When the Smoke Clears

New Beginnings

The morning began. For most, it started a half-hour earlier, with the crack of orange-yellow sunlight above the tree-tops in the East, and the sky turning blue. Clouds lingered and passed, ever-shifting and ever-changing, and the golden wheat fields down below swaying to the breeze. Somewhere over those fields, the signs of civilization began to make themselves known. First with fences, short and white, and the red tractors and threshers dotted amongst the wheat. Next went the barns, big and red, closed for the day, and past those, the squat houses of the farmers that tended to the fields, worn grey and brown through time. Past those, the fields turned from gold to green, animals sprinkled across their breadth. Dirt roads gave way to asphalt, and the ground gave birth to trees. Among these trees, houses pockmarked the landscape - some small, some large, all numbered and white.

The houses grew tighter and neighbourhoods formed rows of them perched along the hillsides and sweeping down into the basin of Mount Narlassus. The mountain itself stretched to the sky and scraped the clouds, mighty and tall. Within the basin, communities had formed, full of families, strangers and friends.

--

Tucked into one of those neighbourhoods, there stood a small house of no particular distinction from the others, and in one of its top floor bedrooms, an alarm clock kicked into action.

~ On an evening such as this 

It's hard to tell if I exist 

Pack the car and leave this town

You'll notice that I'm not around

I could hide out under there

I just made you say underwear

I could leave but I'll just stay

 All my stuff's here anyway ~

The sheets ruffled and an annoyed deep breath drew in from beneath them. It really was much too early for her to be expected to rise. She kicked the sheets away with a pout, slowly rising to pull up against the headboard. Her hands rose and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and she glanced about at the blurry space she called her room, before leaning to the left and plucking her glasses from the edge of her bedside dresser to put them on. The room instantly came into focus, and she glanced to the alarm clock spouting what she recognized to be the Barenaked Ladies’ cheerfully optimistic tunes.  A small grimace crept onto her delicate features, and the girl crept to the edge of the bed, swinging off to feel the carpet between her toes. The room was icily cold, despite the deceptively sunny morning view from her window.

The girl took another deep breath and sighed, running a hand through her crimson-red hair, which had (at one point, at least) been styled shoulder-length and thick, so that her fringe swept across her forehead, while the rest hung attentively in its proper place. Now, she had a righteous case of bed-hair, and it pointed towards the ceiling erratically. Attempting to neaten it as she crossed the room to her desk, she fell into her chair, slapping one of the keys on her laptop to get it to wake up.

She tapped in her password, hearing the speakers chime in approval.

‘Good Morning, Lisa.’ The screen read, and she frowned, grumbling “Not really,” As her desktop loaded itself. Her morning routine consisted of rolling out of bed and checking the internet; most of the time it was useless, but she smiled when her e-mail client informed her she’d gotten a few. Bringing it up, she fumbled through the usual spam-bot messages (and several different African princes wanting to put money into her bank account), and replied to several that she’d received from her friends back in Ireland who’d bothered to keep in touch since she moved. Why exactly they’d moved to a large town in the United States was ill-defined; her mother insisted they both needed a change of pace after the father figure in their family decided he’d rather spend time in jail than with them. Lisa supposed it was a mid-life crisis; somewhat drastic, she judged, but at least it wasn’t a Porsche.