Ninth Time Was the Charm
Hues in a landscape of eternal slate can be disquieting.
“Do you know how this works?” she asks me quietly.
“We’ve done it eight times already!” I answer more savagely than I intended.
I glance at her eyes, seeking immediate absolution for my transgression. As always, she takes her time to grant clemency, jaws clenched tauter, her emerging crow’s feet sharper.
As we have continued to argue after the last Reboot, her eyes have become progressively narrower when angry, pupils dilated to striking black orbs that constrict her blue to a thin outer ring.
Yet this time, her natural hue has been replaced with a band of livid, and I have a sudden fit of anxiety that if this continues, her eyes will become colourless and overpowering.
Finally, she speaks, loosening the band.
“I can’t go on like this. I need the husband who can provide a child and more financial security. This is the last time we can try, so we must make it count. Are you with me?”
We both know it’s a zero-sum game; It had explained to us in detail. I look away, unable to say no to the question I had feared for years.
I nod.
Her face breaks out in the sunniest smile I have ever seen in ages. She extends her hands, and I clasp them, finding them cold and sandy. We start chanting the Nine Verses of Reboot.
It will take about an hour.
The cold drizzle is light, yet annoying, as the water finds its way through the old poncho’s holes and over the rim of my greasy hat.
The trucks awaiting our group are parked inside the fenced perimeter of the compound containing our corrugated metal huts.
As we trudge towards our transport, I wonder again who the hell would, in this land of eternal slate, paint the vehicles’ roofs in the sapphire blue of her eyes I fell in love with.
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