CHAPTER 47 - RECLUSIVE WATERCOLORS AND DRAMATIC!

Current Time

Mr. Cunningham once coughed as lucidness arrived like a spontaneous combustion. A dribble of light on his cheek gave hint of the door, slightly ajar. He rested against the wall's dumb comfort. Personal space was never meant to be this soft and … padded. Humble footsteps echoed through the halls, but they were too far away to share any concern. Nurses drudging about. "Is it really …" he thought as the divide opened a touch more. His heart was swimming in its promise. Through the opening a jumbo-sized light switch appeared and slid to the middle of the room. It happened all of a sudden, giving little room for consideration as to its true motives. "Light-switch, do you want me?" Cunningham enquired as the toggle flipped back and forth fretfully. By all measures it was like a Labrador retriever begging to have its human follow and see the curious marvels. Elicited to reply, he reached out with his hand, then withdrew. All the latticework of nerves shivered to the tips of his fingers as deep panic set in. Perhaps this was how it started. Impressions of the years flew by in frail particles of thought. Across the clinic on a roundabout path he would chase after the shadow of another light switch, once every so many days. Beguiled, lured by its gracious charm. Each time he tried to touch, they slumped into dainty powders of memory. Why did this one seem so familiar? The man leaned forward, depriving himself of the wall's empathy. It hummed with a sound beautiful like philosophy. "This is different today ..." he thought, first taking the time to consider the past. All the times he had acquiesced, and given a parcel of mind away. Letting it dwindle into the tides of ether swaying through the windows and down the halls of the clinic, filling its every volume. Bit by bit. Halting his reach at the level he took a moment for his last doubts, and wolfed them down. "… I can feel it" Cunningham said as he flipped the switch. From the guest came colors suspended in air like pigments in water. Rich photons of yellow clotting the others. Below, the plastic element displaced its bulk. More of the base flowed into the length of the switch, broadening it. He watched the sprouting of arms and curly hair. Soon, a visage met him at eye level. The man checked the industry of his mind. Recently it had been an exotic garden melting with rumors, but now, it was clean, his senses cogent. The girl was bewildered. "Lusi, is that you?" the patient implored, scooting closer along a floor that, with respect to style, was not incompatible from the remainder of the room. "Thank you for flipping me, friend. I thought I would be like that forever. How many days has it been?" Reclusive Watercolors pondered as the cushioning all about came into focus. "Did you think you could just run off like that child? It's been … don't really know the day, but … more than a few months since the uproar" he shot quick, rife with the anger of long worry. "Mr. Cunningham! Wait a minute. So, this means we're back home at the foothills of the portion, at the clinic, aren't we? You're still here?" Lusi said, unfettering her bafflement. About her head the pigments died down, slowly dehydrating into hollow shapes. Years past, he was her shift leader at Stratagem And Porous Opal Industries. Repurposing bland spells, editing them from the ground up according to the axioms of magic. She moved on, but they had always stayed friends. A regular after the fact. "Getting treatments my dear, yes. Kalia misses you" he returned. Apart by a mere foot, they came to equal terms. Ideas and information shuffled. Lusi looked at their surroundings, her eagerness foiled by the pillow-lined walls, "Let's get out of here, know a diner nearby". Departing through a square mile of precious land the clinic had managed to cling to, they came to Featureless Run, the street to the urban life of the foothills, and took public transport. Even after the second move, certain notions had remained the same. One of them was the greasy spoon. Little more than a singular, drawn-out room with booths packed besides the glass, crosswise from a bar. Even so, the place held rumblings of talk. More or less informative of actual speech than their bellies. Gloating from behind the workstation, unwashed plates sat in stacks. Ugly enough to ease the mind to rest, and the chuckle of the company on the stools, face first into mounds of lunch higher than a house of cards. "Hmmm … I think I'll have the ordinary garden salad" Lusi said, poking the menu decisively. "Are you sure love? Flip a few pages over and I'll show you the daily specials" the waitress insisted. "It's fine, but can you tell me what dressings there are?" the girl added as she snooped through the back page. "By the way, I'll just have the chicken sandwich" her friend nominated following a cursory rub of his beard. The waitress fetched a key and turned it on the page to unlock the hidden menu of dressings. Lusi skimmed through, raising her head back to the woman, "do you have ranch dressing for the garden salad?". The question was answered promptly with an eye roll, "It's a little bland, don't you think love? There are so many choices". "Today I can manage" the girl concluded with a smile. Hopes dashed, the waitress left with a sigh. Between mouthfuls she tallied what she had seen on the front and its everlasting dangers. Cunningham looked at her eyes breaking with raw wonder. Listening for thirty minutes trounced his disbelief. The man got ketchup for his French fries then sat back down, "Ever since you ran off he's been looking around for you, came to see me a month ago". Lusi gave enough impulse to push the bowl to the end. It barely missed, ringing as it did. "Wait, wait, who do you mean?" she blinked. The old friend regarded the young adult, leagues past her peers in terms of merit. Different from before. Cunningham leaned over the empty plate destined to be at the top of the stack, whispering what she already knew.

