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[i]You're only given a little spark of madness. Lose that, and you're dead.[/i]

In the grey matter between logic and reason, she found herself, braced and prepared for the weight of all that was going to drift into her reality. Strangely, she found herself grinning at the opportunity. 

[i]You ask yourself some pretty strange fucking questions, man, like—why me? No, really, of all the people out there, why me? Make that make sense. I dare you. You think back on yourself, all the little private moments of your own private worlds. What great magnitude of the universe looks down upon those times and goes, ‘Yep, them!’

Make it make sense. I dare you.’[/i]

That surge of warmth and serenity reached out and took him by the hand as it blurred by in gold, as she walked by and snatched his hand into her own. The heavens. The back alley behind the Circle K on Sampson Ave. The mall food court. The International Arrivals halls of the airport. The bass and thump and sweat of a crowded nightclub doing what she always loved to do best. 

Feet sliding, hips hopping this way and that, shoulders pivoting in unison as she danced all on her own. In the sunlight, in the dim wattage of the living room table lamp at midnight all alone, spinning, hopping, bouncing back and forth. Except now she wasn’t alone, as reality twirled fast as she could dance from scene to scene, a living trip of time and space, at every age she had ever been; it was the little girl who finally stopped the dizzying display of perceptual bending, who stopped at the metallic government gray doors, and whispered in his ear with devious, playful, intent:

The whisper of a child, within the scope of a goddess, “They’re going to be confused, and very, very, upset.”

To music only she could hear and beats that were infectious and undeniable, the very costumed golden girl he’d met on a battlefield and took him to the beach, hip-bumped through the door and nodded her head in repressed dance down the hall, as faces shocked and unbelieving started to take notice…but that tended to happen in the cavernous control room of his home agency.

There and back at the start, next to him, she stood, in duplicate, full sized and fully aged grinning in his ear, “I don’t mean any harm. But let’s not pretend I don’t know where you all are, who you all are, and if you want to know the first thing about me? My mom and dad would tell you it’s just me, dancing, alone, together, everywhere we ever were.”

Her face glowed as warm as the gold shine of her eyes as she sat, Indian style, as she looked at him, where he sat, cross-legged like her, smiling at him with the undeniable charm and magnetism of someone who certainly knew how to have a good time. Even as she sat, mostly still, her shoulders did the slightest shimmy to the left and right. The pale milk white glow of the moon on one side of them, the blue and white swirl of the earth on the other, the former far closer than the latter as they sat in the dark vacuum between, blissfully unaware of the solar radiation or crushing vacuum of space.

Like they were just sitting on the living room carpet, sharing a secret, “Loneliness is a disease of the spirit, I just finally figured out how to come back to life: I’d just stop being lonely. I’d just start sharing my spark with the world. Afraid? Why? It’s easier than it seems at first, you just put one foot in front of the other, and dance. So, here’s the deal,” she said, reaching across, taking his left hand in both of her own, tracing fingertips along his palm like a palm reader, golden eyes hidden under long, black, lashes, as she looked downward to his palm, “tell them not to get too upset guessing at everything I’ve said and done. It won’t make sense right now, but I’m just…learning to love again. I’m just coming back to life, spiritually. The world will decide I’m a god,” she admitted, pressing the bottom pad of his palm with one finger, while delicately tracing the bottom edge of his index finger with another, “and others will declare I’m the end of things, and yet more will look at me dance through their control center, and fear and control will flash through their eyes because they don’t understand, and it scares them,” she said as her thumbs wiped across the upper width of his hand, her lips cocking in a small grin, “but look at the whole of it,” she finished, her flattened palm pressed against his palm, both hands meeting midair between them, “and it’s just meeting someone new.”

“Demons will want their pound of flesh. The ghouls will come out to play.” Her voice remarked, more distant, as they stood beside each other in the entrance of his government agency, watching men and women in suits and jumpsuits carefully, like she was watching them from thousands of feet in the air, invisible to their eye, “Tell you a secret? I think the high will be worth the pain, but we’ll let them play out their game. It won’t always be fun…” she shrugged, gilded lips almost coming to a giggle, “screaming, crying…but that’s life, hon. I’ll see you later.”

Lights dimmed, lights brightened, and she left him in the entrance to his agency, suddenly alone, and fully visible, the ride over—for now.

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