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kasihyaWrite for at least 200 words about an act of cruelty, a kiss, a rose, and a businessman. Focus on dialogue.
Joanna finds refuge in Central Park in the evening, when the homebound traffic clogs the city air with honks and shouts and epithets that make her wince and pray to her Mother for the souls of those in the city. Let them step outside of their own impatience and need to drive a mile in the driver’s seat of another, she prays. Let them learn compassion.
‘Where are we going?’ asks Patricia, following behind her. ‘Why are we going there?’
‘I need to pray,’ she says. ‘I must prepare myself for the events to come.’
‘What events?’ asks John. Oh, John. Joanna turns around and smiles at him fondly. So very young, and very much in the dark; the way she would keep it for as long as possible. He is like the younger brother she never had, and she knows – reads it in his heart more easily than the subway map he carries in his back pocket – that if she told him what was going to happen, he would do something foolish to prevent it. To save her. And that would defeat the point, wouldn’t it?
The three of them get a few odd looks, walking along the paths in tight formation: a tall, deep-voiced woman and a dark-skinned boy with rainbow paint splattered across his shirt, flanking a stocky woman in an oversized yellow jacket. Joanna meets every stare with a smile and a wave. There is no reason why their presence should cause discontent amongst the others seeking shelter in the greenery. Behind her, she feels Patricia and John stiffen at a particularly leering stare from a man sitting on a bench; she reaches back and takes both of their hands in her own.
‘Do you see that group of rocks, across the bridge?’ she asks them.
‘Hard to miss them,’ says Patricia, and, yes, she has a point. This is part of the reason why Joanna chose them. The other reason is that there aren’t so many trees near the top. Joanna loves trees, but she needs the sight of the moon right now. Say what you would about God being in everything, and no one feels this more acutely than Joanna, but seeing the moon … well … it reminds her of home. It hasn’t quite risen enough, but by the time it matters, it will have.
They reach the outcropping of rocks without incident. Joanna sits down cross-legged at the top of one; her two friends follow suit. Seeing them follow her without question, copying her and waiting with their faces upturned to see what she will do next, is at once deeply comforting and deeply unsettling. It is a reminder of what she has amounted to on this planet, this beautiful, sinful planet, and what she will miss about it when she has moved on.
The thought closes around her throat unexpectedly. Thus far, she has been calm, collected about what is to come. She must maintain this clear-headedness for only a little while longer, but to lose her cool before she is able to, that would be disastrous. Joanna reaches out and grips her friends’ hands once more. This time it is for leaning, not leading. John returns the grasp firmly, inclining his body towards her. Patricia looks confused for a moment; then John flicks his eyes at her, and Joanna feels the little jolt of silent communication that passes between them, which causes Patricia to hold her hand just as tightly as John. They reach out to each other, as well, and the three of them maintain their small triangle.
‘Why us?’ asks John. ‘I mean, where’s everyone else?’
Joanna shuts her eyes and smiles. ‘I sent them to be with their families. I told them they could no longer follow me where I was to go.’
‘That’s nonsense. There isn’t anything we can do that they can’t,’ says Patricia.
‘You believe,’ Joanna says. ‘You believe in me.’
‘Of course we do. You’re our Joanna.’ John lifts their clasped hands in acknowledgement. ‘You can make people stop stealing and start building, and you can turn the worst life around. You kept me alive,’ he says, in a much quieter voice. ‘I didn’t think I’d make it through school, the way things were.’ Joanna opens her eyes.
‘Hear, hear,’ says Patricia. ‘We all do, even if my brother won’t say so in as many words.’
In the gathering darkness, Joanna can only make out so much of their expressions, but she can feel the gratitude and empathy radiating off of them. The thought of how much tonight is going to hurt them, and how much still needed to be done … she bites her lip and stares at the crescent moon over Patricia’s head.
‘I need some time to pray in solitude,’ she says. ‘Could you please go closer to the pathway, and make sure that no one disturbs me? It’s important.’
John gives her a suspicious look; a small, hurt expression crosses Patricia’s face, but she hides it well and gets up with the bustling, adamant attitude that drew Joanna to her in the first place. They sit down together on the bench across from the rocks, murmuring.
Joanna smiles, and she prays.
‘Mother,’ she says. ‘Please, tell me that you have a plan for this. I can see it all, in my head, but I have doubts. I doubt that this will change anything the way we hoped that it would, and I doubt my own desires. When I first came to this planet, seeking to bring good to its people, I thought only to make my stay as efficient as possible, as I had with all other places and times. I valued this planet immensely, immeasurably, as well you know, but no more so than all of the other immeasurably important places.
