The Never-Ending Notebook: Book of Books

Spoken in Silence: Cracked Consistency

Pausing to hear the stranger's voice, he arched to see a glance of the blob from behind the carefully groomed shrubbery.

Hey! Would you look at that! It's not a blob! It's a girl! Still might need the shovel, though. Who knows.

The boy saw the girl with long ebony hair in a mess of leaves and twigs with stray strands stuck in the bark of the tree and drifting down her front. Her face was damp in the leaf-shadowed moonlight but her eyes glimmered a sea-green as her mouth was open and singing sweetly.

Still gripping his shovel and drumstick, the boy climbed up the treehouse. Grabbing a dirty and forgotten blanket he curls up above her in a corner. Silently, he listens to her voice dance around them.

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Chapter 4: Cracked Consistency

Mei Lang Huang blinked her soft eyes open, tapping her index finger against the lush grass under the grandfather tree. Her finger stilled, her eyes widened and her head tilted up to the sky releasing a held breath when noticing the sky was still the color of spilled wine against a silken tapestry.

Slowly reawakening her leaden legs, she stood. Mei knew that she would have to be in her silken sheeted bed before the shadowed sky became burnt with fresh rays of sunlight. Activating her right leg she attempted to step forward but stumbled like a newborn doe. Her hands hit the dew sprinkled grass of the earth below her. She pressed her palms down into the dirt pushing herself back into an upright position and resumed a steady gait.

With confidence, her steps became as light as the crisp air and her pace rose to a faster stride. Through the trees and off beaten sidewalks behind modern styled Japanese minkas Mei trekked raising her speed once her legs acclimated to the new movement.

With a starting run, the ebony haired girl followed the ephemeral fragrance of the night sky and the blooming flowers of Tashinaga's Seiren Gardens. The night washed hair streamed in the wind like a traditional ribbon dancer, flowing as she ran past greenhouses and gaudy backyards of mansions.

A girl in a white nightgown floated down the paved street towards an enlarged contemporary siheyuan knowing the inability to walk into the courtyard. Instead, the ghost opened a bedroom window and climbed inside. Washing her ceramic hands in the porcelain basin, she glanced at the mirror opposite the bed. As she glanced, a shadow seen in the daylight replacing the sun at night.

The girl ambled beside the sizable bed before picking up the finely threaded sheets and slipping under. Her leaden legs fell and froze. The night once again became merely a summer's dream.

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Awakening on silken bed sheets underneath four-bed posts, the girl with the black hair circled her fingers on the fine threads feeling no dew sprinkled grass or fragrance of the night air. Her leaden legs draped in a white nightgown validated that the ebony haired girl's dream last night was reality.

The opaque fusuma door slides open to reveal a doe-like Macy, the maid. Shuffling around the room, she reorganized the dresser, neatened the vanity and, assisted the porcelain doll to ready for the day. The only noise between the paper walls was shushing of the girl's clothed feet and the soft twittering between Macy's lips.

Exiting the paper prison in a delicate, lotus blossom, hanfu, poised and pruned to perfection placed in a matte black wheelchair. Assistants wheeled the black-haired child across the hall in another section of the house. There, a wizened man dressed in silver hair and carved calcite face would greet the blank-slate eyes before lecturing topics of Chinese and American History. The plastic and perfect flower sit paralyzed in the flawless garden of concealed imprisonment.

In this time, between the girl and the carved man, life paused. Nothing else mattered but words of the man before the still-faced model. Absorbing facts, reliving memories and envisioning a moving picture filled with word-made images. The man never thought the girl thought of his words, that she saw the world before her, that in one moment a happy life would glitter distantly behind her eyes.

Life would play again when the fusuma doors 'shushed' open and wheeled the porcelain figure through other doors, other halls and other rooms as the bright sun would shadow lower and lower silhouettes on the paper painted doors until she would be placed once more in the adjoining sitting room of the dolls bedroom.

The girl with the curtain of obsidian would sit in a plush lilac chair before being left with only Macy, the maid, till another would open the doors to reveal a silver dome and a polished fork. Being fed painfully slow with tiny bites of gourmet food, Macy-the maid- would return back to her corner in still silence.

As the sun lowered its head closer to the horizon, the girl with the hair of night and eyes of starlight would raise her head to gaze at Macy. With a smile in her heart, the girl dressed in blossoming spring smiles and nods to Macy in the corner. Who returns a happy grin, a knowing look under the bed, and 'shushes' the door open one last time.

Carefully rising to a stand as the sun falls to sleep, the girl stumbles over her feet before tossing her fake pastel shoes. She strides to the bottom of the bed where she fishes for her treasure. In her hand, she reveals her secret happiness, a small sandalwood zither.

With the rest of the house wishing 'good nights,' Mei silently slides the fusuma door open to step out onto the outreaching deck. Inhaling a fresh breath of the outside air, clutching tightly on the zither, Mei closed her eyes and began to feel the steady pound of her feet skipping over the damp dew-ridden grass. Like a Boka lens on a camera, Mei's gaze blurs her vision only seeing snapshots of the pruned beauty around. Cold air swirls at her lungs and whispered into her hair, "Run, be free." The ground disappears beneath her as her mind flees from the four walls of the house behind. Twist and turns between trees and secret paths, wild grass and rebelling flowers climbing over trees.

The harmony of nature's chaos stills as Mei's eyes recognize the camphor tree and the shabby tree shack within its embrace. Her breath races, stealing clutches of oxygen around her as she glides over the randomly placed stones and long grass.

Finally, with a release of breath, Mei sits against the trunk of the camphor tree pulling out her small zither. With a few uncertain plucks, her fingers beginning to dance over the thin strings. A harmony swirling around her like the leaves in the tree and the grass on the ground. Crisp notes and sweet movement compel the lips of Mei to widen and spread. Like preshaken soda, Mei felt the bubbles inside bouncing to be free. The cap twists, her smile widens and her fingers skip, dance, moving faster and quicker like mentos in soda.

"Oof!" With a harsh thump, the melody shrieked to a halt. The peeling bark of the camphor tree grabs her hair.

Mei opened her eyes, awakening from her trance to see a similarly aged boy on her lap tangled between her legs. From his upside down position, his thin lips creep up to a quirked smile, his eyebrows crease and he waved his hand, wiggling his fingers.

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A/N: I know I havent posted in a while and I am sorry. Hope you enjoyed another chapter in Mei's life. Feel free to read the rest of the stories in the notebook.... Soon (kinda? Maybe?) I will make a separate book for these stories. Be happy, smile and accept other for who they are. 

Stay Inspired;

Fruitgurl