Truthfully, I never would have met her if I hadn't been up at three o'clock in the morning watching the miniature Kangaroo that Alex had just bought. She told me that the person who watched got to keep the egg that came in the morning, and I was lucky enough to have raised my hand first.
The thing about staying up all night waiting for a miniature kangaroo to lay it's egg is it gets extremely boring. I may have dozed off for a couple of minutes.
The tinkle of bells. The noise I heard when I woke from my kangaroo-induced slumber. They were somber tinkling bells, if that's even possible. Coursing through the house, defeated and lonely. So I was pretty sure they weren't Santa's.
I had left the windows open to cool down the loft from the heat of a July evening and the morning glow was already starting to seep through the open doors. Although I never recollected that the sun rose at 3:30 a.m. In fact it wasn't a golden shine, but more of a bright white light. It drew me up from my chair and over to the balcony like a moth to a flame. The light was most definitely coming from the street below, but much to my chagrin, I couldn't pinpoint exactly where it was actually coming from.
The light and the bells started to fade away as my mysterious enigma started to move away. I had to hurriedly skid down the stairs through the sub shop and out into the street to catch whatever was causing this post-midnight disruption. I threw open the door to the shop, regretting the action immediately as it sent echoes down the narrow street. I traipsed back towards the door shutting it silently. By the time I had recovered from my mistake though, the alley was only being lit my the signs in the windows of the Sub Station and it's neighbors.
After deciding the light was coming from a kangaroo dream, I was all set to give up chase of this strange occurrence. I really would have too, if the shiny dew left on the porch outside the substation door hadn't perplexed me. I was naturally drawn to shiny objects and more often than not distracted by them, so I was pretty sure that I would have known if our steps were shiny before tonight. So it was definitely a new sparkly layer to the old step. Wiping my finger across it, I noticed that the sparkles were warm and they were glowing. Furthermore, there was a trail of them right up the street and around the corner.
Always ready for an adventure, I grabbed my stashed badminton racket, and I snuck up the street. Holding it high above my head and squinting my eyes shut, I prepared to attack whatever was around the corner. As I threw myself around the corner, I threw my racket out in front of me. Without my eyes open, there was no use of thrashing the club around and I just let it fly.
From the clunk it made, I figured it had only hit the building. But it sure did scare something, or someone. I was surprised to see that when I opened my eyes the eerie light was back. Only it wasn't eerie. It was soft and calming and warm. And in the middle of the light sat a girl terror plastered on her face as she tried to scoot away from her attacker. By the way she moved, I could tell that she was hurt. My first instinct was to try and help the lady, well actually she was probably only my age, so girl. But when I dashed to her side, she made a mad scramble to get away from me.
"It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."
"Oh yeah, then what was that with the… the … sticky thingy," her voice jingled. I mean I'm a wizard, so magical things don't really scary, and I'm also Max, so normal weird things don't really faze me either. But her voice sent chills down my spine. And good chills at that. "You could have… hit me." In awe, I moved from my crouched position to a now sitting one. I wanted to hear her talk some more.
"Are you an elf?"
"An elf?... no silly. I'm a… I'm… a… what's it called?" She spoke as if she didn't know what words were going to come next. English was probably not her first language. Actually, it was more like wherever she had come from she hadn't been doing much talking at all. She gave up trying to explain where she had come from and changed the discussion back to elves. Fortunately for her, I was much more entranced with her voice and the fact that it was raining sparkles to really care much about where she had come from.
"An elf?" I realized she had asked me what an elf was. "Oh, an elf is like a creature with pointy ears that everyone always wants to be around. They've kind of got a magnetic personality I guess you could say. But you are much different than an elf…"
She blushed. Well sort of. At least I think she did. Her skin was white. Not pale. White. And a glassy, pearly white at that. So when her cheeks lost their opacity, I figured she was blushing. Her skin was actually just as fantastic as her voice and the sparkles. Hidden underneath long, silky white hair, she almost looked like a china doll. If not for the fact that she was breathing and her facial features, instead of being painted with colorful makeup like a doll, were more of a glassy blue hue. Actually, she was just really beautiful.
"I'm… I'm Max." I stuttered out.
"I'm Clara."
