Fraaaaaax!
“For the love! Please! Give me space!” I begged, desperately seeking quiet and calm. I just wanted to read my new, sexy, so very cozy, steamy story, and listen to my ‘Steamy Goddess’ Playlist. By myself. I pulled off my black compression stockings and reveled with my bare toes under the exquisite breeze of the ceiling fan. Mayhap even release some stress by shimmying down my undies and well… But not without some actual flipping privacy.
“Fine. Take space.” My sister, Teale, replied calmly tossing her squishy, green cactus pillow at my head from across our shared room. It tried to bounce off of my bangs onto the floor but I snatched it back tight, skimming my hand over my hair to settle it, flabbergasted at her audacity.
“I’ll take ALL the space! You don’t even know!” I shouted, hugging her cactus to my chest, my heart beat speeding up, annoyed that I felt so strongly and did so, so very quickly. I soothed my greedy fingers along the soft fabric, trying for all intents and purposes to remain calm. Act like an adult. Which I was.
But there was just something very time travely about suddenly being in one’s childhood bedroom again. With a sibling roommate. Instant age shift. Squabbles suddenly blooming out of a closet now filled with mostly wrapping paper- for every possible occasion- and some epic bins of legos in the darkened corner.
“Well, I do now. You just told me.” She cutely grumbled, looking for another super soft pillow to cuddle. Hah! There were none! Only I had the softy soft thing. Not her!
“Well FRAAAAAX!” I hollared, hoping to heaven it was enough to halt her. In case she took to throwing heavier objects with sharper corners and sturdier textures. Like s forgotten stapler or some ‘not so floppy’ floppy disks. But our room was now mighty sparse for fixtures beyond a guest lamp and extra fleece blankets for colder nights. And a plethora- nay- a newly established, darkened library corner full of paperback romance books on black shelves. Teale grabbed one from the shelf right by our door, quickly skimming the book title, nodding her head once definitively.
“Yeah, Frax.” She winked and stormed out- with her book.
“Good riddance.” I winked and whisper shouted back, quickly pondering if she chose the best book or if another blurb on any of the backs would satisfy my craving. I was craving space and friendly aliens. And instant connection with spice. Had to have steamy sweet spice. Or no chance in heck would i read it.
Amid a story, lost in dead tree families, at least I could finally breathe and recover from the flight home. And the drive home.
And well- being HOME.
There’s no place like home?
What a fraxing relief.
I needed less home and more calm. “Right about now.”
And then something amazing happened.
A book found me.
Plummeting onto my feet. “Eeks! How dare!” I grumbled, staring at it’s cover in mild interest. “You have piqued my curiosity, Book.” I spoke to it. “I’ll play along.” I skimmed the blurb, feeling my heart softly tenderized and a spark of desire flare inside my being, as though time was a construct and the wait had been merely a blink. A breath.
A flash of pink and green glimmers burst outward from the book’s interior, splashing galactic brightness and sparkle all over my walls and my skin as I dropped it on the wooden floor. Simultaneously horrified and curious, I simply stood there in my jammy and undies, feeling transfixed and overwhelmed. A gateway…
“Whhhat the who?!”
“I’m the sky. I’m the sky.” I took deeper breaths trying to calm my worries. “The rest is just weather.” I turned back to face him, my voice trembling as I spoke it aloud again, hoping to feel it, “I’m…the sky.”
“How lovely and correct you are. My Skye.”
“Nooo. My name isn’t Sky. I’m the sky.”
“Yes, the only Skye I need. The only Skye I traveled here to find.” Oh my! This was a word issue of epic Galactic proportions.
“I’m not THAT fraking sky! Its just the mental health visualization thing! You get me?”
“I do get you.”
“Ugh nooo! Not like that! I mean it’s a tool. A technique to find my calm amid drama or turmoil. Like right flipping now! An attempted woman nappping? Are you fraxing kidding moi? Hello? Totally the time for a tooly technique.” He continued carrying me away. Further… farther… whatever! Just away. “I’m the sky. None of this matters. It will all blow away. I’m still the sky. The sky doesn’t care.”
“Yes. My Skye. Not attempting. Succeeding. Cosmic Connection aquired. All is well. Cease fighting, Skye Mine.”
Fraxzyn
All is well. I told myself on repeat. She was still fighting me. Biting me. Biting my shoulder as she pounded at me. But all it did was make me feel the correctness in our Diving Timing. I enjoyed a good bite.
She was my heart’s match. Her name didn’t matter. Her name was not why I felt drawn to her. Why I instantly and intuitively knew so very deep in my soul that we were meant to venture into our furure. Together.
The sacred books foretold. There was never a mistake. Everything always lined up as it was meant to. Exactly when it was meant to.
I glared at the blasted paperback Sci-Fi romance as he stepped us through the gateway. Doorway. Whatever it was. And like how the frick did that even work? I stared back at the glimmers and fizzling sparkles as the doorway began to shrink. How could pages create a dimensional rift? Or a stargate? Dead trees… magical spells? An ancient curse?
“Who wrote that infernal book?” I demanded to a final pop of pink and green embers, thoroughly confounded. “Did a sorcerress write that? Are words so very powerful they can alter or rend reality?”
“Words have power, Skye. Power to create and destroy.”
“Even silly and cute, erotic, romance fiction?” I asked, interested and alert, giving up getting away from him.
“Especially that.”
“Come on! That can’t be!”
“Can it not? Can you be the sky here too?”
“Wait! You know my name isn’t Skye?”
“Skye is the lead in the story. I am Fraxzyn. You are Rina. You are my book.”
“Holy what?”
“My Book.”
“You’re my book?”
“Yes.”
“Not just a chapter?”
“No. Every chapter from here on into our eternal flickers.”
“Oh. Whoa. Fraxy. That’s rather magical…”
“Magic of the words. Authors keep worlds unspoken inside themselves. When written, the worlds become a living entity. They become real.”
“Hmm, can you put me down? Can we walk through again? I just… I really want to be choosing this. Not be woman napped and carried into it all.”
“You chose the moment you read your book’s blurb and reacted to it. Your fate was sealed. Our fare was interwoven.”
“All with a paperback book?”
“With a book.”
“My sister! Did my sister know?”
“Ask her for yourself.”
“And as he finally put me down and my feet were met with a spongy, mossy forest floor, I could hear her excited shout of “Rina! Roo Roo!”
“Holy flip! Teale! Don’t spread that nickname here too!” We ran to each other and embraced hard, cackling with joy and relief. My ribs felt like they were cracking but I didn’t care. Anywhere was perfect if I still got to hang out with my sister. Anywhere felt like home, in the best way possible, if Teale was beside me.
“So,” I asked her, as I smiled at her new forever face guy as he shyly approached us, “what’s this place called?”
“Space. But in their language, they call it Fraaaax.”
