Noon. The doors opened one final time and an usher came out and stood silently beside the door, holding it open. A few eyes turned to the door, but nobody made any move to enter.
The usher shifted his feet and glanced around the room. “Eloa,” he finally said, perhaps a little too softly. A few moments later, more loudly this time: “Eloa Jevoson Mirentil?”
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Eloa bounded the steps two at a time. He stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs to catch his breath. He wanted to appear calm, level-headed. He wouldn’t be taken seriously if he roared in, wild-eyed and panting. He walked deliberately to the office door marked Administration and pushed his way in.
The office was bustling with activity. The open floor plan allowed Eloa to see almost everything, with only a small reception desk standing sentry near the front of the office. The receptionist was balancing a phone on one ear while looking up information on the screen in front of her. A stack of documents threatened to collapse onto her work area. Workers behind her scurried about carrying papers, and the general din made it almost impossible for Eloa to hear anything. He stared in amazement at the commotion. He had never imagined he would find such chaos here.
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It was a warm evening. Many students were out, strolling around the campus or sitting in groups on the luscious grass, enjoying the final surge of summer. Eloa and Yrial had already walked around the small pond at the center of the campus three times, chatting casually about the day. Finally they sat on some rocks near its edge.
“What was it like, growing up without a father?” Yrial asked him.
Eloa picked up a few pieces of the decorative bark that surrounded the rocks and flipped them lightly, one at a time, into the pond, watching the ripples grow bigger and then disappear. The lights from the building across the pond from them reflected in the water.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “What was it like growing up with a father?”
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“I don’t know how you can say that with a straight face.”
Yrial didn’t respond. Her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, but Eloa either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“It’s a fairy tale, a myth. Nothing more,” he continued. “It’s the only tool early man had available to approach the great unknowns of the world, and it had been passed on as truth for centuries. But nobody believes it anymore.”
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Mirena ran her fingers slowly through Eloa’s hair just behind his ear. She would start near the top of his ear and work her way down to just where the hair ended at the neck, a process that lasted about ten seconds, and then back up to start again. She was somewhat surprised that he hadn’t stopped her. He had been laying in the bed; she in the chair beside him. She had reached over almost absentmindedly and patted him softly on the head, and just by instinct or habit had fallen back into this familiar pattern. She had done this when he was a baby to soothe him at night and for his naps. As a toddler, before he could completely form his words, he would indicate that he was tired by lifting his hand to the top of his head and running it down the side of his face. As he had grown, she had gradually stopped doing it, not necessarily because he had grown weary of it, she now realized, but merely because he had become independent so quickly.
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What are our options?
We don’t have any options. We’re on a collision course. Either we move or it does. Or kaboom. And we’re not moving.
So we’ll have to move it.
Right. Only there’s no way to do that.
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The first few hours would have been a time of great joy and wonder if they hadn’t known what was coming next. Many smaller fragments of the giant asteroid had been blasted away from the main body during the futile attempts to break it apart or divert it from its course. The first night had been like a fireworks display. At first just a few microscopic pieces of the asteroid entered the atmosphere each second and lit up during their fiery descent. Brief sparks of color flashed like fireflies in the night: yellow, red, and green twinkles causing the sky to come alive and dance. Four hours later some of the larger pieces started to hit, and the night sky glowed fiercely with bright streaking trails falling against the glittering backdrop. The announcement of impending death had come, and people stood transfixed, eyes cast heavenward, fascinated by its morbid beauty.
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Eloa’s mind reeled. This couldn’t have happened. The entire room was turned completely upside down. He hadn’t even recognized the place at first, but as he focused on small recognizable items amidst the mess strewn throughout the house, he knew that he was in the right place. He strode quickly through the entry room, stepping awkwardly over broken furniture and books, down into the long hall. “Mother!” he called out, desperately hoping that she would answer, that he would find her, even badly beaten or unconscious, but alive, somehow alive. Even as he called for her, though, he knew what was in store.
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The first full week of March I’ll be attending The First Annual Writer’s Retreat at the fabulous Pete Repeat Treat Retreat Inn in scenic Jackson Pot. I hope to be able to do a lot of writing and a lot of learning. It should be great.
He wasn’t sure why he had offered to walk her home. The words had come out of his mouth and she had accepted before he realized what was happening. Sure, he thought, the streets are more dangerous now than they used to be, but this was her neighborhood, after all. Yrial could take care of herself. Or if she couldn’t, he doubted he’d be that much more help to her.
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