A Peculiar String of Bizarre Dreams

Chapter 44: Make Me Vestigial

Eli gets a phone call right then; he makes his way towards the exit, after he trades his apologetic look for my nod of 'it's okay'. I wave at him and he glances at me one last time before stepping out. Something gets caught in my throat in that moment and I immediately clear my throat and pretend it didn't happen.

"One almost-vacant apartment available for sale," Sachelle calls out from my pocket.

"Stay put, you'll be light as a feather soon," I say to no one in particular as he continues to rasp. "Being light as a feather will make me vestigial. I do not want to be vestigial."  I frown in the general direction of the talking bag. Sachelle quite obviously knows he's not an appendix, yet he takes way too much pleasure in being reassured that he fulfills a greater purpose.

I move from one aisle to the next looking for Phina. Fortunately, the library at this hour has a smattering of people. Quiet rule-abiding readers linger about and I can't help but make up a story for each one I encounter: When I find a reader in a certain aisle, I look up the section they're in and imagine how they came about to peruse those particular books. Look now, here's a haggard fellow with long blond hair and an unkempt beard in the Spirituality and Religion section. I decide that he's transitioning from being an ordinary short-haired boy of twenty to an extraordinary philosopher of twenty-one with long locks; his hesitant browsing silently boasts of his determination to be on the path to self-discovery.

I wander further into the library and begin to think that perhaps Phina hasn't come in for her shift today. But I feel unsure because Phina is almost always at the library, regardless of her shift. I head back to check her desk again and luckily it isn't empty this time. My chest lightens a little at the sight of her sitting at her usual workplace. She has her wispy fairy hair tied in a ponytail. My footsteps make her look up at me and I smile in greeting, "Just the person I was looking for."

"You're back again," she says softly with delight swimming through her spectacles.

"The library's like home, Phina, you know that."

She smiles faintly and agrees, "I know that."

"How are you today?"

"Good, I'm well, thank you," she replies and turns a page of the book before her in an anesthetic manner.

"I didn't see you when I came in. I went looking all over the library for you. And then I come back here and find you've inexplicably appeared back at your desk."

Phina smile latches on deeply this time, "I'm sorry, I was out at the back. The good citizens of Avian Oaks were feeling generous this morning. We got boxes full of book donations."

"Oh, that's great!"

She nods with quiet enthusiasm.

"Would you believe me if I told you seraphs are not very delightful in person?"

"They're not?" Her hazel eyes consider me carefully. "But they make the world a better place."

"They're fickle and uncertain, like us. They even have springs from which they drink, to erase doubt."

She continues to regard me curiously, "I think I can believe that. Nobody is perfect, of course."

"And they eat from trees ablaze on fire. Fireberries. Which taste like oranges," I recall.

"That sounds delightful," she tells me, not for a second surprised or questioning me. "I would love to taste some fireberries."

If there's one person in Avian Oaks, who would wholeheartedly believe in all my bizarre adventures, it would be Phina. I retrieve her gemstone and place it gingerly in the open spine on her desk.

"It's from the five-seventh layer of heaven."

Phina's eyes widen for a split second behind her cat-eyed specs. Then she grabs the stone almost hungrily. "Seraphinite. I've read about these. I don't think you can find them here. Oh Jemma, this is incredible, thank you," she gushes with renewed vigour, which pleasantly startles me.

"I'm glad you like it. The stone serves as a link between you and the seraphic realm. How though? I'm not sure. But it's supposed to give you the ability to live more fully."

She nods with perfect understanding, like she already knows what I'm talking about. "And that'll make me a hopeful immortal Sylvia Plath?" She jokes unpretentiously.

I laugh, "Precisely, don't we all want to be just that?"

She nods again, with another inscrutable smile.

"They're mean tricksters, I'm telling you," I describe the angels.

"Perhaps the ones you met were. But there are others. And they make this world a better place." Phina stays true to her interpretation of the seraphic realm, and nothing I say convinces her otherwise.