"What am I thinking?" Griffin scolded himself. "I'm not ready for a relationship ... or a tussle.”
Pushing out the wave of negative personal thoughts that followed. Griffin plopped down in his cube, logged onto to the corporate computer and opened Safari. Google produced nothing on earthquakes in, around, or near by Pittsburgh since the 5.8 in Virginia that happened in 2011. Griffin next checked the USGS website. No quakes of significance in the continental US within the last twenty-four hours. Not even in California. How did those people manage? Griffin asked himself.
"What the hell happened last night?"
He recalled the dream again. So vivid was the smell of sea salt, distant sound of gulls, and then the vacuum of sound. What had happened on the sidewalk this morning? Griffin reminded himself to have his blood sugar checked at the urgent care. Griffin wasn't the kind of person to constantly fret over his health. Maybe he should. Plus he would need to replace his bedroom door. He made a mental note to take a picture of one of his other interior doors to take with him to Home Depot. Measurements, too, Griffin added. Best not to have multiple trips.
Inner Strength
Itishree woke to sound of the front door banging closed. Muted excited voices chattering from below, a product of having her bedroom above the living room. Itishree could distinguish her Aunt Deepa and her mother in stern debate. It was going to be one of those days. Itishree flopped onto her back and let out a rushed exhale forming into a growl. Her last full day in India was going to be one of rapid fire concern over her status, her journey, and her future.
"Please Vishnu, shoot me now,” Itishree thought, covering her head with a pillow. She fought the urge to stay in bed.
The debate continued downstairs. Her aunt's voice gradually became louder as her mother remained unmoved by her sister's urgency. Itishree knew the discussion — nay argument — was about her and her adventure to America alone. And for that and the love of all her relatives, she needed to save her mother and defend herself. She was twenty-four, after all, and about to take a huge step into the control of her life and future.
"This would never happen if father were still here,” Itishree found herself saying. No, not at all.
Tossing back the pillow and sliding from the covers, Itishree found her slippers without opening her eyes. Itishree caught herself making a frown as she left the warmth of the bed and stood.
Sticking out her chin, Itishree thought, “I’m a woman, able to make my decisions, able to fight my own fights.”
She walked across her room to her dresser. Grabbing for her favorite brush, as she'd done for forever, she began the battle of stripping out the night's tangles without pulling out her head of hair.
Stroking the brush Itishree continued the conversation within her head, "I can do this. What am I doing? I can do this! Why America? I am doing this."
The clash of voices within her caught the tempo of voices from the living room.
"I deserve it and I want it. Father,” she thought with a measure of grief.
Itishree stopped brushing her hair and sat on her bed cupping the pearled brush in her hands. Itishree looked down at her hands and brush and ran her thumb over the bristles.
“Father,” she said, this time out loud. The deep cramp in her chest came rushing back just as she had experienced in the grief years before. How she missed her father. How she wished, how she needed his blessing now. Itishree openly sobbed once and cradled the brush to her chest. The brush her father had given her for her seventeenth birthday.
“No,” Itishree said, standing. She placed the brush upon her dresser. She looked into her small mirror, wiped away the tear and forced her shoulders back. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of movement down on the street from her bedroom window. She walked to the window and opened the sheers that ran the length of the window to the floor. Itishree's looked straight down the center of the street. Their house sat on the outside of a ninety-degree turn of their narrow street. Following an imaginary line down the street, Itishree could feel every object in the street. She knew every fence, every bush, tree, pet, block of sidewalk, and every neighbor. All her friends. Itishree took in light, frozen, eyes fixed upon nothing as she dwelled in her past and became afraid. Afraid for the first time.
“Father,” she called aloud to the past.
Minutes later Itishree bobbled downstairs and addressed her family. She was armed only with her wits, pajamas, and house coat. Her mother, Mala, slowly turned and faced down into the kitchen sink. Her hands made busy work, as if a wild animal needed to be subdued. Her aunt only stood there with her arms crossed, a defiant look dried upon her face. Her sister snickered and bolted from the room like it was on fire. Brother, that family conflict coward, was nowhere in sight.
