Earth, 2305

            Remember. Learn. Earth is just another planet. A planet, and it is headed where they all go. It is just one in a line of others, waiting to enter the door, one by one. What is on the other side? Nobody knows. All we know is how to live. Life is different on each planet. But we can learn from each other, for there is always a string that ties us all together as life.

            It’s a wonder how we even ended up here. And I don’t mean that way, where we somehow survived an unfortunate accident, and I’m contemplating why we got into the mess in the first place. No. I’m contemplating why we even existed. I’m sitting at my desk, facing a window, which I keep boarded up. I didn’t need to stare out into the constant reminder of the mistake we’ve made, and have become. It’s dark in here, in my cave. The wood that keeps the filtered light from outside into my eyes is splintering and rotting. Pieces are crumbling onto my desk, and places where it peeled away altogether allows rays of sunlight to shoot through and onto my workplace. The walls are in a similar state, the paint falling away, stapled over with posters, as if it could deceive a visitor that it was in any better condition than it really was. Not that I got many visitors. Sure, there was Michelle the tax collector from the neighboring town. She could provide company, sometimes. It wasn’t always the best, but it was better than none at all.

            I lay my head down on the maple desk, breathing in the smell of lead, ink, parchment, and wood. It was what made up the main part of my life. I waved my right hand in front of my face, chin resting on the left, letting the speckles of light play over my skin, as if they were little creatures scurrying about my arms. My arms were so pale, probably from the lack of sun. My nails were cut short and unevenly, and my hair was knotted and tangled, and pushed back into a lazy ponytail that streamed down my back. I was quite the sloth of a human, you could say. I never took care of my place, or my hygiene. It simply didn’t matter to me. My chair creaked painfully underneath me as I rearranged my seating position, stretching back and cracking my knuckles. I reached for the pen and grabbed a couple handfuls of paper and sighed, staring down at the blank pages before me. They almost stared at me accusingly. Maybe I was just paranoid. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe they were right.

            I placed the ink tip onto the paper, but the pen didn’t move, instead blotting onto the paper. The air conditioning rumbling at the back of the room was too loud. I shrugged my shawl closer to my body. It was too cold. Maybe I should take a shower, and clean up. My mind screamed at me to do anything other than what I was supposed to do; write. It had come to so easily back then, when I was younger. As soon as my pen tip touched the paper, the strokes of the letters would come easily to me, and words spilled out onto the blank world, creating planets, people, creatures, legend, and dreams. Anything was possible. Back then, my windows were open, and after hours of writing, I would sit there for a little longer, watching the people running about on their own business, watching as the train clattered and shot past my window, making the ground beneath my feet shake and the sky darken with soot. Then, I would grab my coat off the hanger near the door, and go outside. Remembering when I was like this was as if I were dreaming someone else’s dream.

            Now, I was just a sad author, still young, according to society, but already acquiring the lines across my brow and the dark circles underneath my eyes that were usually signs of years on the road of life. At least I wasn’t balding. I heard stress can also do that to you. As it were, my coarse black hairs were all still real and on my head. The ink blot grew and expanded on the paper as I sat there, staring blankly. Maybe my muse had gone and died. Maybe it had gotten sick, and took a leave. My best hypothesis yet was that I myself had gone and killed it somehow. I cursed myself under my breath for something I might have done in a hypothetical situation that I knew wasn’t true. Did I consider myself crazy? Well. That’s a difficult question, and still pending on an answer.

            The alarm startled me out of my daydream, crying bloody murder into my ears. I slammed my hand down hard onto the machine, quieting it. I groaned before standing up and waddling over to the cabinet, careful not to knock over the piles of junk that had accumulated on the floors. I grabbed the bottles off the third shelf and dropped them onto the kitchen counter. When I first turned on the kitchen faucet, a torrent of murky brown water flooded out, splashing the inside of the sink, staining it. It only took a few seconds, though before clear looking water flowed out, and I grabbed a fairly clean cup from the counter, filling it to the brim. I went through all the bottles, grabbing a pill from each and throwing them back down my throat with a large gulp of water.

