9. Story Sunday #6

Glitter Glass and Magic Water

Dear reader,

We’re halfway through this month and I’ve read only one book and two short stories, which by my reading average is pretty low. But some months are like that, especially when you’re a writer. For example, I’ve read a lot of essays and articles for work and future writing in February, I’ve written a lot (drafts, edits, notes, potential pitches), I’ve emailed a bunch of finished pitches (a few acceptances already!)—and with my faculties tied up during the day and too depleted after work to read for fun, it’s been nice to finally catch up on some TV shows that were long overdue (Nobody Wants This, Reacher S2, Bridgerton S3).

This is how I try to balance filling up that creative well in months when there isn’t a lot of downtime reading happening. This is usually true at the start of a new year for me, when the first two months or so are always more hectic than usual. It’s when I brainstorm, plan, and send in the pitches for the year that require early notice for assignation, even if the actual writing and publishing of it will happen much later on (especially so with book coverage: reviews, interviews, features). There are also the particularly timely ideas, which continue on a rolling basis throughout the year.

Since September last year I’ve also started carrying around a small notebook with me again. At some point in the past few years, I had shifted to jotting things down in Notes on my phone, but I don’t know why I’d ever stopped using an all-purpose notebook because it’s the best. All my scattered thoughts, passing observations, bits of quotes and dialogue, writing ideas, and more go in there (many don’t progress beyond this notebook, but many do and others turn into something completely different than you’d imagined and lead you down wondrous paths, often merging with other unlikely ones).

As an aside, being able to stick to my workout schedule does play a large role in helping me recharge and maintain that even keel through the freelance life, and I’m grateful to be able to do so.

Ever since I’ve thrown myself into being a freelancer, I always feel much more in control for the new year when I have a few things slotted into the calendar early on, so this hectic start is usually well worth it.

Fellow freelancers, feel free to chime in and let me know what works for you, if you feel like sharing!

Today, as you’ve probably figured out by the title of the issue, you’re getting more fiction by yours truly since I don’t have a lot going on reading wise. The two stories aren’t connected by plot or character, though they were both published in Flash Fiction Magazine (five months apart). But both sprung from me fully formed, drafted in one great gush, soon after I returned from nine months in Spain, and somehow feel kindred. I’ve edited both stories a bit from the versions that were first published.

Hope you enjoy!

Glitter Glass

Originally published in Flash Fiction Magazine in July 2015

Emmy was like a sprite—hard to capture, impossible to forget. On her good days, I got a big smile and her tiny hand slipping into mine as we walked her class to the language room. On her difficult days, a very disobedient fervour permeated every cell and fibre of her thin being. She almost quivered with the effort of keeping all the energy trapped inside. Then there were her worst days. Days every week when her face folded into itself, all expressiveness wiped away as quickly as an Etch-a-Sketch. On such days, nothing got through to her; her only reaction a careless sort of disregard, an almost teenage air of rebellion for all of her seven years.

Unconcerned about firm words or reprimands from the teacher or the amount of times she was made to stand outside the class or in a corner of the classroom, Emmy would casually lean back against the wall, slouch, sometimes all the way to the floor, tap her feet and play with the ends of her plait or ponytail—her frizzy dark hair as immune to any semblance of discipline or control as she was then. She would bend and lift her head to distract her classmates, sliding her glasses up and down her nose. The glasses were a bright lilac—her favourite colour, as she had informed me on the first day—that clashed with her smooth, permanently tanned skin, but somehow suited this girl with as many moods as the colours in a prism.

On the first day of spring, I was walking across the playground to the teacher’s room, not paying any particular attention to the squeals and cries of the kids on their lunch break. Most of my mind was in my current read, a book based in up-state New York, and I was looking forward to an uninterrupted hour with it before my next class. But a voice called my name, commanding immediate attention. Emmy ran over, a whirlwind unsettling the sand on the playground, and showed me a new gap in her teeth before ruing the lack of the tooth fairy the night before. She confided that she thought the fairy might not have known that Emmy was now living with her grandparents. This was news to me. I reassured her that she was probably right; the fairy would turn up in a day or two. In return, Emmy wiggled her long, slender fingers at me. They were covered in glitter from making butterflies in art class earlier that day.

That was when I really looked at her. She looked extra pretty—her hair brushed out and tamed, falling around her bony shoulders instead of being tied up. She wore a white peasant top with delicate lace and crochet details over a brightly coloured skirt that fell just below her knees. Her feet were in elegant, white, strappy sandals, but even they couldn’t entirely mask her awkwardness at having to keep up with a body growing at a faster rate than she could match. There was something visibly different about her though, something that had nothing to do with hair or dress. And then it struck me.

For the first time, I noticed how exposed her heart-shaped face looked without her glasses, how vulnerable her slightly pug nose and chocolate brown eyes that were shifting and blinking more than usual today. Before I could ask her what had happened, she delved into one of the pockets in her skirt and brought them out. There was a big crack down the middle, its lilac frame bent at right angles.

“I accidentally sat on them during science” was her simple explanation. But the smile never left her face. She continued, ‘It will cost a lot to get new ones, but you want to know a secret?’ Emmy leaned in towards me and I instinctively lowered my head down to her height.

