A Prim and a Prophet

The world was grey. Not entirely grey because her aunt’s eyes peer down at him (Tommy’s eyes, she’s seeing through Tommy’s eyes, she reminds herself) with kind and loving appreciation as she gently caresses his face, Blake, standing proudly next to her, arms folded in front, gazing down his nose, his smile chasing away the wrinkles of worry, as he shifts his weight. She see them through a window in the grey, a window that exists in the same way frosted glass, wiped clear in the middle, exists.

Her feet carry her down further into the grey, hair standing up on her arms as she travels deeper, her skin buzzing, cold and damp, down the twisty grey, foggy, corridor within corridors, no place of origin, no place of arrival, corridors connecting to other corridors, joining with even more. She can see no beginning and she knows there is no end—only a middle and no matter how far or long she walks she will still only be in the middle, because the middle is where all the action is.

There is an alcove to her left and Whitney walks up to it, another window waiting, like an old friend at a bus terminal. She peeks through it, wondering what may lie on the other side. Is it dread or something better—something ... nice?

She sees herself lying in her back yard, feet extended, head propped on a pillow, as the clouds gaze down on her from the heavenly sky above, casting shadows across her chest. She is smiling and she remembers she is in Tommy’s head again while he’s in school, and laughing at her brother’s silly attempt at impressing Shayna Billings by hitting the basketball hoop, trying for all net (as they say in the basketball world) but getting only backboard. She laughs in the grey as much as she laughed when it happened, because Tommy was always the same when it came to girls. He could have made that shot any other time, but when it came to pretty girls; his head always began to spin as if he were riding a merry-go-round.

There were more windows to be peered through so she doesn’t linger, so many things to see, and so little time to see them. She is in the grey and if she stays for too long she will always be in the grey. The hair on her arms and the buzzing of her arms remind her of the danger, but she continues on anyway, you can only walk for so long in forever before you become a part of it but turning back now means not seeing the things she wants to see.

The next window shows her a city cut from stone, black stone, shiny and sharp, without reflection, without mercy. The city cut from the very same mountain overshadowing it, tucking it into its breast as if cradling it like a mother cradling her newborn baby and there is fire burning all around the city, burning the once lively forest and all the forest’s bounty within. Some of the fire is reddish orange, like the fire in a fireplace, but some of the fire is greenish-blue, like the fire of a pilot light in a furnace. The fire comes from the giant grey men (almost the same color as the walls (that aren’t really walls) around her). These men have heads like sledge hammers, but their eyes are forward, their legs and arms like trees, and their faces wear no smiles at all, their teeth are angry in their mouths like venom in a snake. Their cries ring out like thunder amongst the flame. The cries are not cries of pain and anguish, but rallying battle cries, as they get ready to attack the black city yet again, relentless in their efforts to claim it.

Her mind is now aware of things it hadn’t been aware of previously. An awareness awoken within her mind when she was twelve, when she first fought for her life, weapon in hand, not intended for training, not intended as play, but aimed and wielded with fearless aggression, hurt or be hurt, kill or be killed, and kill she did. However, before her weapon yielded a deathly blow she felt a timeless and space-devoid connection between herself and everything around her. A connection not just with her surroundings but also with things well beyond the limitations of what a mind could see, or what it could perceive. That connection cut through the grey like a well-placed arrow cutting through a bale of straw, not stopping, or even slowing down, but continuing on and into a black city, much like the one she was seeing ... exactly like it.

Next, through to a people she didn’t know first-hand, her memories stopped up like a clogged sink drain, but the clog was plunged as she began to feel real and genuine danger. That clog flushed clean through. Her mind (her Prim mind), reconnected with her Prim people, her Prim self, much as it was connecting as she peered through that window at where she knew her people were. The very people she forgot for so long, and abandoned

Her sister

Her twin-sister Jo-Vanna

And Mychai-an, her friend and Lover (The fox) she found the fox, but she almost wanted to unfind him again because now there were two

Three