I'm helping a friend out with a museum installation job this month and it just so happens that the museum we are working on is located on the little island of Little Cayman in the Caribbean. It's a tough life, I know. Today we worked all day on site, came home for dinner, and then worked a little more from home; she has to write labels, and I'm sketching palm trees for a mural I'm painting this week. The moon is waxing and casting a silvery white glow on the palm fronds as they bob in the breeze. It is beautiful, but eventually it gets too dark for sketching to be a useful occupation, so we go inside where I watch The Muppet Movie and she...keeps writing labels.
The movie's over, I've changed for bed, and she's...still writing labels. I feel bad. There isn't much I can do to help, but maybe NOT watching a movie in the same room would have facilitated her creative juices, even if she said it was fine. Sorry, Julia.
Well, I don't want to be all happily falling asleep while she is still working. What to do, what to do?
It was raining just a bit ago; let me see what the weather is doing now. Nights out here are beautiful and warm, and the moon is out. I walk out onto our back porch. No rain. The clouds have moved on and the moon is on the other side of the sky. I step out onto the beach and look up through the shadowy palms at the glowing half-circle.
Between blinks, I see a black shape swoop through the sky over the trees. What was that? Probably just a man-o-war bird. We have a couple photographs of them at the museum and--wait, there it goes again. They are surprisingly large creatures, and agile on the winds. From what I've seen.
I scan the sky, wondering if this bird feels as restless as I do tonight. On a night like this, there isn't much else to do but go to sleep and hope that morning will find me in a less twitchy mood.
I turn to head back inside when I hear a rush of wings behind me and catch the sight of a dark shape landing on the sand. I whirl around to face it. Much too big for a man-o-war. Or any bird I've ever seen. I feel rooted to the spot as the shadow unfurls itself, growing taller and taller, its wings settling into place on either side of a shape that gradually reveals itself to be human. Well, not human, I think distantly; humans don't have wings.
My instinct is to stand still and silent, but fear leaps in my lungs as the creature walks straight toward me, unafraid. And then it speaks. He speaks. He says my name.
"Alexandra."
My eyes widen as my mouth drops open, but no words come out. How does he--it--know my name? He takes my hand--it is definitely a he--and I let him hold it in his strangely familiar grasp. I can't dredge up the willpower to do anything more decisive than let myself stare. Do I know him? His eyes are so full, so piercing. He smiles, and I see laughter and strength in his face.
Of course I don't know him; I've never met anyone with wings. But I have to admit that if I don't know him, I surely want to. My eyes can't get any wider, but my mouth forms some sort of disbelieving smile.
"Hi," I say.
And in the way that dates sometimes end in kisses even if you aren't sure, I end up in his arms, in the sky, with his dark wings pushing my lonely paradise away.
