Chrysalis

The air smelled sweet with hay and was laced with the muskiness of animals that had long since passed through the barn. It hurt, a little, to lay on such old hay. It scratched at her skin and the tips were dagger sharp, if the dagger in question was dull enough to avoid piercing. The skin of her arms held this evidence in the form of light scratches. She was thankful to be wearing jeans this time; her outfits didn’t always coordinate with her escapes.

The barn doors were slightly agape and left a sliver of the outside world on full display for Christie. It felt heavy out there. The flickering of the stars and the outside barn light casting itself on the once well-travelled dirt ground could have made for a pleasant sight. She wished she could enjoy it with different eyes. The memory of warmth had faded somewhat. She hoped she would feel it again someday, since the good feelings were not so long ago.

Yes, the once warm space did feel sinister now. It was a pocket where she learned the first lessons of what many might consider ‘hard work’ for a child. This was where she met and fell in love with Cola, her horse. Caring for Cola took a lot of energy and dedication; changing horseshoes was not easy, and Cola had needs that changed with the seasons. This required her to plan ahead more than most twelve-year-olds in her neighborhood. She was one of the only kids that lived with a barn on the property, and with parents fortunate enough to be able to pay for a horse. Cola was not cheap. Horses were a rich kid thing, and the running theme of 2011 was to waste away on social media for the free cost of yourself.

She was twelve when they brought Cola home. The twelve-year-old Christie was not a social butterfly but was instead a self-effacing moth. Cola gave her comfort, an opportunity to be social, lack of judgement. Connecting with animals was simple and safer than people. Cola was her space, and the barn was their haven. They learned a lot from each other.

She hadn’t seen Cola in three years, but the new owners had emailed her an update that he was healthy and happy. The picture they attached made Christie’s eyes sting with longing. His black mane appeared shiny, and the depths of his eyes reached her through the screen. She missed their time together.

The day her parents sold Cola felt like a violent act of betrayal. He had been the brightest spot of her teens. College had been right around the corner, but Cola was part of the family and she was only moving an hour away. As a complete and total flex in their parental power, her parents hadn’t asked for Christie’s input on possible solutions, and instead found a home and made the sale before a word could be said against it. It was not the first time she questioned their intentions.

Their words bothered her the most. “We’re preparing you for the assholes of the world,” said her mom. “Life isn’t meant to be fair,” said her dad. She had no response.

Who knew what the week would bring when it came to the two-faced nature of her parents. One week they were supporting her ambitions, and the next week she was an idiot. One morning, when Christie was eating some buttered toast before leaving to school, she was confronted by her mom. She walked into the kitchen and leaned herself against the fridge, looking at Christie resentfully and with much disgust. It made the sprinkle of cinnamon taste like a coating of dirt on her tongue. “You’re exhausting to support, you know,” said her mom. Christie said nothing and felt universes of confusion.

It was a draining dichotomy. She learned to hold her breath. Her heart became colder and lonelier. Her shoulders began to hurt. Niceties and kind gestures, even those from friends or strangers, became traps she couldn’t trust. Her youth had a new fade.

These thoughts were making her heart palpitate rapidly, so she focused on her breaths. She turned her eyes to the rafters of the barn. Small movements in the dim yellow light alluded to the presence of a mouse scurrying along one of the many beams. She had seen this pitter-patter enough times from a distance to know with near certainty that it was a mouse. The spring air surrounding her smelled sweet but felt bitter. The random heat from the day made the flowering lily of the valley blossoms extra fragrant, and its saccharine touch mixed with the menagerie of hay and barn smells. She had a fleeting hope that the mouse she spotted wasn’t taken up by any owls.

This time of year used to be special, it was not within her anticipation that was up for changing. Every spring, before she turned eleven, her parents would pack her up in their Toyota 4Runner and take the winding roads up to the national parks that were scattered amongst the subalpine meadows of Mount Rainier. The blooming of the wildflowers were a sign of the change of season, and it brought big crowds of families, schools, daycares, and annoyed year-long hikers.

Her family would stop for burgers and fries without discussion or argument. She always got a chocolate milkshake, her dad a coke, and her mom an iced tea. Her dad, an active outdoorsman, would bring a wildflower book so that they could look up flowers as they went. He was a plant geneticist with a degree in biology and a master’s in botany and felt completely at home on the mountain. Christie got her ravenous curiosity from her dad. They saw little mice sometimes, too.

Her family had a lot of traditions, but things that had once been something to look forward to were turning sour with anticipatory tension. It wasn’t walking on eggshells; it was walking on broken glass ornaments. She still bled long after they were removed, and she didn’t know when they’d be replaced again. She was becoming paranoid and expectant of bad things. Christie hated that she believed what they said and hated even more her slide into vilification.

She turned her eyes towards Cola’s old stable. It had been empty since he left. One of his saddles was left leaning haphazardly against the wall. A broken stirrup could be made out beneath a few bits of old hay. A bottle of fly repellant sat on top of a post, it’s label partially worn from repeated condensation and heat. The water trough was empty and had a disorderly, unused look to it. All in all, this barn had seen better days. Its life had died with Cola, they had no other animals afterwards.

Cola was the tipping point of their relationship as a family. After that, there were no moments that felt healthy.