            A tune wove through the room, and at first, I was confused. What is this? Then, realizing it was the doorbell, I kicked stacks of junk in wild abandon towards the corner, placed a hat on my head to hide my hair, and threw open the window, letting sunlight spill inside. I reached for the door and looked through the peephole. You’ve got to be kidding me. Why is she here? A fisheye view of Lavinia greeted me, a serious look, brows furrowed and mouth pulled into a straight line. Her eyes stared at me, knowing I was looking at her through the tiny glass circle set into my apartment door. I always had a strange thing for eyes. If I were to start a collection her eyes would be my prize. They were a light emerald, like the leaves of a sapling soaked in the midday sun, and rimmed with a ring of yellow. I unlocked the door, and we stood there awkwardly for a moment, both looking each other up and down.

            She had on a nice black hat, knitted and decorated with red poppies. It was placed drooping backwards in an artistic way on her long fluffy white hair. Her jacket matched her hat in color, and fitted to her slim body nicely, gold rimmed buttons making a row down the jacket like little marching men. Her hands were shoved into her pockets, and she stood with such elegance. She was lanky, and if anything, the long buckled boots she wore made her look even taller than she already was. She coughed, politely.

“Oh, uhm.” I scratched my head, looking for something to say, anything at all. “You’ve, er, grown?” She rolled her eyes at me.

“I’m 24. I’m pretty sure I had already stopped growing when I last saw you.”

“Oh, right. That was so long ago, though.”

“We were only 18.”

“Oh. Right. Seems like forever ago.” We stood there for a minute longer. Then I realized I should invite her in. “You want to come inside? I guess it’s better than the heat outside.” She nodded and smiled coyly at me, stepping into my room. I should have known she was too nice to just burst in. Michelle often did that. A frown fell upon her face, and guilt gripped my heart, twisted it, wrung it, scratched at it, and then threw it out my throat unceremoniously. Lavinia was just one of those few innocent, sweet people that you can’t bear to see hurt. She meant so much to me, and for her to see me like this, disappointed in me without saying a word? Well, it injured me worse than if she had run in with all smiles and then just upright stabbed me to death.

“Well, it’s certainly homely.” She said, picking up a loosely bound notebook and flipping through its yellowed pages. I ran my hands through my hair, the other half of the ponytail that escaped my baseball hat, and looked at her sheepishly, my head tilted downwards and eyebrows scrunched up.

“Homely? You mean an utter disaster?” I asked, shoving some more piles with my feet, hands now placed deep into my oversized grey sweatpants. She laughed, and placed her hand on one of the pages. She stared at it for a while, tracing the lines I ground into it with charcoal using her finger, following the loops and twists.

“It’s pretty.” She said simply. I looked over her shoulder and found a picture I had drawn roughly two years back on the page. The sketch was of a great horned owl. It was scowling at me as I looked into its fierce yellow eyes, alight with a fire of its own, feathers arching up to form two large horns on its brow, like some sort of beautiful demon.

“Thanks. You could have probably drawn it better though.”

“No.” she replied quickly. I wasn’t being modest, and I don’t believe she was either. We were like two different sides of the same coin. Her writing sounded like something out of a fairytale, condensed while carrying the same weight, and able to be enjoyed by all audiences equally, whereas I was more descriptive, and liked to bend and twist my work into a maze. Her drawings were sketched with light strokes, and the overall feeling would be something like a cloud drifting in the sky, something fragile, as if it’ll fade away before your very eyes. Mine, on the other hand, were made with deep, broad strokes, and my work reminded me of something an angst teenager would draw. I used drawing as an escape, a means to get my mind flowing more freely, and I liked to hide them away once I was done. I didn’t want to be surrounded by pictures I could find faults with and reminded me of moody hormone crazed humans. Though we both were in love with art, I’d taken writing, and she’d traveled along the path of painting. Not that I wouldn’t occasionally dabble in some artwork here and there into my time, and that she wouldn’t write a great piece or two.    

            We had met in the summer of 2299. I was still the exuberant youth back when I met her, still enchanted with what the world had to offer, and what I could myself in turn present to it. It was in Washington D.C, in front of the Washington Art Museum. They were holding an art gathering of sorts, you could say. The victors of the 2299 art competition from Virginia had amassed here to exhibit our entry pieces, and of course, to allot certain prizes to the winners, which were to be chosen by a judge there. The theme had been nature. Neither of our pieces placed in the final three seats, but we were both excited simply to be there, to be a part of this great episode of our lives. And hey, I wasn’t mad about those extra credit points I was earning in my art class. I had just walked right up to her and started talking about her painting, and how the little crying baby the woman to my back was annoying me. I was an awkward sort of child, and always will be.

