hazel

e

The mammoth in the room hovered in a corner, a punished pupil, the short chopper wings atop its back barely conquering in dropping its fall.

There was a tight pull around the navel of the welted silence.

It was skittish, brittle, frangible.

The cluster of mass settled their copious sack into a clout.

The windows were draped; the bliss of the last hour noon tip-toeingly slanting in.

Blue coated her minimalist walls.

“There was a small, snoozing shop,” Her words were voiced so tenderly, a muffled passing graze of another's woollen, that Sid had to lean forward, in the fear that he would muffle them. “A pastel mud yellow, and it gleamed softly amidst the broken towns.”

She sighed.

“There were. . . crayons inside. And the whole other miscellaneous world. It was a stationery. Chart papers stacked, notebooks aligned, bundles of pencil — coloured, granite — and pen, sparkling and muted, and all sorts of them. Rose knotted, glossy silken ribbons, of all kinds of colour. Then dip-beckoning paints, virgin sheets, hard covers, posed magazines, a scarce family of pulling novellas, scented glues, little stuffed toys — and everything else that you can imagine being in a stationery shop, and more. As I said, a whole other miscellaneous world.”

A pause sat down.

“Eleven years past, a girl the same age as I was then, had entered the shop with me. I knew her as my stranger, yet we strolled in together, cheek by jowl.”

Sid sat, iced silence. Arrested.

“Her bugs bunny teeth were but a wide hollow. When she grinned, she didn't care that something broken about her was in display, that her hollow was filling someone's gaze. She grinned as if she had all her teeth, and they had a white pearly sheen stolen from the crazed, ultimate dentist's lab. And she smiled like that at the keeper, who stood behind a plywood counter. He had grinned back with her vigour, her carelessness, showing all his missing teeth to her.”

The pause semi laid. Then sat up again.

“She was sent to buy a new pack of pencil. Her eyes weren't supposed to stray, but they did. They fell on the flamboyant crayon set, its cover winking softly at her, drapes pushed aside for a rainbow grin. Her heart latched on to it. But she was short of pennies.”

The pause stood now.

“Her grin grimaced. Her lips drooped. Eyes became a shade of blue that weren't hers. The old man's lived heart, one that then carried the world in it, couldn't bear it. For some reason, the girl didn't find his kindness odd. She thought the world lived that way, that it was natural. Her moral science teacher had taught of kindness to her in class. It was a wonderful lesson. She was happy. She had the winking crayon set, and she thanked in kind. Her grin patted relief on his ticker, and the short-of pennies were clanged upon the counter.”

The pause stiffened.

“Why, I would never know, but somehow, during this whole exchange, the gaffer never once looked at me. Or asked me what he could do for me, as he did with the other girl." She'd shuffled, in that small shop then, pulling sleeves over her pedestalled inexistence; they stood out, the only thing ever that did so. "I was the floating air to his being. Wearing the same shade of blue my stranger was dressed in a crayon-set ago, I watched her open the scrapped glass door. Watched her spring down the two steps. Watched her dash towards the lane, arms flailing, clutching her possession tightly. Watched a speeding truck trying to break the miles, wheels skidding, its back skittering, teetering off of the road a little, then halting. But not on time.”

Sid shivered, spellbound, heart pooled. She simply took a breath. The pause idled.

“Even in her fall, her hand kept the crayons far out of her blood's reach. Scarlet wheels moved on. No one stopped to see, to pick her up, to do anything. Strangely, even the old owner sat quietly, eyes on some distant time. As if he heard no collision, saw no fallen child. Maybe he didn't, the aged ears hard to breach. Perhaps he waited for another grinning child. That girl wasn't within his sight now, and so bade fair to be lost from his eyes. With a cerise shade then, I opened the door, the same way the girl had, and walked out.”

Her eyes were tranced upon the ceiling, since she began, and from where seeped out, and slithered across, her mind-pocketed rain.

“You can reach the crayon set, Sid, clutch it in your palm, but still miss out on living the spiral of its hues.”

Her sky eyes took on a slight squint.

“And whether or not the crayon set is clutched within your palm, the collision will happen. And it may happen in a barren road, full of people whose shadow doesn't touch the ground, a driver who attempts to put on the break, fails, and wheels on, and a lived, kind grey man whose ears you fail to reach, and whose eyes you soon elude.”

And that's that, she ended.

Sid was bankrupted of words. He left the fragility of the suspension in a wary, shrouded silence.

In a haze, tucked away under a snug, wordless shawl, she muttered, without quite acknowledging that she did so.

“Shadows have scared me ever since.”

“Why?”

“Because they touch the road. They fall amidst the fallen. They shade the crayons of trodden. They hold an arm out, and hand a shilling of hope.”

And hope was known to be poisonous in its derision, and delirious delusions.

“Who was she? Really?” Sid treaded upon the mute current charged in the air, after a shivered moment. His voice quivered, shocked.

She gave a half, head shaking smile.

“I don't know anymore.” She spoke, lips pursed.

The pause had left the room long ago, having taken the hovering mammoth along, shuddering violently himself as he went, from the shocks that charged the air conductor.

She shrugged.

“A stranger, anyhow. We all have one, you know. And she was mine.”

With a soft, dark gaze, she met him.

“My stranger.”

_