A THOUSAND PAPER DRAGONS

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A thousand paper dragons.

Delicate, elegant, they glide above her head in a fair of colors. [1]Rose, gold, cerulean, violet, jade and midnight blue, looping through the air in spirals before corkscrewing crazily and rising again. She smiles indulgently, hands automatically folding another one out of mossy cardboard and letting it join its friends. The newly-born, mottled green is slightly off-balance and she corrects it with a single thought, straightening the bent wing.

"Bets?" the knock on her door is quiet, but it startles her. The voice, muffled by the door, is unidentifiably, unquestionably male.

Quickly, she directs the fair into an open cupboard and psychokinetically slams the door behind it. Her friends, her team-mates, would think her insane if they saw her dancing with the dragons, and she would not give them anything more about which to whisper. As was, the mansion rustled with the sound of rumors, as they passed from lips to ears to lips.

"Come in . . . ." she straightens her simple, cashmere sweater and silk skirt, checking her appearance in the mirror. Her slight, athletic figure is complemented by the tasteful outfit, showing toned legs and neck. Her straight, purple hair frames a finely-etched, Japanese face, slashed by a red stroke across her right eye.

Looking embarrassed and ashamed, Cyclops enters the room. He is more pragmatically dressed in jeans and sweat-stained, grey T-shirt, look completed by black Nikes. Psylocke crosses her arms diffidently, impassively, and nods her head.

"Scott."

"Bets."

She cringes inwardly at the hated nickname. Why shorten it when Elisabeth is a poem of a name that ripples off the tongue like a raspberry-flavored stream, or a Chiyojo haiku?

‘Bearing no flowers,

I am free to toss madly

like the willow tree.’ [2]

"So? Why did you need to see me?"

"You’ve been so quiet since . . . since . . . ."

::Since what? Since I was reborn\killed by the Crimson Dawn? Since I slipped out of the shadows of death again?::

"It’s taking me a while to adjust."

"Oh. I thought I should see how you were."

::Did you hear me, tossing madly, whirling like a fair of dragonets?::

"Fine. Thanks."

"Good. I’m sorry for disturbing you."

He looks relieved, hand all too quick to find the doorknob and turn it. Feet all too quick to leave the room. She watches him exit, a throbbing, half-dull pain in her chest. She loved him once, and thought that he could love her back. She knows better now.

The cupboard doors open and the fair emerges, like rainbow-colored toothpaste from a tube. She makes them whirl around her, coming close enough to brush her with their thin, papery wings and noses. Comfort. Serenity. They rustle, like lips whispering inaudible secrets or the wind that carries the rumors of willow-trees, and her mind tosses and whirls, like blown leaves, as the tears slide down her cheeks.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] According to Anne McCaffery’s definitive Dragon Series, especially DragonsDawn, the collective noun for dragons is a fair of dragons.

[2] Written, amazingly enough, by Chiyojo. The wife of a samurai’s servant, she became a nun after her husband died, studying poetry with a well-known teacher of Haiku. Her work is praised for its amazing lightness of spirit.

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DISCLAIMER: All characters are Marvels, all prose is mine, all feedback to brucepat@iafrica.com  This piece is an experiment in reiteration and recurring motifs. Whether or not it was successful is for you to judge.