Shane had made a point of writing everything she recalled of Eliot's stories in her diary in hopes of making him her guide to this world. She hated that she couldn't remember more, but couldn't have known that she wouldn't be hearing the stories once a month for the rest of her life and thus let them fade to make room for another section of the library. Never had she hated her brain more, not even when it caused her to misspell the word "biplane" at the televised state spelling bee. What she remembered best was how to get to Blythewood Garden and to his favorite statue. That seemed the only thing on this campus that had actually caught Eliot's fancy enough to describe in detail enough for Shane. To hear him go on--and she dearly wished she could again--Blythewood was a little corner of Eden that floated up during the Flood, still being presided over by an alabaster Eve. If he had described flesh and blood girls in general with half the passion he directed toward one made of stone, Shane would have had to fight off his suitors with a large stick. She felt she wouldn't have minded.
Shane was wrong. Not about bludgeoning other girls with a club -- that was definitely the best course of action -- but Eliot was not exaggerating. His pronounced absence, though instantly as painful as a hatpin to the chest, did not stop the flowers from seeming to be full to bursting with color. The touch of autumn had already begun to creep into the trees around this walled garden, the tips of their leaves catching aflame with orange, but the plants within were as florid as if in a hot house. She saw a large black bird -- far too large a black bird, Shane thought in passing -- alight upon the boughs of an overhanging willow. It croaked encouragement at her, but she couldn't find that reassuring very reassuring. The bird stood anxious to see her next move.
She walked down the hill, eschewing the stone steps for grass beneath her. Closing her eyelids, she tried to keep Eliot tight in her mind. He walked down this hill a hundred times at least. He rolled down it more than once. If she thought about him as though he were here, then maybe he would be. Maybe, at least, it could feel that way.
Her eyes opened to bursts of red and green, but no angel-headed hipster. The statue of a small girl -- the stone lips she knew Eliot had kissed -- gazed blindly at the ground as though goading Shane to move closer. It looked like an estranged and mourning lover from a distance, though a lover no taller than a toddler.
Shane stopped walking when she caught sight of the statue and decided to put the garden off for another day.
Returning to her room, she intended to finish her unpacking. Half the room had improbably been decorated while Shane had been standing on the path to the garden. The room remained nude on Shane's side but the rest of the room wore the hues of a deep bruise. Next to the only window hung a fairly skillful rendering of a blonde girl, hugging her knees and naked but for a pair of glimmering dragonfly wings.
Despite the preponderance of decor, her new roommate was not there. This was for the best as it gave Shane a chance to snoop both into her roommate's closet and dresser. Aside from a preponderance of purple and black, pleather clothes that looked in no way comfortable, she was amused to see that her roommate wore pink undergarments with unicorns and fairies on them. She looked forward to meeting the owner and not just her underclothes.
Shane turned from her underwear invasion and noticed with some awkward comfort that her roommate had a three-foot, ceramic ankh hanging above her bed, covering a triangular scar in the plaster. Shane fidgeted her ring and found a use for the rest of the tissues.
We Shadows is a serialized novel being written by Xen, also known as Thomm Quackenbush. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