At the table they penned a telegram. It was short and simple. Reclusive waited anxiously, and upon receipt was directed to meet nearby. Founded for the great purpose of an afternoon walk, Em-Box Park sits atop the local anechoic plateau, sparse with people craving a moment's relief from the city. Just a few private neighborhoods occupy the very angles. Within such a place, quiet groves formed the boundary of picnic areas. At night, dreamlike green weakly appropriates the twilight. That was long since gone. Now, bristles of jaunty wind glanced their cheeks. Trees at equivalent distance made the place, although sequestered by the rebirth of nature, seem emptier than it actually was. "Please, wait here" Lusi bid as she spied the warden standing in humble privacy. He looked back, ready to hear the voice of his student. Below their feet, the chamber hummed as they drew closer. "Child, don't ever do that again" Graham willed as he embraced her. Lusi laughed into his beard. Looking over his shoulder, she could see Petty Officer Parfait Plurality and Lance Corporal Synchronized Strudel hanging by a bench. "Everything happened really fast, so don't be mad. I was minding my own business when this energy came to me. It lit me up like a lightbulb. I was having so much fun and mischief that I decided to follow my instincts, and left Sol. There were times where I was normal again, but they didn't last forever. They needed help at the front, a person like me" the girl recounted, pride welling in her lungs. "Lusi, as your teacher I knew you always had to find your own way. The others didn't understand why, but I never expected you to run. A handful of men I knew are imprints now. They didn't last the war. Believe me Lusi, I would have not have stood in your way if you had told me. It's only because I pushed you too hard. Maybe that's why. As a teacher I thought it would make you stronger, but I was wrong" Graham chanted in a somber procession of words. The adventurer thought to herself how she had expected another Graham, any-one else. Hadn't she been on the front, fighting for what was right? Lusi felt the illustration, how it turned the moving picture of her life into a display. Her heart felt like an insect pinned with mixed emotion. Riled by the instant, she stepped back, "Yes, a lot of things went south, but the world is so much bigger than Sol. We had to fight to protect it". "Lusi, at a certain point you have to wake up. The lightbulb of quintessence is too much force for you to handle. It led you into danger. I can't have that again. Hand it to me so I can figure this out" Graham demanded. Led by the tide of the conversation, the girl cupped a hand over her chest, drawing out a glass bulb. From her palm and through her fingers it bled with sumptuous light. Linear streaks parodying the crumpled curvature of skin. Graham took it and placed one hand on her shoulder, "Since even before you came to the Institute, I have been looking for someone who can truly understand my work. Asymmetry is a lifelong disability for most. So many children have been turned into outcasts, forced to live beyond the view of society. Their stories all came to me. There was a time when we didn't even know what to call it. People said things that you probably wouldn't like to know about. It was a darker time. Through long study we eventually began to discern its cause. Lusi, I am a lot older than you probably think I am. As a lantern I've seen many lives, and I'm getting tired. As an example, to the public, I've always wanted a student to succeed me as the warden of the Asymmetrical Institute. Take the lightbulb and throw it down. It's dangerous. Shatter it now so we can be done with it". Lusi focused away from his face to the trees. Discrete periods of silence came as every so often the anechoic plateau muffled the wind as it blew through. Leaves rustled but gave no sound, but in exchange, waves of hyper-sense arrived, ingrained into their welcome frames. She felt a sweet tinge of reality, then fatigue as it crept through her muscles, a dense potency, "Because of what you taught me I was able to help someone else … out there, in the world. Do you know what it was like to be put aside? My classmates were very nice, but it didn't matter. If I was going to go there, I had to change. The only difference was I was smart enough to know that, and all I ever wanted was to be accepted. Ramshackle … I'm not the person who can do this. I can't go back". Warden was astonished, "I thought I could rely on you". "I'm sorry" Lusi breathed. A fresh tide of noise returned, soft and cool from somewhere past the grove. Every plan can come undone. He furrowed his brows to take the hit. Ramshackle dug deeper into her shoulder. It had been so long since he had seen her so dewy-eyed. "That's the last thing you should be worried about. The portion knows your name. I'll be here with the rest if you want to visit. You have pure acceptance" he promised. "Warden, your hand feels funny" the girl noticed. Fine oscillations radiated into the pulp of anatomy. "Really? They're left-overs from doing some morning exercises" he recalled. In his palm the lightbulb fluctuated briefly, catching both of their attentions. "Didn't you say to me once