Tariel Sky

Summer’s life is made of strings. It’s not something she can ever pinpoint beginning, nor does she remember when she realised no one else saw the world made up of tiny, inconsequential strings like she does.  The threads cannot be touched.  She cannot cut them, change them, or prove their existence to those who can’t see them.  They are like ghosts, ethereal and transparent. All Summer can do is observe them and listen.

The first string she remembers being enchanted by is her grandmother’s.  Nanna Rose lived on a rocking chair in the highest room of the family’s seaside cottage, her window facing the endless blue waters and her walls adjourned with papers and trinkets.  She had a fondness for embroidery, her wrinkled and frail old fingers working day after day on whatever new project tickled her fancy.  Sometimes she’d stitch together a rose to give to her grandchild.  Sometimes she would recreate a memory of hers in her art before they would fade from her mind.  Sometimes—very rarely—she would knit a scarf for when her son and daughter-in-law returned from sea.  Like she expected them to sail in from the horizon at any moment and laugh because they’d forgotten to take their own on their initial odyssey.

(Summer remembers thinking even then that it was just self-deception)