            Soon after she got over the initial shock of having been approached by a wide hazel eyed, bushy black haired frenzy of words, we were conversing like old friends. She first appealed me as the quiet, nice kind of person, and although she had opened up a little more to me in the past years, she still remains to this day quiescent in speech. She would listen better than anyone, though. Lavinia would pay attention to my ramblings about everything, and would occasionally laugh, shoot back a comment or two, and nod gravely, eyes locked onto mine as I swung my arms about animatedly, passionate about the topic. Passion could very well be a word to describe me. I was always open to new possibilities and would dabble a little bit in this, and a little bit of that, drifting from one topic to another like dandelion seeds on a breeze. When I would alight on a topic, I would always pursue it with great fervor, and then leave it with such, bolting towards the next excitement. Our conversations were far from monotonous. She could match the frequency of my brain, the way it spun, soared, and dropped at the drop of a pin, the way it would suddenly reverts backwards, to something else, and tie it into the new.

            I said it had been a while since we had last met. We had shared accommodations after considering the costs, which was fine, until she came to meet Elliot Moffet. Elliot was kind, almost knightly, you could say. He had cropped fair hair, a lean body, a long slender nose, narrow sapphire eyes, and glistening white, even teeth. He was in my newspaper class, and ever since that damn project where I had been partnered with him, he has been hung on her charms. It was sweet, watching as they blushed and held hands and such, and I told them as much, but inside, I had to admit I was jealous. Sure, she had won the Disney competition. She got the prince. Yippee. But I wasn’t envious of her man, the lover, and all of that. I was more frustrated at the fact that she spent time with him. For so long, I had prided myself, in a sense, in being that one friend that she talked to, that one friend that she could trust, that one friend that was special to her.

            Now, suddenly, I was put on the back seat, and I was miffed. But I couldn’t hate him, outright. After all, she was happy with him, and her happiness was mine also. Well, sort of. I have to admit that it was me who put those strange things in his drink, which would trip him while we went all together on a trip, and that would hide his keys and his phones. Petty things like that would give me the strange satisfaction that I needed. It didn’t do much for me in the long run though, except make me feel guilty. It was my fault for developing such an ego. To think that I meant so much to her that she would never socialize with others was absurd of me. I mean, what kind of friend is that? If it were like that I would feel like I was keeping her prisoner. So that’s how it went, until one day, she was there, the next, there were cardboard boxes, and then, she was gone.

            I was invited to her wedding, and made the maid of honor. It was a magnificent wedding. There was white everywhere, like newly fallen snow, and she looked so serene and happy as she walked up that isle, veil like mist trailing down her back, a smile on her face. I was glad I didn’t cry. Instead, I scrunched up my face and applauded after their kiss, even more than the mother, who broke down in sobs and was laughing like a maniac at the same time. Their new house was loftier, and the view was great, looking out over the ocean. I visited there once, after the wedding. It was back to our, no, my house after that, and again to the writing table again. She would call and tell me how her new life was as a wife, and such, but as the days wore on the conversation ebbed away, the silent lulls grew, until the calls stopped altogether. And now, here she was again, standing in the same room. I’m sure it looked awfully different than she remembered it.

“So,” I said, stealing the notebook away from her, which earned me a benign punch in the arm, “why you here?”

“I was just passing by, and I thought that I might as well say hi.” She says.

“Thanks. Looks different, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She agrees with a slight nod of her head, eyes roaming the room. “It does. What happened?”

“To me, or to the room?”

“Both, I guess.”

“This place and I have become pretty filthy gross, right?”

“No.” I give her my famous one arched eyebrow and incriminating eyes look. “Well, yes. A little.” My eyebrow hikes up higher. “Oh, fine. Yes, you and your apartment have become disgusting.”

“Yeah. You could say that.”

“I could help you clean it up.” She says.

“Oh, that would be great!” Maybe if the room clears up, my writers block will also. I missed the company, anyhow.

“We can start tomorrow, then.”

“Oh, but Michelle comes over tomorrow.”

“Michelle?”

“Tomorrow it is!” I say. I’m not proud of the fact that my only friend had become the tax collector from the nearby city.

She shrugs and smiles, turning around to open the door and step out.

“Oh, one last question,” she says, turning around to look at me quizzically. “Why are you wearing a hat?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Lavinia!” I say, closing the door after her.