🌣🌣
🌣🌣
( . . . content warning . . . )
🌣🌣
🌣🌣
0. alejandro
at the chandrani family’s welcome party near the jowar seas, inside their over-colorful house, you think important thoughts. you are alejandro caldera-altaha. you are 7. your caldera family has sent you away; they are worried about your caldera aunt. you sit with your important thoughts on the indigo loveseat by the door leading out of the house, far apart from anyone who means anything.
you are a brown-skinned boy mage upon the planet imion. you are a star out in space. both these things are true.
you think about how you are too dark for a star. teo is the right color, very pale. teo is your biggest brother. teo’s best friend juan herrera will save him. juan herrera will save everyone. juan looks like a hero while talking animatedly on the navy blue sofa with armando herrera-rivera, the bravest old man in the world—he married ranvir chandrani. teo seemed to find this very funny when he told you. you wish teo were here, too.
there are two other 7-year-old boys running around, mostly zooming through different rooms prior to coming back to the center of this one, and frequently. they look identical. there are many other children, though those children are upstairs, playing hide-and-seek instead of acting crazy. there’s another twin nearby.
one of the twins—antonio chandrani-rivera—is darker-skinned than juan. juan is a little lighter than you. he would be a proper star.
you think, sourly, that antonio shouldn’t try to look like juan. he doesn’t keep proper dark hair like juan. you do. yours is longer, anyway. fernando chandrani-rivera has the long hair, but his skin is the same color as antonio’s.
he has golden eyes instead of red, so unlike you and antonio, he is like a star.
you still can’t make him your twin brother. he is too dark.
these are important thoughts to think at 7 years old. they stick with you forever.
I. ALEJANDRO AND THE MORNING’S STAR
Satan said, “You can go wherever you please. You can go anywhere.”
Alejandro said, “I can’t. I’m trapped atop of a star. You put me there.”
Satan said, “I didn’t put you anywhere. You are free to go where you please across space-time.”
Alejandro heard the song from far away. He danced with Antonio for a while to it, floating above the star that could never harm him or anybody brought to him—sashays, those things they’d once known—and then he realized.
He wasn’t near enough to him.
He wasn’t close at all.
A million-fold…
A little beyond.
Antonio Chandrani-Rivera wasn’t there.
Satan was.
It was the first time his identical twin brother Adrián had walked right up to him from a million-fold miles away.
II. THE FOOL
Alejandro said something foolish. Satan seemed unhappy.
Adrián said some garbage. Alejandro was upset.
Nothing ever seemed to become fixed.
Since a long time ago.
Alejandro said, “You don’t understand. I don’t care about any of that.”
Satan said, “It’s all you ever care about.”
III. SATAN
Alejandro Satan said, “You don’t get me at all.”
The brother from across space-time said, “It doesn’t bother me. You’re wrong. I’ve been fine for a long while. It’s you.”
IV. THE ANGEL
There was an angel from across space-time. People said so.
V. VISITS
Alejandro heard the song from far away. He danced with Antonio for a while to it—sashays, those things they’d once known—and then he realized. It was 100,000 years ago. It was 100,000 light-years away.
Back then, on 2000’s Earth, Antonio had been some human being in his teens. Alejandro had been a useless God. H-town had been hot as Hell.
His brother Adrián had been a million miles apart from them.
Alejandro tried to imagine Adrián on “Imion.” He was never around.
Unlike his brother Adrián, little Alejandro Caldera-Altaha was wise. Little Alejandro was drawing with intensive seriousness upon the Boundless library’s overly cool, stony floor. The boy had at least rested himself on a reddish rug that had manifested out of nowhere, the way the Boundless was wont to do as a dreamy realm apart from true reality. The library was always shifting around him. Like some sort of strange jungle.
His drawings were awful things. Some had rainbows. Others had Adrián Caldera on them looking much more beautiful. Others had scratches and multi-colored eyes everywhere.
Quite the wise-guy, little Alejandro said, “Just go back to Mexico. You’ll find your Adrián there. I don’t like Adrián. I don’t want to see him. He said Antonio will save everyone in our whole wide world. He’s so stupid. I hate Antonio most. God isn’t real. You’re super deluzoid.”
Alejandro told little Alejandro, “I can’t go back to Mexico. The place back then, it was 100,000 years ago.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m not,” Alejandro said, gently.
“I realized it,” Little Alejandro said. “You don’t really love me and Adrián.”
“Alright.”
Little Alejandro seemed too depressed. “You’ll come back and keep us all safe, right? After you finally go visit him in Mexico.”
“I will,” Alejandro said.
VI.
VII. the biggest stack of knock-off mon plushies toppled after all. the toy shop owner stared at the wildly worn down, once-velvet red carpet floor. he seemed to want to go past his counter and out his shop into the sunlight. instead the toy-shop owner walked back near the cashier. the toy shop’s owner said, “a girl like laiyla has no story of her own. she only weaves together others’.”
No longer 7—instead much older—he thought it had to be a very old age, maybe 17 or 21 years old—Alejandro woke to reality upon the planet Imion. He was in his dorm suite’s bed; it was surrounded by shells and sparkling trinkets, the way it’d been. He realized something. He was afraid of someone being Satan. He tried to remember who that was.
He tried hard. He remembered his family. He remembered Antonio Chandrani-Rivera.
He couldn’t remember this “Satan.” A being from far away and long ago was difficult to remember.
( fin. )
🌣🌣
( . . . extra notes and content . . . )
🌣🌣
fin.
🌣🌣
Note: Unlike many of my typical Blue Horizon media and experiences, you don't have to look around for anything. Just a short story I wrote to express frustrations.
And "Laiyla" is not a misspelling of Layla. That's about it.
🌣🌣
🌣🌣