Purple Sky
It started as a shimmer that no one saw.
Cars jockeyed in the streets for the best position at the red light. Pedestrians stumbled along the sidewalks reading the news on their phones. News went on around them, but no one saw.
A shimmer turned to a line, turned to a crack, turned to the first break. The pace was slow to start. Not so slow that we would have time to stitch it back up, it broke slow enough that our first feeling could have been awe. It would have reminded one of watching a chip in their windshield glass that survived the summer and fall only to give up in winter when the car warmed up on the inside, but the air was still freezing on the outside. It would start as shimmer, line, crack. A window could sometimes stay one long line. Our sky did not.
The spiderweb cracks broke open and the fabric of sky fluttered like curtains in the breeze, until golden pins pegged it back on itself leaving a gaping hole to someplace else. We were definitely paying attention now. The sky behind the sky was no sky we’d ever seen. It looked like a sunset of blues and purples instead of red and yellows. Endless cold air seeped from the other side.
Hope stepped out of the crowd of people whose iPhones had all dropped forgotten to ground. They never would turn their back on the sky again, buts she wondered if this was the final play of the Fates to keep her down.
Hope looked for the looters to gauge how much time she had. The helpers were already helping. Those do-gooders recovered from shock more quickly than the rest and tended those who had heart attacks, those who fainted and hit their head. But the looters took a little longer to realize their opportunistic door was opened along with the sky. Hope’s opportunity was in staying alive. She’d find shelter, water, food, and ideas. She wondered if through the veil was the world she dreamed about in which she believed there was a version of her for which everything went right. She’d trade places with that other her if she could and make a new life that wasn’t so hard.
The other her saw a yellow shimmer in her purple sky. She had time to plan for their worlds to collide.
