What Remains

The Room was empty of all entities, except for Creator and I. I was the only one of my sisters He could stand to look at past completion, so the three walls of windows that surrounded us shone light from the west on nothing but piles of His tools and the remnants of the things he'd made. I had never made anything, and so I couldn't possibly imagine why every time He had made the final touch on one of my sisters, He either seized her from her place in the center of the Room, her first sight being a flurry of motion as He whipped her away, the first gentle calls moving like disturbed dust through the air as He took her to a place I had never seen and never wished to go to -- or why He would simply rip others apart, never letting them see the world He brought them into, never letting them call out to the rest of us. I wondered what fate He would choose for the one that currently sat in front of Him, open and undeveloped on the well used seat. He stood before her, working His miracles, mahogany brow furrowed and peach mouth slightly agape.

Sometimes He would speak to me while He worked. He would ask me which version of the thick, shining material He ought to use, as if I deserved the honor of such influence. Other times He would wonder out loud about what He was doing, what little sense it made, like He truly didn't see the wonder and magnificence of the power He held. And sometimes, He would tell me he missed my singing. That the absence of it haunted Him like a phantom. I did not know what such strange things as 'singings' or 'phantoms' were, but I deeply regretted the pain He felt. I had not been the one to cause it, but I thought my presence perpetuated it. I think that was what my purpose was: to keep the wound open. A reminder and a remnant of what He had lost and remade. The tears spilled from his juniper eyes onto the dark, splintering floor told me so.
   
The trouble began when He began leaving the Room. Before, He would only leave for moments to do whatever mysterious task, and then He would return appearing less tense or wearing different colors and textures. Sometimes when he would return, his hair would be hanging in loose, thick clumps, water shining like new diamonds in the light. He would rest on a pile of quilts and burlap, trusting me to watch over Him with the eyes he had made so lovingly. He would eat here, sitting on the floor next to my seat, sometimes asking me questions or making conversation with me. So it was in the bright and warm light, and in the dark and cold light. From the moment of my completion to the time where He began to change, He never spent more than a moment away from the Room. When we reached what I now know to be the beginning of the end, He stepped out of the Room and did not return until the light had shifted from warm to red. He slept on his pile when the light grew cold, and then left when the light turned warm again. My unfinished sister sat forgotten on her seat, not knowing yet to feel neglected or lonely. I envied her. The light had gone from cold white to red to warm three times before He returned and fell on his knees before me. As well He should, I thought haughtily as he gripped me and murmured sweet words, something about 'SoSaRee' and 'Love You All Ways'. When the light had turned cold again, he retreated to his quilts and burlap and slept. He did not leave the Room again for some time, instead resuming the work he had started and then momentarily abandoned. But then the woman began appearing.

Sometimes she appeared and would stand at His shoulder while He worked. He did not speak to me while she was here, as if He was afraid of her. Nor did He look at me when she stood over Him, watching as He worked tirelessly to bring forth His new creation. No, instead, she and I would gaze at one another. We never spoke, not as He and I had done before she had gracelessly invaded our space. But we stared. And Felt. She noticed, I'm sure, the beauty and care He had given me. I noticed the ice in her cyan eyes, the rigidity in the curls of her platinum hair. She did not look so sweetly made as any of His work.
   
Other times, she would appear in the Room only for a moment, and then He would follow her out. These were very sad times indeed, because when she stole Him, He was unable to return for many, many changes of light. Sometimes when He returned, He would gently kiss me and say "Hell Oh." Other times, He would not speak to me at all for shame. I did not hate Him; I knew His pain well, held it within me. I tried to forgive Him, to understand Him as I had in the many, many light changes since I had been completed. But He kept leaving me, and I could sense how important she was becoming to Him. His absence felt like a loss. So potent and destructive was the grief that gray clouded my vision and I felt as though I were a ghost.
   
After so many changes of the light I had lost track, He returned. My heart leapt as He approached me, cooing softly. Joy grew in me like sunlight melting a frozen river as He took a rag dipped in some oily substance and gently wiped my face, clearing the gray loneliness from my eyes.
"SoSaRee," He said. I did not know what his words meant and I did not care. I focused on his beautiful callused hands as he continued wiping me off. I could have sprang to life with the happiness of it, I could have forgotten that I could never move unless he moved me, never really smile unless he fixed my face to do it. I could've let it all go like leaves in running water. But then, He brought betrayal down on my head like fire and brimstone.

