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Tasci felt something strange on the bus that day, like a peculiar mirror, as if for a minute she were drawing herself.
"So the Geology exam was covering the chapter but I'd already read the two chapters..."
"Can't stand it I tell ya! They order two milkshakes again then..."
"Uh! Uh! Uh! *gurgle* Uaaah! Uh! *suck*suck*suck*"
Typical noise on the bus filtered through her head as she tried to figure out what it was she had just experienced. It was a long bus, with the rumbling engine in the back. There was a row of sideways seats on either side of the bus from the engine at the rear to about halfway towards the front of the bus. From there, the seats all faced forward, being split into two pairs of two for each row, 4 seats with a walk way between them.
"Must have been someone walking over my grave," Tasci concluded, playing with the mittens in her lap. Her coat to the side in the heated bus was light grey in color, rather cheap looking, though not damaged. Somehow the forest green sweater had ended up underneath the coat, even though they were removed in reverse order. Such is life.
Clothing is funny. It's the source of endless ridicule, and the secret to shallow fame. In Tasci's opinion, she paid close attention to clothing for one and only one reason: it was camoflage. That which showed off one's charisma could also be used to conceal. Some twisted part of her enjoyed being able to step aside from the fashion battle, hiding in shades of green and grey, watching from afar: the falling picking at the fallen.
Not to say she didn't have any friends, just none on the basis of clothing. Perhaps a conservative olive shirt, or teal, or green-blue, a personal favorite. Always solid colors, or white, always aimed at maximum wear and comfort, minimum flair. To be invisible is a truly exhilirating feeling, and even among the shabbily dressed patrons of the bus, Tasci was invisible.
"Hm," she chuckled to herself. "I'm not Goth, I'm the Antigoth. Have to find an excuse to use that line..."
The bus went on across the wind swept grassland, pass farms and scrub grass rendered in muted shades of grey by the endless clouds overhead. One long strip of black concrete broke the uniform greyness, stretching on forever towards the horizon. Tasci leaned against the window lazily, watching the little rain drops spatter against the plastic sheet, dancing in their frantic dance where invisible vibrations from the bus would cause them all to jump simultaneously, then quiver as though driven by a great shock.
The bus was dark, no more than shifting shadows of people could be seen. Tasci could see them clearly, glad to have learned that she was gifted and challenged just a little bit from her visit to the Optometrist. Tasci found a certain delight in being weird, so a doctor's conformation of even a little thing was good news indeed.
* * *
The light was so bright everything was shiningly white and then red with veins. "I see you have very sensitive eyes," the optometrist said, moving his light pen away from Tasci's face.
"Really?" Tasci cocked her head at him. "That's funny. Makes sense though."
"I would recommend you get sunglasses with your prescription," he said, fiddling with the great machine that contained all the lenses for refining the prescription using one's perception of vision. Like a mounted set of huge binoculars, there were two spaces to put one's eyes, but the spaces looked like eyes themselves. "There could be consequences if you don't."
"Like what?"
"Nothing serious, just the fact that your eyes are so sensitive, they'll probably start giving out later in life," the doctor kept on calmly.
"Oh," Tasci said, equally calm. "So sunglasses can fix that?"
"Those or transition lenses should do fine."
An uncomfortable silence followed, then Tasci spoke up again, hesitantly. "Makes sense... I'm always blinking in the sunlight... sun blind. And I never get too lost in a dark room."
"Mmm hmm," the doctor said, not listening whatsoever. Tasci shut up then, a little disappointed, but not wanting to push the issue. The machine came closer and he said, "I want you to look at the letters across the room..."
* * *
A thump brought Tasci back to reality. The bus was constantly rattling around. Those tin cans of buses were almost a laughing-stock. One lousy bus came every hour, and it only allowed two bicycles. The bus system was fragmented, expensive, but there was a good point. All the noisiferous shakes and rattles had done miraculous things for improving Tasci's accuracy in drawing. She didn't have her sketchbook right now; it was in the backpack, with all her other little hopes.
Tasci swayed and caught herself on the hand rail attached to the seat in front of her. Something like hope flashed in her eyes, but then the brown orbs darkened further with resignation. A quick glance about the relevant extremities on her body confirmed her suspicions once again.
"Why do I keep kidding myself," Tasci more stated than asked. "That sort of melodrama can't be healthy." She gave herself a mental slap. "I know it'll never happen but I keep feeling like I can do it. Oh well," she sighed. "'doing the same thing for years, will be doing the same thing probably until I die..."
Tasci finished the phrase like a mantra: "Cold alone, old and forgotten. If I'm lucky. Gaea, this world stinks," she finished, grumpily putting her elbows down on the thick folds of cloth over her skinny legs and letting her short hair fall over slumped shoulders.
"Why'd I even wear this dumb skirt today?" Tasci told the air. "It's not like it helped my Biology presentation at all. Not that I wanted it to... Now I'm going to have to freeze all the way on the walk home. I would have much rather frozen on my bicycle." The bus turned off the freeway into a small town on the way to her own small town. "Ah well, I can turn on the heater when I get home."
