Elara

The first and final forever sunset occurred at the turn of the third millennium, the explosive event called, “The Framers First Sight”, it was happenstance or an after effect of humanity’s genius. It was an attempt to control the uncontrollable and Hansen city heralded this union between that hope and its failure. The Framers First Sight had enriched the sky with particles like emerald daffodils, flowering each cloud with shimmers of yellow-green streaks. A cosmic play that cast other orphaned blobs of color as fish set to swim through radiant forever clouds. This is what it was like to see Hansen’s forever sunset. A skyline bound to the sunset’s existence, never falling to night, and never rising to daylight.

Humanity’s dwindling science called these clouds, Johnathan clouds, a name honoring the original framer Johnathan Dimitri. Every day and even this current day exhibited these spectral clouds each with a resemblance to the Northern Lights. They were thick though. Thick with Hansen city ashes but emptied by yesterday's rain.

Jonathan clouds could generate time halting raindrops, raindrops that fell from Demitri’s heaven. These tiny collisions upon the ground evolved reality producing sudden stillness. A stillness that happens suddenly during rainstorms, a daily property known as time jitter. An elusive time skipping property originating from the first law of Seraphian Mechanics.

This time jittering process was responsible for malforming all types of resilient materials. Leaving Hansen’s cityscape diluted, destroyed, and shadowed in destruction. If not for Zanir towers, tall and mighty dystopian structures, buildings made of spiraled metal designed to withstand time jitter, Hansen city would be no more than a dust field or an iron wasteland.

Hansen city had an establishment of new rain puddles, some gorgeously transparent and others that looked more like brown oil stains. It was the lack of Elizabethian energy, a refreshing process created by the Johnathan effect that defined the difference between the two puddles. The process was noticeable when observing brilliant blue water still dripping down tips of charred city pieces. Off the pieces came Elizabeth water and those sudden streams would drip and flash flickers of emerald light accidentally distilling a polluted puddle or two. Refreshing smells of newly cleaned water would rise up after each drip. Even the cement cracks seemed less dirty after a droplet or two. The Framers summed up the Elizabethian process as the Teardrop Clause.

To me, a teardrop clause meant searching for an old friend, someone known to be clumsy. A man called Kitsune. If anyone could educate me on Seraphian Mechanics it was him. He excelled in everything I lacked: the technical know-how, mathematical skills, proper influx hopping, oh and azure stabilization.

It was a lavished concept Seraphian Mechanics and my professional inquiry drove me to our oldest hangout, the restaurant called, “The Passenger”. It was hidden alongside the drenched Fredrick S. and it was easy to miss. But I did arrive and I grabbed the metal handle leading into the old hang out. I pulled at the door, it wouldn’t move, blood streamed down through my forearms fueling my hand’s grip, the door didn’t move. An annoying sense of denial ‘clunk’ ‘click’ occurred and I was faced with rejection. The sign said, “Closed”.

Facial recognition finalized after some time and unlocked the glass door. About time, I thought. Then after another moment of stillness, I reached inside my peacoat pocket for a heart-shaped locket. It was still sticky from the obliterated ride through the city. Decorated with blossoming valentine's day colors and bursting with gold trim, a jewelry's fascination, a blend between emotion and science, a place where Elizabeth water leaked sapphire light throughout the gold trim enclosure.

“A few drops used to save a few breaths.” That's what Kitsune always told me. The heart-shaped locket had rested a very long time inside my pocket and I always questioned... Why did the seamstress have to match an ever-ending void when she built this exact pocket?

I stood halfway through the glass door entrance, the attire I was wearing included a long London peacoat, high inertial variation boots, black of course, and an unnoticeable t-shirt hidden within the coat’s warmth. My hand was fumbling, twisting, and snapping up the heart-shaped locket, its safety being reassured. The locket emerged into the thick film of gas near my breath, “Ah there it is”. My fingers wrapped around the poor spirit, it had hardly survived the travel out of the coat’s sanctum. The locket, small, fragile, and about the size of a fingertip.

Winds like the chills of winter kicked us forward whispering with me, “ Well I guess we’re ready to go in.”

A legendary waiter greeted us, the milky particles that lost life, the city ashes. The ones that swirled throughout the breeze during our entrance. The waiter was cleaning that same stereotypical glass cup. His name was Joe.

“Elara, are you enjoying Eden’s ending? Or have you decided to call today a new Hansen beginning?“ Joe’s hairy hands made small squeaking circles polishing the glass with a millennium-old white cleaning towel. His eyes peered across the glass, another deep inspection.

These days post-annihilated drinkware usually accompanied a sad story or a hard tell. Even if a single drop of story water lingered Joe would clear that effervescent glass. Now Joe’s fearsome and slightly hairy hands rubbed these drops neatly away. Joe had a mustache that drooped over his lips, it was the thick kind of mustache, it had strength and thickness, far exceeding the already square and still quite thick eyebrows.

I said patiently, sarcastically, and annoyingly happy, “Another day in this exile. I guess!“ I tossed my hands into the air, causing the locket to hurl towards the ceiling. Then I tried snapping the locket back into my hands causing trouble because the golden chain twisted itself, pinning it to my peacoat handcuff.