"Good morning, Auntie Deepa, why are you here?" Itishree mused faking confrontation. She blitzed the refrigerator. "That wasn't a grown up opening,” Itishree thought. "Be adult and be in this moment."
"I am here..." Auntie Deepa said. She pointed at the floor. It was a stabbing motion with a long fingernail of doom. "...to talk some sense into you and your mother.”
Itishree slowly peered above the refrigerator door. She looked first at her aunt then to her mother, where she caught a glance of rolling eyes.
Aunt Deepa was fixed and menacing as a farm scarecrow. Itishree backed out of the appliance shutting the door with her right hand, mango juice in her left. The battle had begun. This was going to get real, she thought.
"Be in this moment. Seek common ground while moving beyond your own position,” she recalled her father's words.
Aunt Deepa put her bulldozer into gear. "Never before has one of our women left her parent's home unmarried,” she said. "Not to live across the street, across the city, beyond the river, or anywhere else in India.” She jabbed the fingernail of doom into the air, her voice growing louder.
Her words more pronounced, for effect. "And you,” Itishree could feel herself shrink, as the fingernail of doom sent invisible rays of guilt her way. “You are leaving for America, unwed, alone. It’s crazy! What will become of you?"
Itishree let her aunt go on and get the frustration out. She knew her auntie had no firm ground to continue this tirade. Itishree stole another glance at mother.
Aunt Deepa said, “Why can you not stay, find the right husband, and then go on with your need for independence?”
"Now!", Itishree said. "Auntie, this is not about my independence. This is about what I want to do.” She set the juice on the counter as if it were a weapon to display.
"I don't want a husband, at least not now. I want to work, make my own money, have a career! And I refuse to be owned by any man.” Itishree said.
Aunt Deepa put both wrists on her hips, unbelieving. "So, you're better than your maataa and your mausii? You think we lived our lives as unloved slaves?"
Itishree's eyes rolled back and hit the stops with a 'thud'.
"Your father must be standing up in his grave,” Deepa pressed with emotion.
Itishree’s mother, Mala, who had been washing the metal off the pot while Itishree and her aunt sparred, turned slightly to look into Deepa's eyes and said, “Don’t.” Deepa had been the recognized matriarch since naanii had passed, Mala had always been the wiser, more controlled woman; even through the death of her husband.
Itishree stood transfixed. Her eyes darted from Aunt Deepa to her mother.
“Your own daughter lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on this day. Unmarried” Mother picked a carrot up from the counter, using the carrot as a ‘weapon of truth’ towards her sister. “Aruni started this migration of unmarried women. Let’s be clear.” The carrot moved left to right as if mother erased lies from the air.
Auntie Deepa shrank somewhat but still protested. “Aruni has a loyal suitor. He’s a nice young man.”
After a painfully long silence, Mala continued, "It is her father who raised her to be strong and a singular thinker. Itishree is his daughter.” She turned ba
ck to the sink and gazed out the window, the mechanical motion of her arms returning to wash anguish from the pot.
Itishree approached her aunt. "Mausii, my mind cannot be changed. I am going to America tomorrow morning. We are having my party today. There is a need inside of me I cannot deny. I must go.”
Her aunt's arms fell off her hips.
"I will miss my family and I love you all. Please support me here.” Itishree said.
Aunt Deepa blew out a defeated sigh and embraced Itishree.
"I will carry you in my heart where ever I go." Itishree continued, looking from her aunt to her mother.
Deepa pushed her out to arms length. "You had better call often or we're coming after you.” She said. “And Aruni!”
Mala smirked and shook her head.
During the next few hours, Itishree helped when she could, although her Aunt and mother had often pushed her aside declaring the party and day were in her honor. With little to do, Itishree found herself with her own thoughts. Looking around her house and watching her family that had been and would be her entire world until tomorrow, Itishree took stock of everything she felt she would miss: the smell of her mother's kitchen, pestering her siblings, the warmth of her room, the view from her room, and... father. "Oh father,” rang in her head.