She shouldered her thick backpack as the bus drew to her stop. The air about the bus was serene and clear, thick clouds overhead and a light drizzle falling. Yanking a parka out from her backpack, Tasci shouldered it, protecting what she could of her backpack and her clothing. Thus protected, she ventured boldly out into the afternoon. Immediately in front of her was an intersection of streets.
Cars, buildings, distances all seemed to increase enormously, not literally but in the way she reacted to it. Tasci stood there surrounded by confusion and noise, stinging brightness and endless asphalt between the safety of one sidewalk and another. There was no fear, just incredible bewilderment, this walking pillar on two legs that was tall... too tall...
The walk signal flashed and Tasci tromped out, skirt billowing in the hoary breeze. "I hate that intersection," she concluded for the thousandth time, hurriedly crossing the second crosswalk and soon heading past the downtown shops, those that had not ousted by the distant mall in her little town.
"Little exploding town is more like it," Tasci mumbled, remembering how the pressure of jobs in a valley far to the South had attracted joyful developers intent on paving over the praerie, cramming as many potential workers as possible in what was left of this land. People commuting an hour, two hours, even 3 hours to get to their jobs every day, fighting worse and worse traffic. Of course the developers are happy to build houses everywhere. "They screw us over every time," Tasci said, approaching a local supermarket.
Perhaps that tiny population of ground squirrels in the empty lot opposite the supermarket would be there forever. Perhaps they would be poisoned and buried alive tommorrow, covered with some building or another. She passed the little dirt colored critters, at once cocky and timid, fleeing her as though she were one of the cruel humans that had to torment them. She smiled nonetheless, glad to get a glimpse of her bushy-tailed friends. They appeared not to care about the rain as much as she did, although there was only one aboveground.
A left turn and down the final road. A swift retreat to stride along the tree shaded sidewalk as far from the roaring traffic as possible. The Starling tramped between the two lines of shaded trees, turning her head as crow after black crow dodged gayly out of her path. "Hi crow!" she said cheerfully, getting a caw in return as the crows found new footing and settled their feathers.
Tasci's vision swum briefly, and she stopped, clutching her head. "Oh," she groaned. "Hope I'm not coming down with something." Tasci dragged the large pack on her back around to get at the cloth lunch bag clipped on it. A single swig of juice remained in the drink container therein, and soon Tasci was eyeing the empty bottle critically. She carefully placed it back in the lunch bag.
"Great," she said. "Just what I need, no juice and an impending flu." Tasci knew she probably wasn't sick, but it was rather exhilirating considering the tragic drama if she collapsed senseless of plague on the sidewalk during the last five minutes of her trip home. And the rushing cars paid no attention to her crumpled form as the light flared in her eyes and everything turned hazy, then faded. Then pan out to the body, slowly turning as though vultures ascending before a kill.
"Hee hee," Tasci giggled. That was a bit much. "I wouldn't want to pull a Rittek," she added cryptically. Then turning to her side, she spoke even more cryptically to the air on her shoulder. "You remember? Heh... good thing those buzzards turned out to be from the Healer's College."
Good old Rittek.
Tasci sneaked across the last busy street, turning into a residential section of the town. Many people lived inside her, going about their daily business, driving their cars on her asphalt skin, living their lives in her house-bumps where she watched an ever silent witness to the wonders and terrors of the human within.
Hee hee, just kidding. ^.^
Tasci sneaked across the last busy street, turning into a residential section of the town. Despite her carefree words, a mote of worry still danced across her face. She really wasn't feeling all that well. The day certainly was a nice one, but a steady rain would have been better than a drizzle, and this queer feeling in her torso just above her stomach began getting annoying. With only central heating and a good book on her mind, Tasci at last arrived at the house. She passed a row of simply trimmed hedges, up the driveway, rang the Gregorian hanging chimes on tip-toes, unlocked the chest level doorknob, and went to go get a drink of water.
Of course all the cats wanted to be fed first. "Ugh, shove off it Tanis!" she declared at the persistant gray one who was using his tail as a club. The small batty black one was meowing up a storm in her characteristic voice that granted her the nickname "crow". The big scared black one was pacing nervously.
"Now... guys. J'st gonna get a drink first," Tasci almost dropped the glass cup, but managed to fumble it to the bottled water spigot. Taking a deep drink, she tapped another. And one more. Then she flicked the heater, and lo' the central heating began humming cheerfully.
"Ahh," her grateful sigh came as she dropped her backpack. Gliding almost in a dream, she fell into the couch to look at a magazine or something, and the last thought that ran through her head before she passed out was,
"Since when have I had to stand on tiptoes to ring the wind chimes?"
* * *
It was the hungry yowls that woke her. The crazed desperate hungry yowls. Tasci awoke in darkness, long after night had fallen. Opening her eyes she saw the three cats looking at her strangely... hungrily...
"Did I forget to feed you guys?" was what she intended to say. Instead she slurred, "Diffreek'kies," and stopped then at noticing how strange that had sounded.
But they were not listening to her anymore. The little black one lurked in the shadows like a stalking vulture. The black male, emboldened by hunger walked in stride with the arrogant swagger of the grey one, two demons given physical form, two ravenous beasts deprived of what is their rightful property, moving to surround her...