that I had more parts? Sarah Daniels-Rule was a colonist before she was my other half, this rampant energy. It took me a while to learn about her. I need to know what you meant" she demanded. Given what was said, he had to assent. His aspect grew in earnestness. Graham rooted about in a leather satchel with one hand, "Early in the days of Institute, it was a general practice. My men would bring me rare conditions that I would puzzle on and cure. Then one day they brought me something I had never seen before. Local cultic officers heard about a creature living in the sewers, coming up by day to frighten people. When they caught the poor thing, I could see how they would think of it as a monster. He was an ugly thing, a deformed mutant with three faces. Legs that could bend like a spider and arms around the circumference. Lusi, I brought this here for you to see. Do you remember our lessons with this volume? As a collector I hoarded illuminated manuscripts for their latent magic. In those days the disorder was a mystery. We needed an isolated system that we could analyze. For that reason, I employed the book in the spell, segregating the mutant into three souls. The only thing I didn't expect was for them to shift into little girls. By sealing one of them in the manuscript and the other in foster care, I chose you as the test subject. From my perspective, you were just a normal girl, but advances in medicine require this sort of forward thinking. It serves as a good failsafe. Since you're in these pages, no matter where you run to, you'll always come back". What she assumed was real life suddenly ricocheted off a hard surface. Reclusive Watercolors flinched with the genuine dread of losing such a buffer. Then it faded, replaced by an eccentric solution of anger and laughter, "Are you kidding me! I am a test subject?". Sentimental, Ramshackle listened, then half-smiled in unwieldiness of the awkward truth, "Always late to class, I see. Of course, Lusi, I could have freed the aspect from the manuscript at any time. Please don't look at me like that". Lines of force from the lightbulb of quintessence bent back to their origin. With a minor glance to his hand she pulled it back into her chest. Swiping the book, she ignited it into motely flames, more lustrous than a butterfly's wing, more intriguing, "It doesn't matter who I was in a former life. That's the past. Did you really think I needed this part to be myself? That is so stupid!" she cried as ash fell from her fingertips. "My research!" the warden gasped. Their oices together expanded out to the boundaries, through air, where the groves pulled them to earth for their consumption. "Graham, thank you for everything, but I'm fine now. I'm not coming back to the Institute. I found a way out by myself, so I can find a better way for everyone. Maybe it doesn't even matter if we're symmetrical or asymmetrical. You showed me how to help people, but now I have to go. Don't send me any letters" Lusi bid, holding back the rest of humanity behind eyes that wanted nothing more than to throw away their sorrow. He stood his ground as the student turned and walked away, back to the trail that led to the north entrance of the plateau. Mouthing the words, "Child … Watercolors", it was more than he could fathom. Cunningham chased after but didn't seem to be able keep up. Embroiled, the warden did not notice movement among the grass, until she had disappeared, and the weight of the argument lifted. Before the park, a stockpile of old manuscripts was left as refuse, and forgotten. As the anechoic plateau arose, they nourished the soil. Looking down, he could see their decoration appearing haphazardly throughout the park. Isolated, a shower of sparks dived through the atmosphere, fashioned from the corona. Pages bellowed with manifold gas as they touched down. "Wait, what is going on?" Graham hollered, trapped in the flurry. Guided by telepathic grace the flames decayed into color and wrapped around him. Despite that, the beard remained gray. The circular spectacles did not crack. Through them he could see across the park, to a path leading up a hill. Along either side a row was set into place, utility poles rising like roman columns. The girl looked only towards the space between the furthest ones. Intrepid, letting go of all the fear in tears of joy. "Priya, do you remember that day? I shadowed you and saw you look towards the sun. Your home was gone, and you were still wondering how to make it better. I knew you could do it. Now look at her, there is only space between the telephone poles in the distance. She doesn't see the emptiness. It's just the world but so much more. Lusi, I promise to make this up to you" he observed. For a moment he considered the real girl, and of Pelfe's beautiful paradox, and the lone survivor of that golden land, soaked in the vibrant science of the Voices of Reason. Priya decided to make herself a test subject. After all, it was just a simple chamber. How could it be that dangerous? Maybe he should have stopped her, but he was glad he only shared everything once she had made up her mind. Dramatic sighed, "Very well, let's prepare for the second part of my conspiracy. This body is damaged. I will have to move quickly".