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          A   "Tell Me Where You Are Tonight, 'Cause   aNAda #49    A
        A          I'm Going Back To My School"                      A
     A                     by Phairgirl                04/24/00         A
 A                                                                          A
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        Bess looked down at me, a smile across her old and tired face... I'd
 never seen anyone look so happy, so in love with the world and everything it
 had given her.  She looked like an angel that weathered hell.  She was
 content and ready to pour her love over me.

        "Sugar plum, tell me where you are tonight," she asked gently, that
 smile of hers beaming light across my face and brightening the entire
 darkwooded bedroom.  I stared up at her.  There was knowledge that I could
 never know, a life that I could never understand.  There was time, time in
 her visage that made me glad to share a part of my time with her.  I could
 not fathom why I meant anything to her, why she cared about me, why any of
 this mattered in real time anyway.  I felt an invisible, intangible bond
 that formed solely from chaos.  There was no reason for this bond.  I had no
 idea why I was there.

	"I'm somewhere between the dawn and my pillow, Bess," I murmured up
 at her.  She caressed my hair, pushed it back from my face, and gently
 kissed my forehead.  She smelled like skin and flowers, fields of flowers,
 and work, the work that made those flowers beautiful.  Her gentle touch
 warmed me more thoroughly than the thick quilt that covered me.  I blinked
 heavily, awaiting a grip of sleep and dreams that could never compare to my
 waking hours talking to Bess... learning from Bess, living through Bess, and
 leaving my empty body behind.

	"You float past all that, dear, you lay back and close your eyes, and
 caress the silence around you, drip from it like a dew drop honey," she
 breathily sang through her aged, full, cracked lips.  "Stop dreaming and
 start living as you sleep."

	"I'm floating through walls, Bess, I'm trying to stay calm.  But the
 breeze is cutting my arms and the clouds pierce my eyes, and I flee back to
 where I began," I poured out to her, pleaded with her, begging for her to
 share all of her knowledge and bring me to peace.  "I'm tired of the empty
 black stares that are returned to me from every star, all of the nagging
 tintinnabulation and overpowering stenches of desperation.  I'm wondering,
 Bess, how I will ever leave my pillow."

        "Seek the dawn, dear," Bess encouraged, and then suddently stopped.
 She was answering things that she should have left for me to discover.  She
 was guiding me, and it was not her place.  She looked down and turned away
 from me.  She spoke to the knotted walls.  "You have all the answers, you
 see them as you drift around this empty void, searching for the gliding
 wings that will bring you from tree to land.  You have fingers now, sugar
 plum, you can grasp whenever your will speaks to you.  You can take all of
 this wisdom and stop the wind, stop the clouds.  Use your gifts, dear, and
 rise from your pillow once and for all."  She stood up and slowly hobbled
 her way to the crack of light along the closed door.  Yet her face shone
 brighter, her hope still stung.

	"I'm searching, Bess, I'll keep searching for that golden lake," I
 called to her.

        Bess turned the knob and flooded the darkness with blinding rays.
 She inched her way out and began to close the door behind her. "You're going
 back to your school, sugar plum," she called out to me.  "You've learned all
 there is to know.  Live, darling, live."

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 {  (c)2000 aNAda e'zine *                       * aNAda049 * by Phairgirl  }
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