swirlsofpurple

 

“A bed!” Marla jumps onto the thing. It’s lumpy, has protruding springs and looks rat-chewed. Their floor piles are likely comfier. But it’s a bed! She sprawls out and demands, “Tell me about them.”

Mother laughs. “You’re not so young that you don’t remember beds.”

“Please?”

“Oh alright. In the times before the war, most people had beds to sleep on. They came in many different sizes, and were filled with many different things: cotton or wool or memory foam. Sometimes even water.”

“Wow.” The thought of wasting water to fill a bed is befuddling. She asks, “Will The Gods bring us beds again one day?”

Some believe the beings who came to help rebuild the world are aliens and some believe they’re supernatural creatures. But Marla is her mother’s daughter, so she believes they’re Gods.

Mother tuts. “You’re sitting on one, child. The Gods’ focus is on rebuilding the systems: for water, for food, for sewage, for shelter, for medicine. Which would you divert their attention from?”

Marla sighs. “I said one day, when they’re done with all of those.”

“It’s no easy task. Even before the war not everyone had food and water.”

Marla takes several moments to think on that. The Gods are going to make things even better than the glorious before times.

 

*

 

Marla bounces in her seat; an isle of misshapen bricks. There’s laughter and dancing and cups of sweet water. Today is a very special day.

She stares at the sky. It's muddy whorls. The grey film Old Wendy says is like a cataract. She’s supposedly old enough to remember the sky of before. But she doesn’t, not really. It seems like so, so long ago. The memory is like a flash in her mind, an almost there thing.

A crack appears, bright blue. There are gasps and cheers, hoots and hollers. But the sounds soon slip away: everyone watching the same point, waiting. Expectation sits sticky in the air.

Marla thinks she can almost see the hands of The Gods, from the same place in her mind that forgotten flash lives. And then there’s a whole solid patch of blue.

People are jumping and hugging and kissing. Marla stays in her seat, still now, looking up.

The blue spreads across the sky. It looks like a painting, or a photograph. She always thought the pictures she saw were exaggerations: photoshopped or airbrushed or something. But now she sees, they were nowhere near as good as the real thing.

And anyone can use any fancy technical term for what’s happened here, the science doesn’t lessen the truth of what this is: divine.  

 

*

 

Marla spends the next month watching every sunrise and sunset she can. She’s at her stillest in these moments. Thinking. Deciding.

It’s the night she sees her first full moon that she tells Mother: she’s going to be a priestess when she grows up.

“Hmm. There’s much time yet to settle on this,” Mother says. 

 

*

 

Marla spends every spare moment she has staring at the sky. It calls to her. She’s only more certain as the years go by.

Mother cries when she leaves. “You’re still so young.”

She bites back the urge to say Mother is supposed to be devout, instead says, “I’m an adult.”

“In the before times you wouldn’t be considered so.”

 

*

 

The hall is the biggest she’s ever been in, filled with what must be a thousand priestesses in training. It’s so vast, with more shine to it than she’s ever seen. But her awe quickly turns to misery.

The head priestess repeats over and over, every day, that they will root out any who are there just to get a chance to see or speak to or get closer to The Gods.

And there’s a little Hell inside Marla’s chest where the words sit, as she wonders every time: isn’t that the entire point. Is she unworthy? Is she a fake? A fraud?

The rabid thing in her chest grows, clawing at her stomach, at her throat. Turning from hurt to anger. She stares into the sun. And is certain.

She is still, until she raises her hand: it shakes. “Isn’t that the point?”

“You’re not much for prayer, are you girl?”

“I watch the sunrise and sunset every day.”

 

*

 

They send her to a nowhere place and she spends her days doing the mundane tasks she’s given. The days turn to weeks and then to months. Marla’s never felt so far away from reaching The Gods. She knows she should try harder to fit in. Then maybe she could progress. But she has no interest in meeting The Gods as a facsimile of herself.

When she can, she stares, memorising each days sky. No two skies are the same.

 

*

 

The years pass. She knows what is meant to be will never happen. The ache dulls, but remains. Marla forges new meaning in this place. People come to join her as she watches the sky, they talk and she listens. Sometimes she tells stories of the ephemeral flotsam up above them. 

 
*

She wakes to one of the young ones at her door, bouncing excitedly, “You’ve been chosen!”

Marla blinks away sleep, uncomprehending. “What do you speak of?”

“You’re going to the Prime Temple.”

It’s a mistake, surely. Or perhaps a cruel joke. She doesn’t dare believe it. She gets confirmation from three different elders. It still feels untrue. Her head is awhirl.

Something long-dead unfurls inside her chest. The sun is in her heart. She’s going to the home of the Prime Goddess herself.  

 

*

 

Marla stands at the entrance of a place she’s longed to be since she was a girl. She almost expects to be disappointed, surely no singular place can meet the weight of decades of want. But it’s more than she could ever imagine. It’s tall, has many, many floors. But it's plain. And that buoys something in her.

She’s given a bowl of water to leave by the Goddess’ door. She carries it tentatively, her feet measured against every stair. She can see the sky reflected in the liquid.

If she gets to do this every day and never gets to even see the Goddess, her life will be perfect.

 

*

 

“The Goddess wants to meet you.”

This is a dream. Her heart is pounding. Her hands shaking.

Marla lets the other priestesses guide her to the bath. They clean gently, anointing her with special oils and powders. And wrap her in ceremonial robes.

She kneels, alone, waiting. Panicking. She wishes she could see the sky.

A hand grasps her shoulder. She gasps.

“It’s good to finally meet you Marla. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”

 

*

 

She sits opposite the Goddess. It seems wrong, to sit so close, on the same level.

“You’re the one who will fix the sky.”

Marla gapes. “What?! The sky is fine.” She would know if something was wrong with it. She watches every fibre of it so closely.

“Not now. The sky of when you were a girl.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Time works differently for us. We didn’t just appear after the war. We were always here, in different times, waiting to do what fate had in mind for us.”

“Wow.”

Silence takes hold. Marla eventually says, “I don’t have any powers though.”

“You have spent decades learning the sky. You know it like no one else.”

 

*

 

Marla sees her child-self, bouncing. Impossible.

She looks to the sky, knows every bit of wrongness. And, with the certainty of staring into the sun: she reaches her hands out and begins to mend.