by Quiarah Butler
Coll bolted straight up, sweat-drenched and shivering. She was sitting naked on her bedroom floor, thick vines wrapping her like ribbon. Her feet were caked to the ankles in mud and silt. “Damn it! Not again,” she groaned. She’d been sleepwalking again. Fifth night in a row. It planted itself right behind her eyes and played out like a movie she couldn’t shut off. She couldn’t shake it. Each attempt at closing her eyes brought the dream closer and closer, breaking through her reality. She could almost feel the tug of iridescent wings sprouting from beneath her shoulder blades, spanning the size of her small bedroom. Her fingers elongated, turning thin and delicate. Her nails were pointed like sharp claws. Her smooth, dark skin shimmered like spilled glitter in the moonlight filtering in through her window. She’d morphed into beautiful creature she couldn’t name.
She could still hear the song, like a distant wave, crushing against her eardrums as creatures with wings and skin like hers danced and sang.
All these broken pieces on the ground
Make up every moment of our time
Shatter like the glass
A cacophonous sound
Chasing me into the darkness
The somber song rang inharmonious to the act of the provocatively wild waving of their arms and legs yet had put her in a trance. She had only awakened at the last line, her breaths like gusts, as she sucked the air in and gulped it down. What was happening? Why were these dreams coming to her now? And how was she going to get any sleep? She’d been warned by all her teachers that she was slacking on her schoolwork. Coll’s only saving grace were her A’s. The Punk Girl with the Brain, the other kids whispered at her back whenever she passed them in the halls. Coll was no stranger to their whispers, though she hardly cared about what others had to say about her. Kids talked; it’s just what they did to pass time until the end-of-the-day bell rang. But lately she’d been on edge.
Paranoid. A mess.
Earlier that day, she’d shown up to school wearing one ripped stocking on her leg and the other leg bare. A minor mishap to her relief. Luckily, no one had really noticed, as the dark socks blended with her deep brown skin, and if someone happened to glance down, Coll blew off their curiosity as something she’d done on purpose. Something done just for the hell of it. Her mind still whirring from the eerie dream plaguing her, she laid down and fell back to sleep.
Hours later, she rose like a zombie and made her way down the hallway to the bathroom. She had to hurry. She had slept through her alarm. Castra would be downstairs waiting for her to pop out the front door to walk with her to school. The pair didn’t much like taking the bus; it was nothing but a tube filled with girls talking in high-pitched voices and boys trying to look up their skirts or down their shirts. The walk, on the other hand, was peaceful and uncrowded.
“Had the dream again last night,” Coll said. She faced forward, not wanting to look her best friend’s way.
“What?” Castra nearly shouted before lowering her voice. “What happened this time? You float away to faerie land again?”
“No! I grew giant wings and claws! And this time it looked and felt real.” Coll puffed out a flimsy breath, already exhausted with the conversation. She’d started it, and yet she wanted so badly for it to end. Castra was always so excitable, and it didn’t help that she was sarcastic too. Right now, Coll couldn’t take her friend mocking her dream, not when last night felt so real.
“Wait, wings? You grew wings?” Castra stopped in her tracks. She snagged one of Coll’s book bag straps, stopping her short. “What is going on, girl? Five nights ago, you were perfectly fine. Now you’re having weird ass dreams and seeing things in the dark.”
“I’m telling you what happened. You asked.” Coll started walking again before Castra pulled at her bag again, stopping her short once more. “Castra,” Coll huffed.
“I’m worried about you. Plus, you got kids talking more than usual. It used to be fun making them jump, but this is beyond bizarre, Coll.” Castra ran a hand through her neon pink Senegalese twists before throwing them up into a bun that slanted to one side atop her head. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to end this conversation and continue walking. Right now, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t stop the dreams from coming, and I can’t not sleep forever to stop them!” Coll started walking again, but this time Castra didn’t stop her. Instead, the pair walked the rest of the way to school in silence. Deep down, Coll was frightened of what the dream meant, and it didn’t help that Castra seemed more frightened than she was. For now, it was best to get through the day and figure the dream out later.
#
After class, Coll said bye to Castra, and then headed into the house. Nobody was home. Her parents were off at work, while her sister, Lori, was in South Africa taking a gap year from college. Coll had the house all to herself. So why were there glass shards strewn about the wood floor? They were laid out in a makeshift path. Flecks of light from the windows bounced off their clear surfaces as they led from the front door up to her room, where she found her full-length mirror shattered beyond repair.
Coll gaped at the glassless frame, the flowery, curled corners appearing less ornate and oddly beautiful without the glass mirror insides it held. Her stomach somersaulted as she peered from the glass to the empty frame, speechless. How’d this happen? Apart from the mirror shards, the house appeared intact; nothing was disrupted, no furniture turned over, yet Coll couldn’t shake the creeping sensation that she was being watched. Stepping closer to the mirror, Coll examined the frame. There weren’t any imperfections that would explain the mirror shattering. But even if there was a rational explanation, there was still the mystery of how the glass shards ended up downstairs, laid in an almost neat fashion, like a peculiarly lovely clue for her to find. And it seemed to have been done right before she stepped through the door. But who could’ve done so without her spotting them sneaking in and out of her house?
Coll’s skin tingled all over as she glanced at the shards closest to the frame. They were larger than the rest, as if purposefully broken that way, and gathered beneath the frame in a half-moon shape. “What the hell?” Coll’s heart jumped in her chest. A flicker of purple-blue streaked over the large shards of glass. “Was that… hair?” Coll peered closer, swallowing hard, when a pale brown face popped up on the largest shard to Coll’s right. A smile covered the creature’s oval face. Glittering purple-blue hair cascaded down to its shoulders and curled over its chest. Its skin glittered like Coll’s had done the night before, as if millions of glittery particles were spilled upon it. “Who are you?”
