Zat

Walking away from the lights and voices of the center, Zat was filled with a deep sense of regret. His would be a lonely journey into an unknown, without family and friends. He wasn’t sure what had drawn him there tonight—a last chance to strengthen memories of people he’d grown up with? Memories he could take with him to sustain him for whatever lay ahead? Maybe he was hoping for a shot of courage. Or at least someone to take an interest in him, his choice, his future. That didn’t happen.

It was every man and woman for themselves now, and if you weren’t part of a person’s future, you didn’t exist for them anymore. They had no time for you in the most literal sense.

Except Sahra.

But even Sahra didn’t understand Zat. She could never feel what moved his soul. The poetry that spoke to him from a beautiful, messy, chaotic world of long ago. A blue planet shrouded in clouds. A place where people dreamed even when they were awake.

Sahra was practical. Zat was not. They were never meant to be.

He looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again, and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.

The dry, powdery soil reached Zat’s ankles creating clouds so thick in his wake they obscured his legs to the knees. He walked slowly, carefully moving the light stick in front of him from left to right and then back again, dragging it through the dust to expose a viper, if one should be lying in wait. Maybe he should have stayed the night at the community center, but he couldn’t bear the isolation. He felt more alone there among the others than he ever felt in his own home. In his own mind.

When the pain tore through his calf, searing the flesh all the way up to his groin, he’d been thinking of Babe, and he called out her name.

The way she gripped a racket in strong, capable hands. Gliding across a red rectangle of clay in pursuit of a small yellow ball in a game they called tennis. Her legs were powerful and she moved with joy and confidence.

She was so alive.

Her mind so blissfully pure.