Pushing past the sting of missing her father, Itishree thought of the exciting aspects of moving to America: Pittsburgh, “an old steel city with a proud history,” she'd read on the internet, hundreds of bridges, three rivers converging at the city’s heart, and culturally diverse foods. And there was the work! Thinking of working in a city in the United States made Itishree's spine straighten. Work. Accomplishment. Responsibility. My own money! My own life! Itishree could not help but allow her imagination to run screaming, clicking off one achievement after another as if they were already in her past.
A broad smile washed across her face which caught her mother's attention. Mala gave her a side-ways glance and a warning of, "What was it your father said about your pride?"
Mother knew how to beat down a moment with alarmingly accurate mentions of father.
Second Contact
Gabriel's super heated trail vaporized an asteroid 728 meters across in a brilliant white flash. He had reached the outer edge of the asteroid sphere of debris just within the edge of Earth's solar system. During the journey from Messier 87, Gabriel’s encrypted data was nearing ninety percent decrypted and filed. Soon his database would be complete. He struck another asteroid. This time a glancing blow shearing off some metal and pushing the remaining its original course.
It was time to make another contact with the vessel, Griffin DeLuca. To help prepare the vessel and allow time for them to accept angelic directive, each contact’s intensity was increased. In the first contact the vessel was asleep, allowing the communication to be easier and simpler to maintain. In past visits, the vessel would awaken and vividly recall the dream and take it as an omen. If the vessel had been awake, it would be called a “vision,” and taken as divine intervention.
This contact protocol called for Gabriel to slow to less than light speed in order to achieve more focused concentration and to confirm his exact location. Gabriel's robot like energy apparition had given him navigational instructions and had decrypted those instructions hours before. The Archangel was unaware his flight wake was detonating asteroids. Behind him, a trail of white flashes and molten debris. Below light speed his form entered a large asteroid as easy as a ghost entering heavy fog. The asteroid had only a moment to quake before vaporizing, chased apart by a white spherical flash of raw energy. The destruction didn’t happen from impact but from an internal catalytic event of Gabriel's endless energy. Nothing could contain the raw radiant heat and power. The crack and explosions had no atmosphere in which to sound. When Gabriel passed through these cold giants, muffled "whomps" were quickly suppressed from what little frozen water, oxygen, and hydrogen they possessed. Behind Gabriel was a clear cylindrical path through hundreds of thousands of kilometers of asteroid field. What wasn't destroyed was easily displaced from unencumbered shockwaves.
Slowing further, Gabriel's travel extruded a long white-blue tail, similar to an ice comet. The effect wasn't from Gabriel losing energy. The smear effect was created as his energy came into contact with small particular matter at slower speeds. Space wasn’t empty. Solar particles, dusts, and pebbles filled space from its original creation. Only the space of inner solar systems would be free of this debris.
Gabriel reached out with his thoughts. At fifty million kilometers, Gabriel's celestial form was relatively “close” to Earth. This would be the last contact before penetrating Earth's atmosphere. Because vessels had no experience, or facility, to engage in thought-speak, Gabriel had to instigate communication. This one-way method of opening communications would continue until possession was successful. “Griffin,” Gabriel sent out into the vacuum of space. “Griffin.”
The Dream of Children
Griffin looked at his D'Anjou pear, examining every square centimeter for irregularity. The pear had ripened on Griffin’s desk for almost a week. From what he had read on the internet, it was at its peak. Slowly Griffin carved away the pear's thin peel with a sharp kitchen knife he'd brought from home. The skin came away easily. Each peel bleed droplets of juice. The pear was delicious, slightly grainy in texture and flavorful. Griffin imagined that the pear tasted like a southern white pear mixed with red wine. Each slice erased the memory of the chicken salad sandwich he had gnawed on just a few minutes ago. Griffin noted a tinge of displeasure as he sliced down the thinning core of the pear which produced a sliver of the white fruit.