‘I can see fine without them. Now Mum won’t be mad. I can see fine.’ Her voice was a whisper and she squinted like she was focusing, nowhere in the line of the sun.

I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her close, cradling my splintered heart in the process. Before I could react at all, Emmy gave me a quick, tight hug and ran off to play with her friends. Glitter-flecked clothes and broken glass.

Magic Water

Originally published in Flash Fiction Magazine in December 2015

I wake up after the first dream of my life; a once-familiar dent next to me. My breath catches in my throat. I wish I could go back to when I was standing on that summit, with you on my left and the sun on my right. Everything after that still seems surreal, like it’s possible to go back and change. Could you smell the guilt on me then? Does it still stick to my skin? I roll over and feel the Saturday heat on my half-open eyelids—low, harsh.

But I can’t escape the ominous, smudged, navy-purple mountains from my dream; when in reality they were a pale, frosty lilac under the early morning sun. Our breath shards of abstract art, our boots crunching dry leaves, the trees attempting a reassuring canopy over our heads despite their bareness. “Just a bit further,” you’d said for the fourth time in two hours. The same voice that said “I’m yours” yesterday in that quiet but self-assured way you have, leaving no room for doubt to sneak in through the hinges of the closed door behind you.

I’ve often wondered if you thought about me like I did you, whether you believed I was waiting just like I said I would be. Do you know that I suffer the thoughts that haunt you because that’s the only way I can ever completely be a part of you? But I’ve always been the practical one; you’re the dreamer.

Maybe this would’ve happened anyway. I drink a glass of lemonade, then scrub the bathroom; not stopping even when my hands turn red from the soap and hot water.

That morning on the mountain you’d asked me to follow you. Quiet water trickled out of the uneven gaps in the rocks. The thought that you might be proposing flitted through my mind before I dismissed it as stupid. We had known each other for only a few months.

“I read that this used to be a place of worship. They say that the couples who drink from this spring stay together forever.”

I wanted to tell you that I didn’t believe. But I couldn’t do that to a face radiating an eagerness to prove that a little magic still existed. Instead, I held your hand and kissed you with all the heady intensity I’d always felt around you. I’ve never told you that I only pretended to drink.

Later, you wanted to take some water back in an empty bottle someone had carelessly thrown away. By then I felt that my action had already changed everything. We could never go back. You looked up as if seeing me for the first time, and I spotted the longing behind your intelligent, expressive, brown eyes that had nothing to do with me. It’s what has driven you all your life, a hunger for the unknown.

You told me that the university was sending you to Egypt. Would I come and share an adventure with you among the sands and stories of a land overflowing with them? I looked back at you, at your brown hair glinting in the sun like it already knew how much lighter it would become, and felt a sharp pain at the thought of having to let you go. And yet I knew it was our best chance at survival.

In the present I empty the suitcase with the squeaky wheel you still haven’t done anything about.

“I apologise for all the sand, it gets everywhere.” The longest sentence you’d spoken since your return.

I return to the bedroom. The empty building from across the street has been patiently waiting to be demolished for more than a year now. My eye catches a glimpse of bright blue with flecks of parrot green. A scarf stuck on its balcony. I feel rather than see the ripples on its surface. Like when you traced the side of my face yesterday as if to make sure I was really there, your eyes telling me you’d missed me as much as I had you. Maybe even more. Could you feel my heart stop and restart the moment I saw you again? I blink. Assigning deeper meaning to seemingly trivial things has always been your domain. But will I be able to resist when it comes to the sharp scar that defines the right side of your chest? The puckered skin you have had time to get used to feels foreign to my fingers.

What else hasn’t happened at all for me the last three years?

I don’t realise I’ve drifted off until I’m jolted awake by the shifting shadows. I look at my watch. You will be back soon. My heart gives something between a happy skip and a lurch. “I’m yours.” I steal an unconscious glance across the street. Then a longer look to confirm that it’s not there. I fancy that I spot a tiny piece of it clinging to the rail, but I can’t be sure. I wonder where it is now; that I’ll never know makes me unexpectedly sad. The feeling overwhelms me, out of control, until I’m nothing but separate molecules, then atoms, floating away.

Across the street from an empty building, I finally allow myself to accept the fear I’d felt that day on the mountain. The suffocating guilt that followed at my pretence, and my decision to let you go.

What if it was all a mistake and I was to blame? Do you know how often I couldn’t breathe thinking I’d never see you again? I had really wanted to believe for your sake, for ours.

I close the light and walk to the kitchen, imagining the hug I will give you when you come through that door again; pressing myself closer to you until nothing matters anymore. Until I’m not afraid to ask you if you found what you wanted halfway across the world.

Until I’m sure that we never needed magic water.

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I completely forgot to include the “from the archives” section in the last issue, so here are two today to make up for it!

From the archives

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Take care and I’ll see you on March 2!

Anu

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You can find me on Bluesky at @anushreenande (yep I finally created an account and I’m really enjoying it—my Twitter remains online so far but I’m not actively posting on there anymore) and on Instagram at @anushreenande. You can support my work at https://buymeacoffee.com/anushreenande.

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