"It's cold out here. You should come inside. I'll make you a sandwich. Do you eat sandwiches?"
"I'm not really sure. I've never had one before." She giggled. They were bells. Just like before. Just not sad. They were happy bells. She laughed bells.
I got up offering my hand down to help Clara off of the ground. She took it. I was surprised at the warmth of her skin. From the glass blue color I was expecting that she would be cold. "You're not cold." I muttered aloud. Oh, great. I was always saying stupid stuff aloud like that. Normally turned people off. But she just smiled. Her perfect white teeth were even glowing.
When she took a step though the let went out and she moaned in pain. Well the moan was also bells, so if I hadn't seen her fall back to the ground, I wouldn't have even known she was hurt. I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her back up. As we walked along, I held her weight mostly on me so that her hurt leg barely even touched the ground. As we walked so closely together I felt her fluttering heartbeat against my chest and her glow began to show again.
Inside the sub shop, I got her set up on one of the stools and ran around to start making sandwiches. Everything on them. Just the way that I liked them. Mashed potatoes, ham, snickers, pepperoni, pudding, some ketchup and a few other ingredients to make my masterpiece.
Clara was gazing around the sub shop in awe. She had a saltshaker in her one hand and was admiring it in the dim light. "Do you like salt on your sandwiches?"
"Salt?" She looked up at me in confusion. Then looked back at the small container and her face lighted up. "This is salt?"
I slid her plate over to her. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Unless it's the pepper one."
She looked at her sandwich and then back at me. I had the sandwich mid-bite and I would have been embarrassed, but she almost looked as if she were studying my actions. Like she had truly never eaten a sandwich before. She placed the saltshaker on top of the sandwich and lifted it all up to her mouth to try and stuff it all in at once. I quickly pulled her hands away from her face though. "Whoa!" She looked hurt. "I mean, you just don't eat the shaker." This girl was crazier than me. I shook the salt out onto her plate. Her face lit up even brighter. Actually her entire body lit up as she stared at the falling salt. She grabbed the saltshaker and shook some more salt onto her plate. Her amazement was astounding. She shook her own hands over her plate and astonishingly, sparkles fell from her fingertips. I gasped in amazement. She giggled and started to spill even more salt onto her plate. She put a finger on the salt and started drawing circles in it.
"Here, taste it." I liked my finger, picked up some salt and stuck it in my mouth. She followed suit, and as soon as the salt touched her lips she looked at me expecting an answer.
"It's gone." She stuck out her tongue to see where the salt was. She tried it again and again the salt disappeared from her tongue.
"It's so nice to finally meet someone who enjoys the taste of simple things." I commented to her.
She pointed to her sandwich, and I nodded for her to try it.
She picked it up clumsily half of the food falling out the side. Laughing as she made the sandwich to her mouth, she took a small bite in the side. Her eyes lit up, as she loved it. When the bite slid down her throat, she grabbed it in amazement. "Where did it go?"
"Into your stomach." I was getting really confused as to why this girl knew absolutely nothing about life whatsoever. But her charm really wasn't wearing off, so I just watched her eat every bite of the sandwich. How lucky was I to find a girl in the middle of the night that like my cooking? I mean I was pressed for luck when it came to find anyone around here who enjoyed my company at all. "You're like an angel."
Her head snapped up at me. I expected her to be angry at my comment. It was kind of creepy, I realized after I had said it, but she just smiled. "An angel?"
"Are you an angel?" It was kind of a stupid question. I had met angels before, and Clara didn't really resemble angels at all. She was missing the wings, and angels didn't really have the blue in the face thing going on.
She shook her head and looked out the window towards the sky. She pointed up towards the black mask above the skyscrapers. "I'm a… a… um…"
"An alien?"
She smiled up at me, but there was no recognition in her eyes. She looked defeated and her eyes were almost pleading.
"Well, whatever you happen to be, I'm sure you can stay with me until you rest up and can go back." She liked the idea of this so I brought her back upstairs, well brought being a loose translation of half pull, half carry. I set her up on the couch, not really wanted her to see my room and not having the effort to bring her up another set of stairs. She nestled into the couch and as she fell asleep her light became dimmer. I sat down back at the kitchen table, but I sure wasn't watching the kangaroo this time.