Author Games: Circle

Task Seven | Lilia Gingerfoot

Minutes or Hours; Days or Years; She Knows Not

Before, the world was cut into sections that were easily digestible and comfortable for Lilia Gingerfoot. Everything was solid and easy. She knew who she was. She knew who her friends were. When her boyfriend left her, the two remained friends. When her best friend started dating him instead, they remained friends. While Lilia watched life happen, she was content to be on the sidelines, a person left for the dust to see all and hear what she choose. That was the life that Lilia had chosen for herself.

The circle had changed that.

A song played inside her bones as she waited outside, weeding her garden while she laughed as Patrick and Keith told her about their crazy day at their university. They'd chosen to go out of state--she stayed in Kennett, at the local community college, at her level, where she belonged. They were attending some party later and were going gaga over some latest music that'd just come out so it was playing in the background, the simple beats rocking against the soil, and Lilia smiled. It was wild and crazy--not her type of music, not the soft eerie sound she adored, but it was music and their smiles left her craving more of it.

"So, like my professor realized that Keith was my boyfriend-"

It wasn't that the words were painful, but Lilia wondered how often life went like that, and how often it could come one at a time to change the figments of friendship to lovers to third at best. And yet I'm here and yet I'm not. I was born like lightning, slashing out into a sky of blue, and they were the night sky. It was poetic. Shannon might like that. Lilia smiled and laughed a little, trying to keep herself from shivering as a cloud passed overhead. It wasn't a cold day but the temperature changed every few hours, from mild to cold to mild again. That too was like friendship, wasn't it?

It'd hurt for a moment, maybe two. The sting of 'boyfriend' being on someone else's tongue. Keith's name in Patrick's mouth. Poetic, but neat. I lost it all, all their love, when I was hurt, but I can feel them even now. Their happiness left springs of joy inside her heart and she rubbed her fingers against one another, feeling the comfort of her rings as she dug deeper into the soil. She was talking and her words felt like nothing, exiting a mouth that heard and said but never did. Talk and talk to never be. "I'd love to go," Lilia was saying, "it's just-"

"Out of town."

Disapproval.

Hurt.

It stung but it was gone so soon. Didn't they understand? Didn't they feel that she couldn't leave? There was a life inside of comfort, lived to the fullest of that she knew. Going outside and away from that would mean a change. Lilia wasn't ready for a change. She'd never truly been. That's okay, Li. We stay here and live here and that's all we need. As long as she had herself, that was the greatest good she needed, and for Lilia, there didn't need to be anything more than that.

She wiped the sweat from her brow, letting her drips kiss the back of her hand and then pass on to the softness of her shirt, already nearly drenched from the exercise of earlier. Moving and being was hard. Soon, she'd be called into work. Soon, she'd have to stop working and go inside. Soon, she'd have to leave the phone of friendship and go back to the house of mystery. Papa had already left for work. Pops was there somewhere, but Lilia didn't bother him in the morning. That bear of a guy preferred to be alone. So do I, big man.

At least, I can tell myself that.

Above, horses rode in the sky, breaking their reigns and flying free as the clouds swirled. It'd been a wild morning, that was for sure. Aside from the temperature, Keith and Patrick's crazy semester, and her gardening, the sky had been moving a mile a minute.