‘But the people here, Mother – the people! They are so fascinating, and so wonderful; they have such potential to ascend to the heights of angels, and to untold depths of cruelty. I have connected with them as I have not with others. These two, that you see before you, Mother, they are my friends. My family. My younger brother, my aunt, and elsewhere in the city are my sisters, and my uncles, and my cousins. I have found a family here, Mother, and I do not want to cause them pain. Even knowing that I will be taking them all in, and that I will be a part of them forever … I do not think I can do this.
‘I came here with delight, at the ability to save them all; and now I pray, with my heart and being, that you would let this duty pass from me. Give it to another. Let there be another. Let me stay, and do good, and lessen the suffering. Of myself, and of my family.
‘Amen.’
Though the prayer seems to take no more than a minute, when she opens her eyes, the sky has gone dark, and the park is quiet save for the sounds of the city’s veins that still trickle in through the trees and walls. Joanna looks up at the moon, which curves into a gentle smile over her head. She strains to understand it, to discover whether or not it is a merciful smile, or simply an understanding one.
Either way, it is like draining pus from a wound. Though she is still full of fear, it is remote, manageable; terror and emotions no longer swamp her. Joanna is reminded that she is, in spite of her affinity for the human race, the Child of God. She will do this thing for her Mother, because what other purpose has she? She is a walker of worlds, a spreader of truth, not a god and not a human.
Joanna stands. She descends to her friends, her first, fast friends. They have fallen asleep on that bench, leaning against one another. Rather than wake them at once, she stands in the path for a moment, to admire the way that Patricia’s hair flutters whenever John exhales, and the exact degree to which they are inclined towards each other. Not even a hint of awkwardness or discomfort, between an eye doctor in her fifties, divorced father of three, and a homeless teenager with a criminal record. In that moment, Joanna decides that, whatever goodwill she has spread, or failed to spread, during her thirty-three years on this planet, it will have been worth it, to see the sight before her.
She fills her lungs with air and breathes out, slowly. ‘I am ready,’ she says. John opens his eyes.
As if on signal, a figure saunters down the path, hands in the pockets of her tailored suit, hair puffed out around her head in a short-cropped halo. She walks directly up to Joanna. ‘Good evening,’ she says.
Joanna smiles. ‘I know why you are here,’ she says, and leans forwards to kiss Judith before she can do it herself. ‘And I forgive you.’
From around the bend in the path, several policemen arrive at a run, bats in hand. Joanna starts back from the bench, and prays that they won’t involve Patricia and John in this. She hopes that Judith has been fair. ‘I’m not going to run,’ she says. ‘But I will pray for you.’
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ƈhatma is almost asleep when there is a knock on the door. His door, he supposes, although the room – covered in tribal accessories and equipment, with a ceremonial shirt pinned to the back of the door that Matt calls a ‘sports jersey’ – still feels like he’s invading someone else’s home, and at any moment, they’re going to come back and want to know what he’s doing there.
Morbid. He pushes the thought aside. He gets up off of the enormous, too-soft bed and opens the door instead. Standing in the hallway is a slender, spiky silhouette. ‘May I come in?’ asks Kephri. ‘Tanwen and Naike are. They’re in the room next to me, and the walls are thin.’ Ƈhatma can’t tell if he’s blushing in the light, can’t even remember if he can blush in the first place, but either way, he still sounds ready to shrivel up and die of embarrassment.
‘And you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Hm, so I have been missing out all this time! I’ll come to the resident master of physical affection for some private lessons, eh?’ he asks, rather than address the ɧaskagi’s anxiety.
‘No,’ sighs Kephri. ‘I just want a place to sleep that’s quieter. They talk afterwards. A lot.’
Ƈhatma steps back and allows him to enter the room. His wiry frame is draped in an oversized t-shirt with plenty of rips to allow his back spines to poke through; it comes down to mid-thigh, and while everyone else had complained about indecency, Ƈhatma thinks that it looks nice. He bounces back over to the bed and pats the blankets next to him. ‘I don’t get this bed concept,’ he confesses. ‘My family always slept together.’
Relief sweeps across Kephri’s face as he steps into the light cast by the bedside lamp. He sinks down next to Ƈhatma, and his tail curls across their ankles. ‘Mine as well. I miss it.’
Ƈhatma takes this as an invitation to shift his form and drape a wing across Kephri’s shoulder. He arranges himself against the ɧaskagi’s back. ‘Sleep well,’ he says.
