Today - Asha's Beginnings Chapter 7
Today -
She moves through the city like someone who’s learned the exact temperature of invisibility.
Mornings, same route to the print shop on Chicago Ave. Walking and thinking, or was it feeling. Focused on nothing but everything at the same time. Before she knew it she was passing the playground behind St. Mary’s. Kids orbit the slide like loud bright planets. Their noise is her blanket. Under it, the quiet ones glow negative-space.
Today there’s an extra layer of static in the air, like a radio stuck between stations and drunk. Tiny clatters (thimble against bottlecap). A faint, indignant squeak that sounds suspiciously like “FORSOOTH THY POSTERIOR.” Asha doesn’t look up. She’s learned not to encourage them.
She made her way back to the shop where she feeds the old beast of a copier its daily communion of paper. The machine growls, hot and familiar. From the top shelf, something the size of a dragonfly with a bent-paperclip lance crash-lands into a stack of cardstock, curses in Middle-English-meets-bottlecap, rights itself, and salutes no one in particular.
Two inches to the left, another soldier (this one wearing an actual donkey’s-cheek thimble, the kind with the little embroidered holes for ears) is locked in furious debate with his squadmate.
“’Tis NOT pronounced ‘arse-nal,’ thou illiterate cork! ’Tis ‘AR-se-nal,’ like unto the place where one keepeth many fine arses!” “Silence, Sir Bray-dumb! The captain said ‘arsenal of democracy,’ not ‘arsenal of thy mother’s—’”
The second knight is promptly tackled off the shelf by three others. They plummet in a clattering, swearing knot, land in the recycle bin, and continue the fight among the misprints, voices muffled but still audible: “TAKE IT BACK, THOU HOLLOW HIDE—”
Asha keeps collating. She stopped asking questions around the third time one of them tried to knight the stapler.
Lunch on the library wall. Splash-pad shrieks across the street. The girl in the too-big hoodie still stands outside the spray, arms locked around her ribs. Asha feels the battalion before she sees them: sudden breeze that smells faintly of cheap ale and incense. Twenty, maybe thirty of the little idiots hover in ragged formation above the girl, wings stuttering. No shouting. No zig-zags. Just a hush so complete it feels like the world inhaled and forgot to exhale. Every thimble helmet dips. Every bottle-cap shield lowers. They know the rule.
Asha finishes half her sandwich, wraps the rest, stands. One soldier (Patty Boylen herself, barely taller than a AA battery, pigtails made of red embroidery floss) detaches from the swarm and hovers at Asha’s shoulder. Patty gives the tiniest nod toward the girl in the hoodie, then taps her own chest twice: We see. Asha answers with the smallest exhale. Permission granted.
Patty raises one paperclip lance. The battalion snaps into the sloppiest V formation in either realm and, still silent, peels off toward the splash pad. They will follow the girl home. Not to intervene (they’re useless at that). Just to bear witness. Sometimes that’s the only miracle on offer.
End of day, locking up and then ending up back over at St. Mary's she notices the empty playground. Empty except for one boy on the merry-go-round going slow circles, wet cheeks catching streetlight. The battalion is already there, perched along the metal bars like deranged gargoyles. No battle cry. No donkey references. Just the soft clink of thimbles touching in something that might be prayer if they knew how.
Asha walks past. Patty drops from the sky, lands on Asha’s collarbone, lighter than guilt. Whispers, voice like a bee that swallowed a Tudor insult dictionary: “Still counting?” Asha doesn’t break stride. “Still counting.” Patty pats the side of Asha’s neck once (affection, apology, salute, all three) and zips back to her troops.
Apartment. Kelly. Pour coffee, stare at it. Pain tolerance achieved. Notebook.
Tonight she writes:
Purple-coat girl – escorted by bottle-cap legion, 12:47 p.m.
Hooded child – silence guard posted, duration unknown.
Merry-go-round boy – full battalion on watch, no casualties (theirs or his).
They bowed their heads again today. I think that means we’re winning.
She’ll be ready.
They always are.
At the bottom, smaller:
She closes the book. Somewhere outside, very faintly, she hears the unmistakable clatter of a thimble army trying to march in formation on a tin roof and failing.
She sleeps lightly. Dreams rarely come, but tonight they sound like the softest clink of bottle-caps lowering for a child who stopped laughing. Silver threads of care and owl feathers cushion her off to sleep.
And still, every morning will bring the noise again. The battalion will be hungover on yesterday’s silence.
For resources : RAINN or Support for Men at 1in6.org are lifelines.
I am a collateral victim of John David Norman - we are healing together.
I do hope this helps others realize they were not ever alone.
I am a collateral victim of John David Norman - we are healing together.
I do hope this helps others realize they were not ever alone.
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