by Kelly Hunt
Part Four
The Details
After breakfast, Jayne walked down the path again. She walked until sunset. While the sun was setting, she walked into a clearing. Now, she hadn't noticed it until she walked into that clearing, but up to that point, things had become steadily more blurred. The outlines on everything were dissipating. Once in the clearing, she saw how vivid everything was, then looked behind her into the blurry mass that was the forest. How did I miss that! she thought. Just then, she noticed the strangest thing. Off of a cloud in the sunset, something was moving. It was a pink cloud, lined with gold, as often occur in sunsets. But the gold was running off of it, similar to flame licking the edge of a newspaper. Soon, all the gold had collected at one end, and fell off of it as if it was water. The cloud was left blurred and pink with no gold. Jayne directed her attention to the droplet, for it had landed not far from her. Slowly rising, it materialized into the shape of a small girl, still golden, yet it held as much detail as was possible.
"Hello," the girl greeted Jayne. "and who are you?"
Jayne just managed to get her name out when the girl started talking again, she started with a small giggle. "Jayne? What an odd name."
"Excuse me, but what's your name?" asked Jayne politely.
"I am not one, we are many. We are the details, the fine lines, the edges, finite shading, everything that is crisp and clear cut."
"How can that be a being?" Jayne wondered out loud.
"How can anything be a being?" the little girl squawked and stamped her foot, obviously offended. Jayne, not being a girl who enjoyed offending people, meant to make amends by stating "Sorry! I mean, you are lovely." This did not work as she had anticipated, as the girl screwed up her face and hollered "Yes, but you'd never notice! Would you! Would you!? No one ever notices us until we're gone!" Jayne was a stuttering loss. "Well, yes, I... now I know... I'm sorry and it will never happen again."
The little girl wiped her tears away with a fist. "I suppose you can't notice us all the time. That's why we're here right now, anyways."
She gave in and let the little girl tell her tale, and asked "Why is that?". The girl seemed contented to lament over her tale before she even told it.
"You see it really is perfectly dreadful. Hah! I should say had they not come sooner" and she pointed at the most curious little beings. It was an X. A three-dimensional X with four legs, one on each of it's ends. It was scuttling about rapidly, and before Jayne focused on it, more appeared. Finding that she had to search for them to see them, she glanced back at the little girl, who continued her tale. "Had they not shown up sooner, we might have disappeared all together! Why they only came yesterday." she trailed off into what would have been an awkward silence if Jayne had not picked up the conversation. "Why would you have been wiped off the map?" the girl looked up, "Not off the map, you silly girl! Off the world is more like it! It's because of people like you!" Jaye thought that if the girl hadn't been golden, she would have been flushed with color as she hollered at Jayne. This golden girl only came up to Jayne's waist, and fortunately was not very intimidating, because her words were harsh. "It's because people like you are too stupid to ever stop and look around! They're to self-obsessed and goodie-goodie to ever consider that there might be things at work besides themselves. Every time a detail goes unnoticed, we have to work to pick up the slack. Often, that's not hard, because a single comment on the detail is enough to keep us going for months. But the world is slowly becoming full of more self-absorbed people like yourself, so it's harder for us. Got it?" a bit of golden spit flew from her mouth on the last word, and the grass where it had fallen glowed. She glowered up at Jayne with a mutinous expression on her face, and exhaled sharply. Upon doing this, she.... "evaporated" back to her cloud, because that was the only word Jayne could think to use for that kind of motion.
Part Five
Pools, Color and Unknown