night skies & black ice

The first time I saw Elsie she was skating on the moon.

Cold out here, I said to her. Snow’s all thick and wet like lard.

Elsie blinked. She stopped spinning; fell right there and cracked a crater in the ice.

“Yes,” she whispered, sopping wet and waterlogged, arms flapping, fluttering. “Yes,” she whispered, softer this time as she slid back onto the surface of the moon, and looked straight up at me.

***

The second time I saw Elsie the air was like cold tea. Too sweet, too brisk: so raw and crisp it was suffocating. She was walking to the schoolhouse, kicking rocks across the trail as she tugged on her loose curls. Though nearly a half a year had passed, her sweater was damp, her hair doused. Still sodden from falling through the moon, I suppose. Still soaked.

I spotted Suzy behind the salmonberry bush before she did -- all dumpling hands and pinched eyes. “Elsie,” she declared, and skittered out: a drupe in her mouth, pink on her teeth.

“Yes.” Silence, shuffling feet.

“Your Papa going to go fight in the war?”

“No ma’am. You know he can’t.”

“That’s right.” She smirked, yanked Elsie’s wet, wet braids. “I almost forgot he was a cripple.”

Elsie bit down on her tongue, winced as she tasted the sickly copper of her blood.

“Cripple,” Suzy said again, drawing the word over her lips, wiping her berry juice fingers on Elsie's sleeve. It trickled down in little red droplets, that juice, stained Elsie’s skin as Suzy turned around and dashed down the trail so fast that she must’ve sailed straight into the sun.

Elsie didn’t see me watching her from the quaking aspen’s trunk, didn’t see me contemplating the way it looked like Suzy was going to be swallowed by a star. Instead, she stood stock-still, eyes spilling little tears, hair like ink: deep and black and endless.

The belly of the beast, I said, pointing at Suzy as she sprinted toward the horizon, the sun.

She stopped, stared at me for a second, nodded. “The belly of the beast.”

I could’ve sworn she smiled.