Tasci screamed as the cats grew monstrous in size at their leap, suddenly realizing that they weren't normal cats anymore. They had been 4 times as big and 4 times as far away as she had expected. They had grown fully long as her. They weren't cats; they were cougars! A desperate roll and a frantic scamper later, Tasci half instinctively ran for her mom's room, not in search of her mom, who wasn't home yet, but for the only open window in the house.
The bed was huge, everything was huge! With a desperate leap, Tasci evaded the claws that sought her tail like a dancing piece of string and charged through the window where the cats had torn the screen. The small opening had become fully the size of a door. Skidding to a stop just on the window sill, Tasci pulled with all her might, dragging the giant window closed. Eyes wide, two frantic breaths later, something... struck! the inside of the window. Tasci bolted, ran forever, escaped through the thunder of fear and the haze of panic, and disappeared into the quiet night.
* * *
"Oh god... oh god..." a quiet voice panted in the shadows. "Vicious! I've never seen anything like it. One minute they were friendly, and then I was lunch! Never saw cats go bad so fast. Oh... dear."
The dear was quite punctuated, followed by the sound of some four legged being shifting around in the clouded darkness. "Figures it would be cloudy tonight... I can't even see myself."
A sound of head shaking, ears flapping. "It couldn't be. It just couldn't! But... is this some sort of dream? I can never talk aloud in my dreams!"
The shadowed figure signed and sat down clumsily in the grass. Then stood up again. "Stupid, scratchy grass." In the distance, across the farms, lights twinkled from far-off factories. Every now and then a thundering juggarnaut of a truck came barreling down the road sending the creature scattering, but it crept back to the sidewalk and continued pacing skittishly.
"This is too much," it said again, stumbling through the darkness. "It's like a dream but... not. Whatever it is, I really did it to myself this time. I don't need the moon to show me I'm already a synx."
She looked down the dark road, where it etched out into the farmland, heading south and from there, who knows where? Tasci looked down that way almost wistfully, then turned around heading back into the artificial lights of town.
"Not getting out of it that easily," she said. "Can't just run out into the arms of fate like in a story." As the lights grew nearer, Tasci stopped for a moment in mid-stride. "Oh yeah, don't need a moon for city lights," she remarked self-chidingly.
Tasci was indeed a synx. The humming glow of artificial lighting, strangely louder now, slowly and eeriely revealed short clawed, thick furred paws connected to stiffly straight forelimbs covered in orange fur, bracing against the ground one after another in opposite motion to the hind legs.
"Wait a minute..." Tasci muttered. "How am I even walking?" With that, she fell on her nose.
"I am so smart," she told the ground, crossing her eyes to see a squished, though not injured black nose on the front of her face, now stretched out forward into a short orange muzzle.
Rolling to her side, Tasci easily pushed herself upright... with her wings. "Ssshee." the mild, and of course enigmatic oath bubbled from her chest through the new nasal passages and throat out in a tiny gasp of air as the full implication of that action hit her. "Ok, let's see," Tasci said refusing to panic. "One, two," she said raising one fore paw after another. "Three, four," she said raising her back paws. "Uh.. five," she said looking at her tail which at least wasn't dragging on the ground. "And... six, seven." One fuzzy orange wing after another rose up into the air.
"Whoo hoo, 3 segments baby!" Tasci crowed a bit loudly, but thankfully no one seemed to hear. "Take that Evolutionism," she whispered fiercely. Her great revelation finished, Tasci considered how to walk without getting confused again. Instead of concentrating on the complex footing of a quadruped that seemed to just... happen, she decided not to think about monkeys as she stepped forward. Not thinking about monkeys is one of the best ways to avoid thinking about anything but monkeys. You stop thinking about orangutans, and gibbons, and screaming howler monkeys, and be sure not to think of the morphological similarities between Prosimians and Simians. Armed with this mental diversion, Tasci was able to forget about worrying over how she walked.
Which was a good thing because as soon as Tasci had gotten to "Gorilla gorilla beringei" a car came shushing down the road, headlights blaring of unwanted discovery.
Darting off to the side, Tasci almost managed to avoid the headlights. The car stopped however, and a man stuck his head out, peering incredulously into the shadows. This was Tasci's key to run blindly down the sidewalk, skittering around a corner and dodging into a neighbor's yard before the man realized what he had just seen.
"Calm down, Tasci. He probably just thought you were an orange rabbit," the little synx told herself. "At least if you got the description right. Just pray he didn't notice the wings."
That night, when Tasci was looking through the fence enclosing a stangnant pond, a sink for rainwater to prevent flooding of the streets. One ear snapped up at attention, and a thoughtful expression passed over those narrowed green eyes.
"My name is Tasci," she said clearly and deliberately.
"Tasci is my name." she said a little bit faster.
"My name," her voice quavered on a warble, "is Ta--."
Shaking her head again, she said, "I know my name is not Tasci. It can't be since I would never use my real name online! My name is..."
"My name is..."
Silence.
Last Updated: Sun Dec 1 2002 08:26:18