“Before he died, he made me a thousand origami cranes,” Aris continues, “He called them ‘blue birds of happiness.’ But since he’s been gone, I haven’t been able to feel happy. Maybe that’s because it’s trapped inside this crane.”
“Burn it!” someone shouts. The person’s voice is matched by another.
The crowd chants in unison, “Burn it! Burn it! Burn it!”
He watches as Aris takes one last long look at the crane in her hand. She tosses it into the flame just as he reaches her. When she sees him, she gives him a smile so sweet it breaks his heart.
Her eyes are filled to the brim with liquid threatening to fall. He grabs her hand and pulls her to his chest. She falls easily into it. Her thin body shakes to the rhythm of her sob. He wraps his arms around her, flooded by the desire to take her away from this place—this surreal life. He slowly guides her way. The spot where she stood is now occupied by another woman with something else in her hand.
They walk in silence until the light of the bonfire is behind them. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he can see the shapes of twisted bushes and squat boulders. A mountain range lies silhouetted at the horizon. The nippy wind blows through the gaps in his jacket.
She stops suddenly, forcing him to do the same. She tilts her head up. He follows her gaze, and his breath catches in his throat. The image above stuns him. The deep indigo sky is carpeted with billions of bright stars. The twinkling white dots, like the pulsing of heartbeats, make the sky seem like a single organism. Alive.
For each point of brilliant light, he knows there are many more that are invisible to the naked eye. Living in the city, where evidence of other planets and stars is obscured by manmade lights, he had forgotten how insignificant his life really is. The faint band of the Milky Way paints the sky like a trail of spilled milk. Somewhere in the center of it is a massive black hole that one day will pull this earth in.
“Doesn’t it make you feel small in a good way?” Aris says.
He clears his throat. “Yeah, it does.”
After a long pause she says, “The Milky Way is not as bright in the winter as in the summer.”
“Why is that?”
“In the summer we look inward, toward the center of the galaxy where there are more stars. But now we’re looking outward, away from the center of the galaxy toward the fringe where there are fewer stars.”
He searches for Vega in the northwestern quadrant as Aris had told him to do in the park. He cannot see it.
“If you’re looking for Vega, it’s there.” She points toward the bright blue light of his favorite star.
“Ah. Thank you.”
“You know, it’s funny how a simple act of burning something can feel so freeing,” Aris says.
“It helped?”
“I feel lighter. It may be too soon to say that I feel better. But yeah, it helped. I think.”
The lavender scent emanating from her skin is intoxicating. She smells just as she does in his dreams. He is drawn to her. Powerless against his own desire. He leans in and kisses her. It is a kiss that carries the weight of their years apart. It is a question that demands an answer.
Do you remember?
She pulls away.
“Metis?”
“Hmm?”
“Take me to your home?” she whispers.
Standing in front of her is an elegant Victorian house the color of a robin’s egg. The home sits among the other Painted Ladies on a hill in a posh section of Lysithea. The wood scales covering it make it look like a fish. Weighty carved moldings, floral flourishes in deep magenta, and white gingerbread details adorn the Queen Anne structure like jewelry on an alluring lady, making it almost too overwhelming for the senses.
The whole ride to Lysithea was a blur. The uncertainty of the unknown vibrates beneath her skin like water tremoring in an earthquake. But the intoxicating high coursing through her veins is carrying her forward. Her stomach tightens in a knot.
They step onto the wide wraparound porch. It hugs the house like a protective lover. From here, Aris sees an unobstructed view of the city lights twinkling below. Somewhere out there is her city. And Elara. Where she scattered ashes of the dead. Where she burned a part of herself in the flame.
“I’m home,” Metis says, and the door opens.
She steps gingerly into the warm orange glow of the foyer. A large floral arrangement in a vase sits atop a heavy oak table. The flowers are a kind she has never seen before. She walks toward them. The green flowers are long tapered spikes with small buds that hang like bells. They look like a cross between foxgloves and foxtail lilies.
Under her feet is a round Persian rug with saturated shades of reds, cinnamon, and ochre. Above her is an ornate chandelier made of blown glass. It is a stately home, the kind that would have been occupied by an affluent family in the Old World before the Last War.
A landscape painting of oak trees and rolling golden hills on a wall catches her eye, and she goes to it. Something about it calms her. She begins to feel the coil inside her unraveling.
“Beautiful house,” she says as she studies the impression the artist left on the canvas while trying to capture light and shadow.
His voice comes from somewhere in the next room, “I think at one point a couple lived here before me. They were poets, I believe. I keep finding pieces of paper with half-written poems all over the house. Some were love notes. Quite sweet.”
She hears the heavy sound of a cabinet door opening, then the tinkling of glass. She wonders what one pianist does in this enormous space.
As if Metis can read her mind he says, “It’s too big for one person, I know. The Dwelling Council