Kephri reaches out to stroke the broad feathers of his tail. ‘Sleep well.’
Joanna finds refuge in Central Park in the evening, when the homebound traffic clogs the city air with honks and shouts and epithets that make her wince and pray to her Mother for the souls of those in the city. Let them step outside of their own impatience and need to drive a mile in the driver’s seat of another, she prays. Let them learn compassion.
‘Where are we going?’ asks Patricia, following behind her. ‘Why are we going there?’
‘I need to pray,’ she says. ‘I must prepare myself for the events to come.’
‘What events?’ asks John. Oh, John. Joanna turns around and smiles at him fondly. So very young, and very much in the dark; the way she would keep it for as long as possible. He is like the younger brother she never had, and she knows – reads it in his heart more easily than the subway map he carries in his back pocket – that if she told him what was going to happen, he would do something foolish to prevent it. To save her. And that would defeat the point, wouldn’t it?
The three of them get a few odd looks, walking along the paths in tight formation: a tall, deep-voiced woman and a dark-skinned boy with rainbow paint splattered across his shirt, flanking a stocky woman in an oversized yellow jacket. Joanna meets every stare with a smile and a wave. There is no reason why their presence should cause discontent amongst the others seeking shelter in the greenery. Behind her, she feels Patricia and John stiffen at a particularly leering stare from a man sitting on a bench; she reaches back and takes both of their hands in her own.
‘Do you see that group of rocks, across the bridge?’ she asks them.
‘Hard to miss them,’ says Patricia, and, yes, she has a point. This is part of the reason why Joanna chose them. The other reason is that there aren’t so many trees near the top. Joanna loves trees, but she needs the sight of the moon right now. Say what you would about God being in everything, and no one feels this more acutely than Joanna, but seeing the moon … well … it reminds her of home. It hasn’t quite risen enough, but by the time it matters, it will have.
They reach the outcropping of rocks without incident. Joanna sits down cross-legged at the top of one; her two friends follow suit. Seeing them follow her without question, copying her and waiting with their faces upturned to see what she will do next, is at once deeply comforting and deeply unsettling. It is a reminder of what she has amounted to on this planet, this beautiful, sinful planet, and what she will miss about it when she has moved on.
The thought closes around her throat unexpectedly. Thus far, she has been calm, collected about what is to come. She must maintain this clear-headedness for only a little while longer, but to lose her cool before she is able to, that would be disastrous. Joanna reaches out and grips her friends’ hands once more. This time it is for leaning, not leading. John returns the grasp firmly, inclining his body towards her. Patricia looks confused for a moment; then John flicks his eyes at her, and Joanna feels the little jolt of silent communication that passes between them, which causes Patricia to hold her hand just as tightly as John. They reach out to each other, as well, and the three of them maintain their small triangle.
‘Why us?’ asks John. ‘I mean, where’s everyone else?’
Joanna shuts her eyes and smiles. ‘I sent them to be with their families. I told them they could no longer follow me where I was to go.’
‘That’s nonsense. There isn’t anything we can do that they can’t,’ says Patricia.
‘You believe,’ Joanna says. ‘You believe in me.’
‘Of course we do. You’re our Joanna.’ John lifts their clasped hands in acknowledgement. ‘You can make people stop stealing and start building, and you can turn the worst life around. You kept me alive,’ he says, in a much quieter voice. ‘I didn’t think I’d make it through school, the way things were.’ Joanna opens her eyes.
‘Hear, hear,’ says Patricia. ‘We all do, even if my brother won’t say so in as many words.’
In the gathering darkness, Joanna can only make out so much of their expressions, but she can feel the gratitude and empathy radiating off of them. The thought of how much tonight is going to hurt them, and how much still needed to be done … she bites her lip and stares at the crescent moon over Patricia’s head.
‘I need some time to pray in solitude,’ she says. ‘Could you please go closer to the pathway, and make sure that no one disturbs me? It’s important.’
John gives her a suspicious look; a small, hurt expression crosses Patricia’s face, but she hides it well and gets up with the bustling, adamant attitude that drew Joanna to her in the first place. They sit down together on the bench across from the rocks, murmuring.
Joanna smiles, and she prays.
‘Mother,’ she says. ‘Please, tell me that you have a plan for this. I can see it all, in my head, but I have doubts. I doubt that this will change anything the way we hoped that it would, and I doubt my own desires. When I first came to this planet, seeking to bring good to its people, I thought only to make my stay as efficient as possible, as I had with all other places and times. I valued this planet immensely, immeasurably, as well you know, but no more so than all of the other immeasurably important places.
