Journeys and Star Gazing

No rainbow hues crowned the dilapidated house across the asphalt. A lone weed struggled through the crack in the cement to greet the constant passersby. She could empathize with the weed. “What’s a weed but a plant discarded from the mob?” she thought.

Her hair, from a distance, looked like a lion’s mane. Up close, what you thought was hair was clusters of thin lines of flame with light blue ends. Was she an angel? A messenger of fire descended into this neighbourhood? Or was she just an illusion to occupy a mind locked into a cube of space? Could she be both? Like a profile that is a vase from one view or two faces turned inward from another. How long she had been watching was anyone’s guess.

George felt her eyes on him, an unsettling sensation that sharpened his awareness of his subterranean existence. He had carried the underground in his soul for so long that he feared being recognized—feared it might destroy him. To be seen was to be known, and to be known was to lose the only freedom he understood: the fragile equilibrium between necessity and whim. His underground world was a realm of shifting sand, where heaven and hell were interchangeable kingdoms. Above, the surface world was a place of silhouettes; below, he clung to the parallax of a lost star.

The worry beads in his pocket offered little comfort. His father had given them to him, claiming they were carved from the thigh bones of a Turk killed in some distant war. The macabre story had been a joke, his father’s way of mixing humour with his dark compassion. But the beads—smooth, ivory fragments of elephant tusk—still felt like relics of a troubled inheritance. He turned them over in his hand as if their smooth surface might anchor him to something solid.

At the station, Sophie appeared, filling the empty space with something familiar and alien. George noticed her wings first—scarlet feathers that seemed too vivid and alive to be part of any costume.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice wary.

“Good, you see me,” she replied, a grin teasing her lips. “Can you see all of me?”

He squinted. “I can see you’ve got red wings.”

“Scarlet,” she corrected. “That’s even better! You can see my wings. Most can’t.” Her hands moved as she spoke, graceful as a dancer’s, and George found himself oddly captivated. “I’m a Temporary Angel,” she continued, “and I need your help. I want to be made permanent.”

George shook his head. “You’re telling me you’re an angel? Walking around Redfern Station? And I’m the only one who can see you?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “What other people?”

George looked around and saw that the station was deserted. The people who were walking around, looking at their watches, holding their bags, waiting for a train—there was no one on the platforms or the stairs. It was as if the world had been blown away with a breath, leaving only him and Sophie in this crystalline stillness. He glanced at his shadow, unnervingly sharp against the ground in the fading twilight. The light around him seemed too pure, too surreal, sharpening every edge and making every detail glow with impossible clarity.

Sophie handed him a cup of coffee, her thermos producing exactly what he liked—short and black, no sugar. “For now, silence might save you. Just listen. Let your heart speak louder than your head. Don’t let your head scalp you.”

As George sipped his coffee, she crossed her legs and leaned back slightly. “You know,” she said, “some people believe you must suffer to reach salvation—hairshirts, long vigils, self-denial. But my colleagues and I have learned that you can sit at the gates of salvation with a cup of coffee and not be asked to move on.” She winked at him.

They sat in silence until the air shifted. A moth the size of George’s hand appeared, landing delicately on the rim of his cup. Its eyes—dark and unblinking—seemed to peer into his soul.

“That’s Moth,” Sophie said. “A fellow Temp. You’ll meet more of us soon.”

Moth took off, its wings slicing through the air like a blade. Sophie stood, her scarlet wings stretching wide. “What do you want, George?” she asked, her voice low and steady. “Say it aloud.”

He hesitated, holding his breath, the weight of the question pressing down on him.

“What do you want, George?” Sophie asked again, her voice softer this time. “Be honest. It’s not the past you’re after, is it?”

“I want everything,” he finally said. “Everything, including making it all like it was before—perfect.”

She smiled, a faint sadness in her eyes. “Everything, huh? Even a brand-new car?”

“Sure,” he said, though he knew how hollow his words sounded.

Sophie turned her head toward the distant stairs. “Look over there. If the timing is right, he’ll reveal something to us.”

At the top of the railway stairs, a man descended. With each step, his shadow lengthened, stretching until it reached the bottom, falling down the stairway like a spectral companion. He dragged a sack behind him, his movements erratic, like a puppet tugged by invisible strings. His patchwork clothes—a riot of velvet, canvas, lace, and denim—hung on his frame like a discarded quilt.

The Ragman stopped before them, his single eye gleaming. Sophie gestured toward him, her voice dropping to a whisper. “He doesn’t expect any sense from you. He merely guards the door.”

The Ragman began to hum, his voice rough and melodic, then sang softly:

“Pictures of Sophie burn at the edges,
In shades of blue, she keeps her pledges.”

Moth descended from above, spiralling in tight circles before perching on the Ragman’s head. Sophie’s wings shifted as she stepped forward. “This is the sign,” she murmured.

The Ragman shuffled closer, his one eye scanning George with a gaze that weighed him in unseen scales. Then, with a raspy certainty, he said, “The timing is right. The planets are aligned, and you’re here.”

Sophie turned to George, her expression shifting to something both tender and resolute. “What do you think, George? Will you take the next step?”

She extended her hand toward him, and he felt her fingers press through his chest, gripping his heart. A sharp crack echoed in his ears as his vision dissolved into light.

They rose together, Sophie’s wings propelling them upward. Below, George saw his body standing alone on the platform. He saw the weed standing defiantly alone as he ascended. Then, slowly, the world came into focus—a railway station teeming with people, their movements alive with purpose.

Higher still, the Earth appeared, a blue and white orb spinning in a sea of black. Sophie’s wings shimmered, their scarlet hue fading into white as they ascended.

The cries and groans of countless souls filled the air. “What is this place?” George asked, his voice trembling.

“The holding space of the dead,” Sophie replied.

“The sun takes those whose light burned too brightly to last. The moon cradles the quiet souls, the dreamers. And Earth… Earth takes those who still have something left to finish,” Sophie said softly.

“Is my father here?” George asked.

Sophie nodded. “He’s waiting.”

George felt the fear of taking an uncertain step onto a journey that had no clear destination. Sophie’s grip on his heart tightened, and he realized she had brought him to the edge of something vast and unknowable. The shifting sand of his old life was gone, and in its place stretched a horizon of infinite possibility.

“The stranger within you is no stranger to me,” Sophie said. “It’s always been watching, waiting for this moment.”

“What happens now?” George asked.

Sophie smiled, her wings glowing softly. “That’s up to you.”

George felt the pull of the horizon, vast and uncharted. Somewhere in the distance, a new path was waiting. He took a step forward into the light.

The above images generated by AI from the story.