A Singular Witness

A Storm Brews

Quinn woke up and stretched. The only sound was an echoing silence. She checked her alarm clock, and confirmed she'd woken on time. It wasn't just the quiet that was unsettling. She looked around the room, and realized it was darker than usual. She crawled sleepily across the covers to move aside the curtain that draped a large window at the end of her bed. On the other side of her window stood a wall of fog.

She got up and dressed. When she walked in the dining room, only Sonia was seated at the large table. Both her tablet and a bowl of cereal were sitting in front of her, though the cereal looked largely untouched.

"No meeting this morning?" Quinn asked.

Sonia looked up, her brow furrowed beneath a mosaic of freckles. "We're not going to get a good feed in this fog. Looks like a storm's moved in, which is almost unheard of for June in Los Angeles."

"Did everybody go back to bed?" There was no sign of anyone in the vicinity aside from herself and Sonia.

"Daniel got up early, on the one day there's nothing to do, of course. He and Ali went to the store, said they needed to get some stuff. Jeremy did go back to bed."

The screen saver on Sonia's tablet popped up while she and Quinn spoke. Quinn noticed the image, a deep space formation framed by the sleek rounded edges of the thin tablet.

"I like your screen saver. Is that a picture of a galaxy?"

Sonia considered the question for a moment. "I suppose it could best be described as an event within a galaxy. The image is actually pretty old. It's an artist's rendering of a black hole swallowing a star." Sonia looked thoughtful again. "It's weird, talking about the image being old, when scientists speculate this kind of event only occurs every ten thousand years or so, and only in galaxies situated around super massive black holes."

Quinn looked more closely at the screen. There were great roiling storm clouds, charcoal gray against splotches of bright aqua blue, interspersed with stars. There was an arc of bright white light that wrapped around a dense black circle at its center. Another jet stream of light shot through the dark tunnel, wispy ribbons of atmospheric pressure forming a haze, like that of dreams drifting away from eyes when they open upon waking.

"Beautiful." Quinn said.

She heard the front door, and Daniel and Ali bustled through it carrying grocery bags.

"We decided to cook." Daniel said, smiling smugly from behind his bag.

"I didn't know you knew how." Quinn said, returning his smile.

Daniel pulled carryout containers out of the grocery bags. Quinn laughed.

Daniel winked. "No need for energy food this morning. Blueberry pancakes are on the menu."

"Walk, don't run." Quinn said, moving to take one of the Styrofoam carry out containers from him.

They forked the pancakes onto a pan to reheat them. There were sides of eggs, bacon, and sausage. The four of them sat around the table, enjoying the first lazy day they'd shared in Los Angeles.

When they finished eating, Daniel turned to Quinn. "So, you serious about that walk?"

"Sure. I'm up for a leisurely pace." She said.

It was raining lightly outside. Quinn took off her sandals, walking bare foot across damp sand. Though early, carnival lights glittered luminously in the fog from the Santa Monica Pier.

"You can taste the ocean in the air." Quinn said, turning to face Daniel. She brushed damp hair from her face, her thin sundress clinging to her skin as they walked through the rain.