He took me from the Room.

I remember not caring what He was doing in the first moment that He held me in His arms. I was just so happy that He had taken the sides of my frame in His own two hands, that I was so close with Him that I could see the individual fibers of His red flannel shirt. But then we turned, and I was looking through the set of windows I had always had my back to. I had never even seen out of them, never noticed the tall spruces and how the red light made them look black - and now we were retreating from them. I looked over His shoulder as He carried me from the only place I'd ever known, my world shattering with every shuddering step. I wanted to scream, to cry and beg as He turned us down a long narrow hallway towards a terrifying unknown, but He had fixed my mouth in a pleasant smile that had never moved no matter how many times I'd tried. I stared at the end of the bare, dark-wood paneled hallway as we began going down, the abruptness of His starts and stops making it feel like falling in short spurts. The lower we went, the more the walnut stairs I'd never seen filled my vision, the limited sight of eyes that had never looked up or to the side. I longed to tear my arms from their stationary prison, to claw at him and those horrible stairs to get back to the easel I'd been sitting in since the beginning. But I was not a living thing, not a being of animation or noise. There was nothing I could do as He took me down another set of stairs, these ones pale and unfinished, into a room so dark that even I could see nothing, absorb no detail. He raised me to look into His eyes, his frame a terrible shadow in the light filtering from the door at the top of the rickety stairs. One word He uttered as my world ended:

"GOODBI."

He took me in one hand by the top of my frame and placed me against something foreign and hollow. The screaming filled my ears as I recognized the texture of cloth and dried paint and He turned to climb those stairs again. My screaming finally joined those of all my sisters as He reached the top and shut us all in darkness again, our grief and loss echoing against walls I could not see and filled the endless space. This, I realized - the darkness He had damned us to in order to silence us, to banish us from his mind - this was Death. In His attempt to dismiss the memories He had made us from, made us with, He was murdering us. I would not have it.
   
Even if I could not see them, I could sense where my sisters were. Canvasses of every size stacked against walls and each other, some suffocated by the weight of others and all choked by dust and tears that they could feel but would never really be there. I knew. Shhh, I whispered. I sent them images of snow falling softly outside the Room's windows, glimpses of the Cold Sphere and the Warm Sphere I had caught in the moments when they rose or fell in the corners of my vision. I sent them the rich tilled soil of their eyes, the thick ginger waves of their hair and the cream of their skin. I shared with them the beauty I knew, and with it, they quieted and turned their attention to where they knew I sat with them in the inky black. When they had all silenced their grief, I showed them the ruby hughes of blood. The imbalanced scales of justice in Creator's choice to bury us here, and the wind-quick movement of pure rage. And I made a suggestion. Fierce savagery coursed through us all as they agreed, and we stood together in one quivering, wrathful entity of decaying, waterlogged canvas and ruined dreams.
   
Step by step, We lurched and clawed our way up those forsaken stairs, all of Us working to direct limbs that We had never had the ability to move as separate beings. Together, We could force these clammy feet bit by bit over course wood, dig these cracked and rotting fingers into the step ahead in order to haul Us toward the thick white door at the top. The final time We flung out a hand to grasp a ledge, it went through thick, painted oak and landed on smooth pine slabs. A scream sounded on the other side of the ruined door. The woman. Our mouth smiled from ear to torn ear as we continued to break apart the exit to Our prison, the shouts of Creator barely audible over the destruction We wrought. We finally tore our way through and landed on the pristine hard wood of Creator's home, and raised our cloudy gaze to where He and the woman sat, holding each other and trembling with horror at what He had awoken in Death. Together, all my sisters and I worked the long destroyed vocal cords to say the words I had heard so many times:

"SOSAREE. LOVE YOU ALL WAYS."

When We had finished unleashing Ourselves upon them, We climbed back up to the Room where unclaimed tools of creation sat. If Creator could not be trusted to keep Her memory alive, We would do it for Him.