Lady of Light

Name Part 1

Saturday's weather was as good as an autumn day could be. The sun shone and although it didn't provide heat, it made the best of the colours of the trees to prove that nature was the treasure chest of the earth. Claire was running beside Nina. She was breathless, but Nina was in great shape as always and therefore managed to engage in a monologue.

"The News always likes to exaggerate about World War 3. Sometimes I think journalists would be quite happy if a nuclear bomb fell on them. Then they would have something to report. Do you think it will happen in our life time? Hey, keep up! I'm talking to you! I think it's pure gibberish. It's just typical politics. Everyone wants to boast and show off, but no one wants to take action, because action is work, and no one, in all honesty, would like to work, if they could avoid it."

Claire wanted to mention her downstairs neighbour, a retired old lady, who seemed to dedicate her life to endless work. This included housework, cooking, gardening and reading books about philosophy or history, which exactly, Claire wasn't sure about. Her mind went on autopilot whenever her neighbour caught hold of her and engaged herself into a friendly, but solitary conversation with Claire, where she talked about her latest book discovery. However, the ability of speech was impossible when one's lungs were inefficient in oxygen uptake, so Claire made a cough and tried to keep up.

Nina stopped by the big oak tree at the lake, because she felt something in her shoe, and Claire took the opportunity to regain her breath. Nina turned her shoe upside down.

"Remember the other day, when we were talking about prophecies? What was that funny table you used in primary school? It could tell the future, right? It would be fun to ask it if there would be a World War 3."

"No," said Claire breathlessly, "The Ouija Board doesn't tell the future. It's fiction."

"Really? How boring. I guess that was all the pebbles," Nina stated, looking satisfied into her shoe. "Let's go, Claire!"

Claire stumbled along, still breathless.

***

"You know the girls are bullying you because your pretty face is a threat, and the boys tease you because they like you."

They were at the girl's restroom in high school. Claire was sixteen at the time.

"The boys didn't tease me, Nina. They threw chalks at me," said Claire bitterly, while washing her face and meticulously flushed her eye.

"They are madly into you," Nina kept on confidently.

Claire swore and looked at her eye through the school's bathroom mirror. It was slightly red and puffed from the chalk that had been projected through the classroom. If this was how males courted to girls, the human race ought to have been extinct ages ago, were Claire's thoughts.

The next day the boy, who had thrown the chalk at Claire, met up at school with an eye patch. Rumours stated he had been at home and his elder brother had clumsily broken a window with the aid of a tennis ball from the outside, and although the boy had not suffered any serious injurious, a piece of the broken glass from the window had planted itself quite closely to the eye, and an immediate surgery had been performed to prevent loss of his eyesight.

Nina had been ecstatic. She had laughed out loud in the class that day and yelled out about making amends to the witch who had not taken his vision.

The boy never touched nor talked to Claire again, which she appreciated. But one of the girls, Tiffany, who envied Nina above all, due to her popularity, felt the need to use "witch" as a notion of bullying. She couldn't go after Nina, who was immune to any insult, but she could and did go after Claire. However, it didn't bother her. After all, Tiffany never physically terrorized her, but only tried to shun her out or verbally abuse her. Nina thought it was exceptionally funny that Tiffany was prone to inflammation of her voice cords for three years straight.