palms together deciding something having no begging question. His chest swells, feeling euphoria, and as the song comes to its end, he thinks:

Man, she's pretty.

The red sunset juxtaposed by this violet girl is a heartfelt feeling, and eerily heartbreaking. She doesn't belong in this industrial setting, he feels, but destiny has led her there in one manner or another, this beautiful creature. Should she be called an angel? Though she's without her feathered wings, her face is radiant with a light not seen by the eye. He is compelled to speak to her; what kind of voice might she have? To twirl with words and sentences? Or at the least, learn a little shred about her being.

Tre goes to come up with a cheesy pick-up line at first, the kind of cheese that gives fast-food its tacky zeal, but he feels she deserves something better than that. Besides, if it didn't work with the other girls he's tried attracting..

"Isn't the sun lovely?" he says from the blue, and immediately he wants to cover his mouth; aw frak. It's so lame, you think you'd hear it from those oldie novels they assign in-class. Luckily the girl seems not to hear; a concorde liner brushes past in the duration he speaks, drowning his voice. Upon the pillar she only gazes further at the distant sun, the red dwarf.

In actuality, he is a pole's vault from her. (That's actually pretty far.) He could encircle her, putting his two hands – thumb and forefingers together like a picture frame. She's a tiny toy figure. Whatever details of her he's seen, it's just what he can make of her, supplanted by his imagination filling the blanks in.

Who is she? The question slowly yet surely fills his mind. The enigmatic figure who sits upon the pillar, and the space which keeps him away from her.. if only there's a bridge across, or that he could climb all the way down and up to her side. But her ladder up is frayed midway.

Tre's standing on the tip of the stack, leaning in out the edge, perking his head, trying to capture just what she is thinking. A girl admiring the sunset is not what you usually see in the industrial playground. (Neither for Tre, but he has his story. It's a long one at that.) He's so intent on her eyes, relaxed as they seem, that he almost falls over—

"Waahahaah!" He clambers back onto balance. No way I'll try that stunt again. He squints at the girl afterward, as if giving her blame for his prior predicament. How strange, whenever he's in the presence of someone.. pretty, his fingers turn into thumbs and his brain switches silly.

Once he regains his cool, he clears his throat – "Ahem!" How shall he establish first contact? Tre remembers the bird calls the Naturist made once on the telly. The sounds he'd made were crisp and distinct, caricatures of the real creatures they were supposed to imitate, man did it carry to the edges of the forest. "Oooii," he goes, shy at first. "Oooi! Ooh— ooh— oooii—!" Ja! He grins, confidence blooming almighty.

Tre buffs up his belly and chest, and sucking air..

"Ooooooooooiiiii!!" His call fades eventually into the recesses of the urban soundscape. The brushes of cars passing, and the takeoff of a flight carrier somewhere to the East. It definitely scares off the jays who've perched upon the scarce framework of this site. Tre has captivated the girl so well that she is staring back at him, more annoyed than anything.

"Ooof.." he goes, frozen still. He didn't mean it. He only wants to talk. "So what are you doing up here anyway?"

She points to that glowing lightbulb 1 AU from Earth.

"The Sun?" Tre says. "You're watching the sunset?"

It is twilight now, and the sun's intensity will eventually fade to a close. Its oblique rays are tangible to his eyes. Above the sun, a small concorde crosses the sky and rises up towards the clouds – a white fluffy line trails in its wake. "The Sun.." Where Life and the Heavens began. It sucks though, you can't really look at it directly unless it's at a time like this. He sighs. But at least he can begin to feel more relaxed. He's found someone who might understand what it is to lose yourself in the sight.

A beat.

He notices her still looking at him. "What's your name? My name's Trevor. But people call me Tre though."

Then she starts to mouth something. He struggles to make out what it is.

"Ku..? Hoou? Qu— on? Qu'on? Quon?"

Yes.

"Quon!" Tre nods. "Aha, I got it. You live around here?" A beat. "Are you a tourist or something? Wow.. I couldn't imagine why you'd choose to visit such a place as this. This is metal wasteland. Unless you're just here for the view. I mean.. this is a nice view, I guess."

Her eyes go off into a daze.

"I love the Sun," Tre says. "As long as I was ever young. In the park there's a hill I love to just lay on and watch the sky turn dark. I'd bring my sister along too. Before the stars show up though.. my Mom would call us home for dinner. Mom.. I think I can see where I used to live, over by the river. See that? The clearing by the bridge? It's in the Boucherville neighbourhood. It's nice. Quiet. Lots of nice people there. I see smoke, maybe M. Chereau is having another barbeque by the backyard. He's old, but hey, he likes gettin' down to the beat at night. And his garage sales, that's where I got my nice vest here! $29.95. He's a reeeally nice guy."

He pauses for a sec, for a breather. The skyfish loom, swimming above like migrations of birds to various Northern poles.