“Coll, it’s me. Sirey,” the creature said in a high, lilting voice. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me already. Much quicker this time.”
Coll’s brows furrowed. “I don’t know you! I don’t even know if this is real or—” Then it dawned on her. “You’re the one who broke my mirror!”
“No, this isn’t a mirror. It’s your way home. You forgot again, didn’t you?”
“What’re you talking about? You know what? No, this isn’t happening. You’re not real. This is all part of my dream or something. I’m still asleep.” Squeezing her eyes shut, Coll made her way over to her bed on the other side of her room and threw herself face down in the comforter. When she popped her head up, she could still see the creature settled in the corner of the glass shard. It smiled even brighter, its teeth sharpened to points like its nails, its wings fluttering furiously behind it so that Coll nearly missed them in the strange sunlight on the other side of the mirror. On her side of the mirror, the sun started to set, making the sunlight in the mirror shard more prominent as it illuminated her room, glowing like the colors of a rainbow.
“This isn’t a dream. You should know this by now. Every time you get upset with Mamaa and Babaa, you leave. And make up some story that they’re at work and I’m taking a gap year, whatever that is,” Sirey said, seemingly bored with the conversation. “Come home. You’ve been gone five moons now. Surely, this tantrum of yours is over.”
Coll stared dumfounded at the creature called “Sirey.” Everything she said coincided with Coll’s dreams—the wings, her glistening skin in the moonlight. Was it real? If so, then what was true about this world she was in now? “Sirey, you’re… my—you’re my sister?”
Sirey nodded slowly, a knowing smile crossing her face. “You’re finally coming to your senses, I see.”
Coll sat up further on the bed, her head ballooning with mixed-up notions of Sirey, her Mamaa and Babaa. Their home world, Shasa, and the Shasali people. They were spirit dancers who danced and sang their emotions.
The song!
It was her song.
Coll slid to the floor. She stared around her bedroom, crestfallen. This wasn’t her room, merely a foreign space to her now that who she was drifted back to her like ripped pieces of paper gluing themselves back together. Posters of metal bands plastering the walls. Her notebooks full of poetry stacked atop her desk next to the mirror. Her red-and-black checkered curtains hung with care, partially open to the world outside. It was all a dream. This place wasn’t her reality, but some conjured punky teen clone of herself she once knew yesterday. The one with her best friend, Castra. The girl who liked dressing in black lace and ripped shirts and jeans. A faded memory she had to stow away.
Gingerly, she scooted toward the large glass shard. Her sister smiled brightly at her, her pale brown skin shining brighter in the dying daylight as the room darkened. Nighttime was approaching on both sides now. Both suns slowly faded to mere glints, replaced by one pallid crescent moon on Coll’s side, and a pearlescent triple moon on Sirey’s side. Her sister’s fingers, like long, delicate claws, touched the middle of the shard, and Coll did the same, the coolness of the glass making her chest swell as her reality sank in. Her hand was still that of an Earth teen, though it would soon change once she went to where Sirey and the rest of her people were.
“Sirey, I—” Coll trailed off. She didn’t know what to say. She could hardly remember the reason she’d left home in the first place. Only the angry, empty feeling of it prolonged in her heart and mind. All she knew was she’d felt so alone, hollow inside, and needed a place where someone understood her. But here, she’d felt more alone than at home in Shasa, her best friend, Castra, aside. For a Shasali, Coll had the hardest time expressing her full emotions, so she wrote them in song, and now the song was all she had as a reminder of who she was and why she ran away.
She was broken.
Mamaa and Babaa were expecting her to take her place as a Shasa angel. She was of age now. Seventeen moons had come and gone. She had responsibilities to tend to. She was a royal angel of the angel court. She stood to take Sirey’s place among the lower angels as Sirey ascended to the middle level. She’d come to Earth on assignment, and now her task was complete.
“You can’t abandon us, Coll. You must remember your place. You are to watch over them, not hide away in their world. We watch from afar, Guardian Angel. Nothing more.”
Coll’s chest heaved as uncertainty crawled through her like briars winding around her lungs. They squeezed the air from her, leaving her breathless and unable to think. Unable to cope. Her world was spinning too fast. She drew a deep breath, letting it go slowly. Each moment of exhalation calming her. And then she remembered the rest of her song. Coll mumbled the lyrics softly, her emotions swimming frantically like a school of fishes in the pit of her stomach. With each word, her voice strengthened, until she was belting the lyrics loud and true:
All these broken pieces
Shards like fire
Heal the edges; moments I’m alive
Time circles round my finger, whole once more
And I know who I am again
Tears streamed down Coll’s cheeks as the memory of who she was struck her like a bolt of lightning, and when she glanced down into the pieces of the mirror, she was her Shasali self again. Her wings fluttered wildly as if happy for her to regain her proper self. Her lavender and sun-green hair was twisted in braids resembling fine tree branches, knotted with colorful charms and beads throughout. Her deep brown skin shined like starlight and gems from head to toe.
Then the shards lifted from the floor, twitching as if dancing with an energetic vigor that could’ve only come from Coll’s swelling heart. They climbed the stairs and bounded into her room, piecing themselves together again, making her mirror whole once more. The mirror was free of cracks; not a piece was out of place.
But it wasn’t a mirror, it was her way home.
And she was ready to go.
Category: Featured, Fiction, Short Story, SNHU Creative Writing