‘But the people here, Mother – the people! They are so fascinating, and so wonderful; they have such potential to ascend to the heights of angels, and to untold depths of cruelty. I have connected with them as I have not with others. These two, that you see before you, Mother, they are my friends. My family. My younger brother, my aunt, and elsewhere in the city are my sisters, and my uncles, and my cousins. I have found a family here, Mother, and I do not want to cause them pain. Even knowing that I will be taking them all in, and that I will be a part of them forever … I do not think I can do this.
‘I came here with delight, at the ability to save them all; and now I pray, with my heart and being, that you would let this duty pass from me. Give it to another. Let there be another. Let me stay, and do good, and lessen the suffering. Of myself, and of my family.
‘Amen.’
Though the prayer seems to take no more than a minute, when she opens her eyes, the sky has gone dark, and the park is quiet save for the sounds of the city’s veins that still trickle in through the trees and walls. Joanna looks up at the moon, which curves into a gentle smile over her head. She strains to understand it, to discover whether or not it is a merciful smile, or simply an understanding one.
Either way, it is like draining pus from a wound. Though she is still full of fear, it is remote, manageable; terror and emotions no longer swamp her. Joanna is reminded that she is, in spite of her affinity for the human race, the Child of God. She will do this thing for her Mother, because what other purpose has she? She is a walker of worlds, a spreader of truth, not a god and not a human.
Joanna stands. She descends to her friends, her first, fast friends. They have fallen asleep on that bench, leaning against one another. Rather than wake them at once, she stands in the path for a moment, to admire the way that Patricia’s hair flutters whenever John exhales, and the exact degree to which they are inclined towards each other. Not even a hint of awkwardness or discomfort, between an eye doctor in her fifties, divorced father of three, and a homeless teenager with a criminal record. In that moment, Joanna decides that, whatever goodwill she has spread, or failed to spread, during her thirty-three years on this planet, it will have been worth it, to see the sight before her.
She fills her lungs with air and breathes out, slowly. ‘I am ready,’ she says. John opens his eyes.
As if on signal, a figure saunters down the path, hands in the pockets of her tailored suit, hair puffed out around her head in a short-cropped halo. She walks directly up to Joanna. ‘Good evening,’ she says.
Joanna smiles. ‘I know why you are here,’ she says, and leans forwards to kiss Judith before she can do it herself. ‘And I forgive you.’
From around the bend in the path, several policemen arrive at a run, bats in hand. Joanna starts back from the bench, and prays that they won’t involve Patricia and John in this. She hopes that Judith has been fair. ‘I’m not going to run,’ she says. ‘But I will pray for you.’
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ƈhatma is almost asleep when there is a knock on the door. His door, he supposes, although the room – covered in tribal accessories and equipment, with a ceremonial shirt pinned to the back of the door that Matt calls a ‘sports jersey’ – still feels like he’s invading someone else’s home, and at any moment, they’re going to come back and want to know what he’s doing there.
Morbid. He pushes the thought aside. He gets up off of the enormous, too-soft bed and opens the door instead. Standing in the hallway is a slender, spiky silhouette. ‘May I come in?’ asks Kephri. ‘Tanwen and Naike are. They’re in the room next to me, and the walls are thin.’ Ƈhatma can’t tell if he’s blushing in the light, can’t even remember if he can blush in the first place, but either way, he still sounds ready to shrivel up and die of embarrassment.
‘And you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Hm, so I have been missing out all this time! I’ll come to the resident master of physical affection for some private lessons, eh?’ he asks, rather than address the ɧaskagi’s anxiety.
‘No,’ sighs Kephri. ‘I just want a place to sleep that’s quieter. They talk afterwards. A lot.’
Ƈhatma steps back and allows him to enter the room. His wiry frame is draped in an oversized t-shirt with plenty of rips to allow his back spines to poke through; it comes down to mid-thigh, and while everyone else had complained about indecency, Ƈhatma thinks that it looks nice. He bounces back over to the bed and pats the blankets next to him. ‘I don’t get this bed concept,’ he confesses. ‘My family always slept together.’
Relief sweeps across Kephri’s face as he steps into the light cast by the bedside lamp. He sinks down next to Ƈhatma, and his tail curls across their ankles. ‘Mine as well. I miss it.’
Ƈhatma takes this as an invitation to shift his form and drape a wing across Kephri’s shoulder. He arranges himself against the ɧaskagi’s back. ‘Sleep well,’ he says.
Kephri reaches out to stroke the broad feathers of his tail. ‘Sleep well.’
