Sphaera Unda

Chapter 3

"I've left plenty of food, so you should be fine."

"Yes Father."

"Don't leave the house unless it's on fire, and if you do go outside, limit to exploring the woods."

"Got it."

"You know how to contact me in an extreme emergency?"

I waggled the written number he had scribbled on a purple post it halfheartedly at him. It had only been the day before when he had announced he had to leave. I felt the emptiness in the house behind me, ready to swallow me up the moment father left. He nodded, and then gave me the eyeball that told me I'd probably be in trouble no matter what I did or didn't do when he got back.

"Don't go in the library or the garage. No incidents."

And with that he was driving away.

I waited long after he was gone, pensively staring in the direction his car had disappeared, hoping he would have forgotten something and would be too late to make his flight. The sun had fully risen before I finally went back into the house to make myself a lonely breakfast. He had even cut off any conversation I could have had with Stelly by forbidding me to go into his library. This sucked. Dry cereal sucked. I paused in the middle of pouring a noisy bowl of cornflakes and set the box down on the counter, haunted by the soundless emptiness in the new house. I pondered cleaning everything again and just couldn't find the heart to scrub and vacuum an already spotless house. I stared out the window above the kitchen sink into the backyard, listening to the cheerful chirps beckoning from the mess of untamed green.

Outdoors it was then.

****

I munched on another bite of still crunchy cornflakes and stepped over a protruding root, craning my neck to fully enjoy the mesh of twisted limbs and foliage above me in the forest that met our backyard. Father had at least been thoughtful to get us a place where I could roam around and explore without much danger of meeting anyone, even if the call of the ocean pulled at the back of my mind like the outgoing tide. I shook off the sensation, choosing instead to focus on the trees around me. I ran my fingers over the rough bark of a sharply scented pine and picked at a fleck of it, finding a bit of the sap underneath. The water in it hummed under my hovering hand, attracted to it like I was a magnet.

I inhaled sharply and listened around me carefully. Nothing but the natural sounds expected, so there would be no human eyes to witness anything. I blew out uneasily and shifted my bowl of cornflakes so that I wouldn't readily spill it and placed my hand over the sap, now slowly dripping from the wound I had given it. The hum grew stronger, but it was sap after all, not much water in it. I slowed my breathing and concentrated.

Water was so much easier than this, but father had never expressly forbidden the playing with of tree sap like he had with any type of water. The sap bulged a little, clinging to the tree by a thin string of itself as I drew it towards me. My brows furrowed as I pulled it further out, spinning it a bit so it would disconnect. The cold splash of milk on my thumb from my forgotten bowl had me hissing in frustration and trying to put the bowl down blindly in the dirt. The bulb spun, now almost out of control and I let go of my breakfast, sure it had dumped mostly out now anyway.

I put both hands out and tried to get the spinning motion to stop, only succeeding in getting it to oscillate in wilder circles. I felt a frustrated scream building in my throat and clamped down on my tongue to keep it in. Why did everything I try always go wrong? In a last attempt at success I reversed my spin, angry now at the little ball I had managed to break free from the tree. My eyes widened at the way my little ball swelled in a most alarming way, and then went shooting around me, spinning like a volleyball tied to a pole and getting close so fast that I didn't have time to react.