“Griffin.” Someone had called out his name. The voice was foreign but somehow familiar. Griffin turned to look left and right with an uneasy expectation he was about to converse with someone he hadn't seen in years. He stood and looked down the sidewalk, in each direction. But, everywhere he looked along Ninth Avenue, no one stopped to collect is reply. No one was looking at him, no one was speaking to him, no one was there. “Well,” Griffin reasoned, "This is what happens when you eat lunch on the street.” Griffin sat and began to assemble his trash back into the brown paper sack.
“Griffin,” the voice repeated. The voice deep now. Hearing his name closer, louder, startled Griffin and made him sit up straight. Griffin looked to his immediate right, where he thought someone had sat next to him and was speaking directly into his ear. No one was there. And then, neither was Griffin.
From under the cool shade of the edge of a forest, Griffin looked across a small river at four children playing on the opposite bank. At first, everything around him was familiar, expected, known, and cherished. Those feelings seemed borrowed and quickly faded. He looked at the children again and saw they were not humans. They had two arms, two legs, fingers and toes; however their limbs were more insect like in design. No, not with an exoskeleton, but longer limbs, more pronounced bones and joints. Muscles not in clumped adjacency like humans, but more sinuous, longer. On closer observation Griffin noted their skulls had twin slightly raised ridges under the skin. The ridges began several centimeters above each temple and crossed the circumference of the skull, ending before the neck. They were beautiful beings. Despite the sunlight that bathed the opposite river bank, the children's skin was pink, supple. They each had similar sandy brown hair and matching eyebrows. Their noses were flatter and wider than humans, but only by a small amount. And from where Griffin observed, their mouths were quite human and expressive.
And as they played with small white stones, Griffin understood why they seemed like children. The laughter, antics, and play — yes, they were playing a game, tossing the small stones in an order to each placed stone. Griffin couldn't make out the meaning, but he knew these were playing children.
Griffin became aware that he was spying on the children. He was ten meters deep under a deep green canopy, standing half-hidden behind the trunk of a tree. A tree?
“What variety of
tree is this?” Griffin asked as he observed and felt the trunk. He had never seen it’s like before.
The ground cover didn’t complete with the trees. The ground was covered with dark leafy vegetation, made darker under the shade. Sprites of light danced on top, having escaped through the canopy. Looking around Griffin realized he couldn't recognize any of the vegetation. Even though Griffin was an urbanite, he held some knowledge of plant life from his youth and vacations.
"Nope, no poison ivy here,” Griffin determined. Somehow this made Griffin more relaxed, nearing comfortable. He had been highly allergic to poison ivy and was glad to discover he wasn't standing ass-deep in it now.
As Griffin took in more of his surroundings, when the big question clanged in his head: "Where am I?" Griffin felt the humidity keeping his sweat close to his body. He heard unfamiliar birds and insects within the canopy. He saw the shade keeping away bright sunlight, which was much like Earth's Sun but gave off a more yellow light. He could hear the river and the children. He could smell a slight damp vegetable decay, common to any forrest on a warm summer day. Finding no answers he focused again on their play. Leaning his weight against the tree with his chest, Griffin half embraced the trunk with his right arm. Finding perfect comfort in placing his head against the tree, Griffin simply watched. In so doing he found and embraced what felt like an eternal peace. It was if Griffin were taking a nap, in the same hammock, on the same warm afternoon, in his own backyard, as he had done so for years. His mind emptied. Griffin simply was a part of this moment, watching the children play, observing in peace. Here. Now.
Griffin realized another feeling, drawing upon it like it were from short term memory: he had come here to observe the children with another. The realization didn't surprise or startle Griffin; he embraced it as he was embracing the tree. Turning to his left he looked upon the other observer.
Divine Destruction (The Return of Divinity Book 1) Page 5
