The Defining Line

1: Permiable

Do you know how many stars flutter over the sky? Just recently I was told there were millions of trillions of stars, however many that is.

The lights in the city dims this time of night making the sky clearer than ever. Even the winds calm during the night to the point I can see the refection of glowing white seedlings over the distance pond. Once in a while they would dance if the wind decided to stir or a fellow firefly began to move about over nature's first mirror.

"Gazing again?" Ove speaks behind me, I immediately feel him approach placing his hands on my hips. Naturally they sit there as if my body was build to hold them steady.

"Sorry, I've never seen the night so clear." I relocate myself aware of my surroundings on a balcony out my bedroom.

"Perhaps we should sleep outside tonight?" Ove releases me and takes the covers off our bed spreading them behind me. I can feel the abrupt displacement of the cotton drape on the back of my leg as he lowers the blanket to the ground.

My legs buckle as I fall to the cushioned floor not chancing a glance away from the sky until Ove force my chin in his direction.

"Why do the stars captivate you so much? They're just blinking lights Astrid."

"I know..." I forget to finish my sentence and look back up.

"Come to bed, I need you to accompany me." Ove pulls himself beneath the ruffled blankets until he is comfortable.

"I don't want to be enjoyed tonight." I tell him stiffly.

"Come on, your unborn children rely on it!" He waves me over. He must think I'm joking.

"Ove I-"

"Astrid! Come to bed."

"Not tonight!" I argue, but where else am I going to go? I remove my slippers from my toes and place myself beside Ove.

"I will not be forced within the first week Ove." I close my eyes and drift off leaving him hungry and unsatisfied.

*.*.*.*

I sit across from Saga sipping a tea as we usually find ourselves meeting for Fika every Sunday or Thursday when we both have the money to that week.

We drink out of small cups and saucers in an outdoor porch wearing our finest oranges and browns listening to the city people sing not a block away from where we perch on a pleasant summer day.

Usually we speak of how our gardens grow when we know there are wandering ears at a nearby table but once the tables have cleared, and they always do once the sun releases from it's largest stretch in the sky. We get down and show each other our stamps we bought from the market place.

It's not often people like us get stamps living where we live, because we don't ever leave our end of town. It's not like we purposely go behind their backs anyway sending letters to god knows who because we know no one outside our small community.

"I got three new ones." Saga shows me, pulling out the stamps of different lilly's.

"I got this new one." I pull out the stamp with a boat on it. Saga always got more stamps than me but I never let it bother me too much.

I take a closer look at her newest editions along with the older ones I have only seen a million times still appreciating their pictures.

I look up to say something to Saga but I forget the words.

I try to look for her across from me but her chair is now empty, and so is the other seats around me. The band playing lovely music now echoes the last of its sounds against the buildings until that too becomes quiet. I sit alone in a seemingly vacant square of town.

"Saga?" I stand to look for her but my hair just clouds my vision from the wind that now rushes past me. There are no signs of life anywhere I look.

Accept a small distance away, across the cobbled road, an ally sits in shadows.

A young girls stands peering over the corner careful to stay in the shadows. Her name is Sigge she told me once, she changes a lot which makes it difficult for me to find her but I know I have her now. she wears white dress and a colourful head piece. Her blonde locks are long and her eyes are nearly piercing.

What could Sigge want this time? She holds out her arm past the shadows and into the sunlight for me to take.

It's rude to keep her waiting, especially when she is opening up to me which she never does. I stand from my seat and move out of the restaurant porch to take her hand.

Although she seems fair, her hands are quite rough, and her hair is more scraggily at a closer view. She watches my eyes as I clasp my warm fingers within her frail cold hands. She's spent a long time in the shadows, and I know she is dying to get out.

A smirk sneaks over half her cheek, she knows I am confident in her.

She pulls my hand deeper into the darkness of the shadows until it consumes my arm. She takes a moment to look at me and reefs my entire arm so the shadows cover us.

"Where are we going Sigge?"

Down the allies she leads changing abrupt directions like she knows the exact way she's going, but she doesn't speak. She never has, I don't know why I always expect something different like an answer to one of the many questions I ask her.

She pulls me around out of the ally and stops abruptly at a brick wall. Cobblestone leads a trail straight until the brick wall starts, how odd to find this here.

I look around Sigge's head to find the edge of the building, maybe walk around it so she can continue taking me where she want's to go. Accept when I look the bricks seem to go on forever.

No sides to a building that's impossible, I walk along the wall and I see it's not. The wall truly does continue forever.

Sigge guides my hand back to the cobble road signing at the brick.

"What do you want me to do? I can't walk through walls Sigge." She smiles at me, still not answering my question, and takes my hand placing it against the warm bricks.

Like jello, my hands fall through, Sigge and I are consumed by the wall not leaving a single trace behind.

I feel nothing as I pass, life continues on the other side of the wall. Accept people move quite quickly. I step into a square I have never seen before and greet lots of children out to play. Their mothers stand behind them, drinking out of bottles of water and discuss the day that has been brought among them.

Many people walk along the square today, they all seem to have a place to go, someone to see, something to do.

A man wearing a rugged green corduroy hat, legs draped over the side plays a small guitar on a bench strumming for a single coin to pay for his next meal.

As a lady, I know I do have some to share, it's wrong to see anyone in a state as his.

I lay the single coin I have and he nods in good thanks.

By now the children have moved towards the player dancing around my knees, I give in as I always do and take their hands to dance.

A young boy so polite and three girls to accompany him, we dance in circles three, until I close my eyes and open again. The fields are soft and bare.

The people are gone the music is gone and I stand afoot of a grave. The label marks Astrid Solem, the last name I'd hope to see.

*.*.*.*

I sit up to scream from my bedroom balcony, Ove is quickly by my side.

"What's going on!?" He puffs in shock.

I look between the metal beams holding me to the house.

"Just a dream." I say. Those words cannot sum up the feelings I have.

"Should we go back inside?"

I nod and flatten my lips to a line, Ove takes my hands closing the balcony doors behind me so we can settle.