unveiled

chapter 4

Sky ran into her tiny room, shutting the door behind her.  She swiftly exchanged her cloak for her blanket and crawled deep into her little corner.  Three deep breaths and she allowed herself to relax.

She had taken the long way home tonight.  She had run all the way home, afraid the girls were following her again, the mean ones, the ones that liked to hurt her.

Sky went to the café as often as she could.  It was her only other safe place.  It had become familiar to her.  She knew she would be safe and there would be food there.  She knew Nev would watch after her.  Nev, he told her his name once.  That was an odd name, but he shared it with her and she honored his wishes.  To her he was called Nev, the one who shared the food.

Sky liked to go to the café at different times of the day, depending on the weather, the season of the year and dozens of other things she factored in before setting out.

She had learned the café had its own ebb and flow, a distinct vibe for different times of day.

Sometimes she needed to go in the morning when the day was new.  All the folks getting ready to start their day made her feel hopeful.  Anything was possible when the day was new.

Lunchtime was alive with the bustle of the day.  The small space almost sparked with the electricity of dozens of people in the middle of a busy day.

The after-lunch lull was her favorite. It was almost as if the café had worked itself to exhaustion and now needed a nap.  It was serene during those hours, energy building for the supper crowd.

Because it was her favorite time, sometimes Sky got lulled into rest and stayed during early afternoon crowd, like today.  Sometimes it was ok. 

Lots of times it was like today and the peace and calm of her sanctuary would be flooded by the mean and petty swirl of the college kids, especially the uni girls as she thought of them.  Some of them were mean.  She had learned the hard way some of them were dangerous.

When she slipped into the cafe she had fallen into an easy routine. 

She always wore her cloak or hooded coat for protection from prying eyes and unwanted attention.

She would sit quietly until something caught her attention.  Sometimes it was poetry she was writing in her head, sometimes she worked out lines and phrases.

Always she collected information, like the exact color of the sun in late October, or the difference in the smell of the green tea brewing vs the citrus tea.  When she got home, she filled notebooks with these facts. She could even tell some regular customers by their perfume or colognes.

People had always found her strange, but she did not know how to stop noticing things.

When she was a child, she had no friends, no one to talk to or to protect her from the bigger kids.  She wondered often how her life would be different if she had found that one friend who would have taken her hand and helped her face the things she feared, who made her feel safe.  But that was not how things worked out for her, so she learned to create her own safe place in her mind.  There she could freely explore ideas or the bits of information she was constantly collecting.  She was happy when she was sorting ideas and making discoveries. 

She was happiest when she found something beautiful.  She searched everything for beauty. Lots of things were “pretty", everything she observed had value and taught her something, but beauty was rare. 

To Sky beauty was so much more than the way she evaluated something visually.  On rare occasions she saw, or felt or heard something that made her stop every other thought and focus only on that.