Joe unmoved, “You know this glass still isn’t clean.” This time his lips slowly chipped and curled towards a growing smile, the kind that nodded the conversation along. A beam of silver light reflected off of some strange necklace brazing my eyes. It was modest, secret, and sort of hidden. By the way, Joe was a space cowboy fan, the kind that rode Armageddon down to its very core. He never counted the people in the restaurant and that always kind of bothered me. Not that that mattered now, the only rules being broken now were heart-shaped lockets.

I whispered to myself quietly “ Lost love… at a time like this? “

Joe motioned towards the locket’s golden chain now swirled between my fingers. His interruption was expected and it did provide hopeful cover and I needed to hide from my friend’s criticism.

“No bringing up lost love again, you know that. “ Joe said, looking back up from the needlessly polished glass. My heart-shaped locket erupted into life when I snapped the pink and gold locket back into my pocket. Kitsune was arriving and the ground started trembling causing the lights to flicker. The light was beginning to be marked absent. And the romantic light bulbs captured in neat white lampshades bounced and swung. My black leather boots made with extra friction tolerant rubber, remained resilient, resisting the shockwaves. I had been through this before, my head tilted back and I cracked my neck in preparation.

I mumbled the word, “Interesting.” How could he smell the locket dimensions away? And no doubt… I waited a moment to sense it, yep it was another seraphian portal being constructed. Kitsune always had an elegant way of approaching his entrance. Some hardly blue specks began phasing into the restaurant. They were blue particles that slowly appeared between Joe and me. They entered in a gentle way. It was like a peaceful group of artists arriving at a new social meeting spot. Although, the vacuum across the restaurant produced by a penny-sized wormhole startled me. Its abrupt nature seized hold of the gentle floating dots and suddenly accelerated them into its growing formation.

The seraphian sphere of quantum azure matter grew to a quarter-cent size now. A scientific manifestation centralizing in the restaurant’s corner. The deep-space blue-purple opening between two realities gave off a sense of determined gravity. A strange selection of matter began to occur. The napkins, the kind with a thin frill, began to jitter in the direction of the seraph. Hardened black plastic straws spilt over from their metal containment.

“ You know you can just call it a portal right? “ Joe interjected my thoughtful attempt at remaining close-minded.

“ Find another way to call a time-space greeting and I’ll forget about Seraphian Mechanics.” The stab at Joe warranted an eyebrow raise in the portal’s direction.

Now, any lost lover could detect a sense of faith, urgency, mood, style, and at other moments a seraphian genesis. Which would sometimes illuminate no sense at all.

The framer was frustrated, you could nearly predict it. Opening one of these atrocious things always involved complication and calculation, not to say you had to be ‘intelligent’ to open one, but open one, fit through it, and live, that was something truly stressful.

I noticed my old friend’s frustration peaking and the vacuum from time-space began a stable fit of suction, sucking the air like a not so gentle breeze.

“ Man this sucks, mind helping!” You could hear a voice crackle out as sparks quaked the air. It sounded like two fingers snapping. Then a few smaller snaps echoed. Joe and I could tell Kitsune was being theatrical. The seraphian framer always fainted his frustration, although I wouldn’t put his clumsiness past him at times. Joe and I shot each other a glance. A subtle agreement that he would be fine with his own procedure.

Ah here it comes, my eyes widened. Okay, now even the particles were invigorated by the electro-magnesium, each dancing into their new conga line positions, creating several circulating rings around the dark cosmic sphere.

I clenched my teeth, it was my hair upsettingly getting pulled at the scalp. Strands of it being wrenched at a rate that stoked my temper. And Joe was nearly giggling at my flustered attitude. He wasn’t bald, but rather his hair, his perfect hair… clothing, and posture were not even a bit upset by the dimensional rabbit hole. Except Joe's mustache… It was the singular piece of Joe that gravitated towards this phenomenon.

Angelic blue light streamed out of the overly stretched portal serenading the air with a symphony of brilliant magic glitter. The glitter tickled the not-so-settled dust and traced the room like sapphire teardrops that rode as playfully as freshly born children. The lining of the portal caught a thick wave of blue and white dense energy that slithered around the seraph’s entrance. It was at the rim of the portal that energy and matter met becoming plasmatic nature, without this phase shift reality wouldn’t bend correctly. Bending reality correctly was essential to Seraphian Mechanics.

“You mean portal mechanics?” Joe stated.

“ Shh, this is the least interesting part.” Time was glitching again, repetition itself, moving things back and forth from future positions to past isolations. A symphony of brilliant magic glitter trickled out, tracing the room in a bind of sadness that only lost and free men could know. The seraphian particles were always so solemnly curious. Each drop twisting and spinning in midair, this was how a portal entrance was formed, something was to enter here, not leave here.

The dust and chairs had settled and the ocean of particles now faded away. A rather tall slender modern man named Kitsune stepped out, the portal snapped shut, he yawned and I vomited. You could hear the vomit hit the floor. Joe squeezed his whiskey glass with a tight angry squeak. The vomit was removed from existence completely then. Your stranger, my friend, shot a glance at Joe. Joe smiled.