The Late Bird's Tale: A Tale of the Floating World

Part 1 || 6 | Judy | The Four Jacks, Manners and Vows

Written on 3/30/21. Spring Season, March 2021 edition (1st scene).
Written on 4/13/21. Camp NaNoWriMo, April 2021 edition (2nd scene).
Grace Ransom (picture reference).

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Part 1 || 6 | Judy

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A Tale of the Four Jacks

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Meanwhile, Judy Windermere awoke a little after 8:00 a.m. in a delirium about her weird encounter with three talking cards and her subsequent dream that she failed to comprehend even now. If she were to describe it, she'd say it was like spying on someone else's dream, though she hadn't a clue who those gun-toting women were. Maybe they were dreamers, or maybe they were just figments of her imagination, but she remembered that scent of cherry blossoms and peach blossoms wafting from them in her God's-eye-view of her dream. Even after waking up, she noticed these fragrances lingering around her bedroom, where she lay inert for a time in fragrant bliss.

After some moments to herself, she stretched, got out of bed, and began making it in her sludgy wakefulness. Then she paused and stared at the surroundings of her bedroom, wondering how she ended up here when she remembered fainting in the family room. Then again, she figured she had slept-walked her way here in one of her sleep-walking episodes.

She looked at her surroundings again. The morning outside burned bright and clear through the closed blinds of her bedroom window, unseen birds chirped and twittered and cooed at their mates, and her low bookshelf below the window sill stood before her, warm and inviting, like an old friend beckoning her into another imaginary adventure in between the covers of its share of books. So Judy crept to her familiar row of books and ran her fingers along the familiar set of titles, some of which she'd read, others not yet. After the weird coincidences of last night, she took out an omnibus of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, intending to read a story or two to bring a sense of clarity to her mind.

She flipped through the pages and placed her bookmark at a short story, "The Adventure of the Empty House," and carried it with her. Then she stopped in her tracks before she passed the threshold of her bedroom door, looked back over her shoulder, and saw three anomalous pairs of boots sticking out behind the foot of her bed.

Had she taken those boots to her bedroom in her sleep? No, she thought. She couldn't have. Besides, she had never worn boots in the first place, nor had she stolen anything in her life, not even in her sleeping-walking episodes.

And so, clutching her omnibus, she crept back towards her bookshelf, looked over the right side of her bed—

And found three sleeping cosplayers there.

Her reaction was immediate. In the nanosecond it took for the synapses in her brain to fire, linking the events of last night's talking cards and her fainting spell and her weird dreams and her awakening in her own bed, she screamed.

And her screams startled the three Jacks into waking up.

Yet Judy was out of her room and down the upper hall and down the stairs, where she lost her footing on one of the treads and fell head over heels through the air, screaming again at the top of her lungs. She squeezed her eyes shut in mid-air, waiting for the inevitable jolt to her body crashing down the steps, waiting for the pain to surge through her, yet for all her waiting, there was no jolt.

There was no crash, either.

And consequently, there was no bone-crunching pain.

Judy opened her eyes and saw the three Jacks stumbling their way to the banister on the second floor, looking at her with shocked faces, wide-open eyes, and gaping mouths. Only then did she realize she was floating in mid-air before fluttering like a feather towards the foot of the stairs.