Memories of the worst altercations were like slides of film. They were not silent. Instead, it was almost like she was watching TV, or from outside the house. It was a loud dream with emotions that would eventually turn into a feeling of nothing. It left her feeling broken. It made the world feel broken, too. As her mom screamed, her dad ignored. And as she confronted her dad, he defended her mom. There was no compassion and no guidance.

Being too young to get into trouble and too aged to want it, the barn was the only safe option. She would stay here for as long as she wanted. It was always where she ended up after fleeing to one of her few friend’s houses or for a walk along the surrounding streets. She was twenty years old now. Going to college and being away from home gave her at least some miles away from the toxicity of home. Her parents only texted about money these days, so there were as few interactions as they could manage. They really were teaching her about the assholes of the world, huh?

A disruption of punctured, scratched wood gave the silence a new energy. Christie looked towards the source to find something she hadn’t expected. A large, white barn owl gazed in her direction, piercing the space between them while retaining its stillness. She blinked. It didn’t reciprocate. How long had it been there?

It was a rare thing to see a barn owl in this barn, for whatever reason. Christie expected that it was because there weren’t a large amount of trees surrounding the barn anymore. Her parents, in a sweeping effort to avoid extra work around the yard, had the few trees that were plotted near the barn removed a few years ago. They were fruit bearing and an absolute pain in the ass if you didn’t pick up the fruit before it became rotten or infested with hornets or ants. She and her dad used to make pies from the apples and tarts from the pears. Any unused harvest was sold, which they advertised with a hand painted sign done up by Christie. It was her idea to sell their leftovers.

Her mom was ecstatic at Christie’s idea of selling off the leftover produce. How ingenious, she said. Her mom drove them both to the local craft store to pick up some special paints and new brushes. They spent the afternoon adorning a slab of old wood they fashioned into a sign with limey-green and pastel pink paints, drawing flowers and fruits in the spaces around the words. It read “Fresh Pears and Apples! 4 for $1”. They portioned the fruits as such and labeled the bags, making sure to have a mixed bag with both kinds. A covered bucket sat to the right of the fruit for passerbys to leave money after grabbing their purchase. It wasn’t profitable, but it gave Christie incentive to harvest what they didn’t bake early instead of waiting until it was too late and full of bugs.

The memory made Christie’s chest tight. She stopped harvesting the pears and apples after the baking stopped, and the baking stopped after the fighting started. The fruit seemed to become rottener each passing year, until the trees were removed, and their presence transitioned to absence.

This owl hadn’t made any moves, it continued its unphased staring contest with Christie. Where did it even come from? She had a small worry for her mouse on the beams. The owl was probably looking for something to eat, she’d hate for the mouse to become a warm glob of meat in the owl’s stomach.

The bird was magnificent but frightening to look at. The barn lights reflection off its feathers made it appear illuminated. Its slight structure was unnerving, and its eyes, though far away, felt fathoms deep, and were connected to a brown v-line that melted into the shape of its beak. Its stark white face was framed by a perfectly thin, heart-shaped line of brown. Its talons were curved in a way that only the relative of a dinosaur could have. It was always meant to be a feared predator.

Though uncommon, this was not the first time an owl had visited the barn. Christie had only seen an owl once before in her memory, because that’s how rare it really was. The owl pellets they left behind were the only footprint leftover. Christie wondered if there were any pellets in the barn, if this owl was a more frequent visitor than she was aware of. She wasn’t living at home, after all, but just visiting for a few week, because, well, she didn’t even know why. She began looking for pellets.

There were no pellets by the door, or the trough, or underneath the window. The owl sat still and watched Christie make her rounds. She climbed up the ladder to the loft, what propelled her to go to that length, she wasn’t sure. The loft creeped her out, and its lack of use made it particularly dissolute. The flashlight that was left up there was covered in cobwebs and barely able to illuminate the area, but it would do for the time needed. She didn’t need it to shine long before it was apparent what was in the loft -- there were at least twenty owl pellets scattered everywhere. There had been more owl activity than she thought, but she couldn’t be certain how old some of these were. She grabbed a pellet and turned it over in her hand. It was light and dense. Using a piece of hay and a key from her keychain, she began to dissect it.

The bones were small and preserved. They were obviously from something like a mouse or a vole. She again worried for the mouse and hoped that it was long gone by now; but the owl had to eat too. Everything did what it had to do to survive. Christie dissected each pellet she could find until she had a small pile of bones. Her key was dusty, and the hay had broken so often that she was forced to keep replacing it with surrounding scraps. As she looked at her pile of bones, she felt a rush of accomplishment and resolve tinted with sadness.

It hurt to stay at home. Leaving felt like relief, but the gap created between her roots and her future was vast and left room for despair. Experience was teaching how uncertain life can be. There was a power that was being created within her that she did not want to grow the way it was planted. The hand of this particular gardener should not be her creators. Home is meant to be safe, but maybe that was a luxury.

She looked towards the owl to find that it had flown away. Was she the owl, or the mouse? She wished she could fly away. Her body couldn’t take the emotional pressure of being at home, and she couldn’t stay in the barn forever. She wouldn’t visit home again, not until she found herself. Whoever she crystalized into may not want to come back.