[a.k.a. Celestial Lessons 002, a stand-alone narrative]

Another morning. Another day. I have to face it. Face her.

As I walk slowly towards the bedroom – her bedroom – I curse myself silently, at my accelerating heartbeat. It was actually louder than my footsteps. She might’ve woken up already, because of that, if not for the smell of her favourite morning coffee, bacon and eggs in the air.

Maybe it was the coffee. Have to stop taking coffee before seeing her.

OFF LIMITS. Read the sign on her door. A warning to me, I feel. Every morning. Do I heed it?

I don’t even bother to knock anymore. She couldn’t care less anyway. College life does that to you, I guess. I turn the knob and enter into a mess of a world, her world, clothes and bags, all over the floor, books and bras…

And there she lay. On the bed. Made for a queen. Tangled up in a heap of pink blankets, sprawled like a lazy cat, thick blonde hair covering her face, bare long legs dangling off the edge…

Curses.

At least she could’ve worn some clothes.

“No…” she groans, groggily, through the golden mane hiding her beautiful face, muffling her soft, husky voice. “Please tell me it’s not time already.”

“I can’t lie to you,” I lie, “you’ve got a seminar presentation this morning.”

“You’d make a terrible roommate, Kieran,” she replies, slowly getting up, folding her lithe catlike body into a sitting position, hair magically parting, emerald green eyes shining through, right through me like a laser beam – I have a thing for piercing green peepers – blanket strategically covering all that was needed to be revealed.

It was just pure torture. Just watching her. Skin the colour of peach glistening in the sliver of the morning sun rays sneaking through the curtains. Such a celestial body. Even the sun wants to take a peek at her, to wake her up, to touch her. What more a lowly being like me?

“I wouldn’t be your roommate even if you begged me to,” I lie again.

She smiles ever so lightly. Another laser beam shot right through me. I think she knew.

“I would’ve stayed at my dorm, if everyone there wasn’t trying to brutally murder me,” she explains, in that groggy intoxicating half-whisper, threatening to rip me apart, and those bedroom eyes, threatening to incinerate me with their laser power.

More excuses. The things I have to put up with.

Calm down now. Breathe. Keep your distance. Stay detached.

“Once more, your breakfast is made ready by yours truly…” I say as she flashes another smile, a brilliant one this time, more brilliant than the sun. It was only gratitude. And I just lose the words, whatever it is I was saying just now.

Stop this. Now.

One last look – I always keep vowing to never look at her this way again – and keep breaking that vow, every morning – I turn my eyes away from her beautiful face, as I say, “Mom’s gone like a ghost again. To work, I think. I’m gonna have to rush off, too. Got a killer Physics exam.”

Turning, walking away from her door, I hear her soft voice fading off, “Good luck, brother…”

I wish she could just stop calling me that.

[Also see: Celestial Lessons 001]

It was unreal. Control. She controls. She was unreal. Celeste.

He felt her eyes on him. Burning through. Controlling him. His every move, his every action, his every word, or lack of it. Almost like she had him on remote control. Was she really doing this to him? Why? Was she making him do this? Like the way he would stay up late at night, alone in his room, dark, silent, staring at the ceiling, doing things boys his age shouldn’t be doing anymore. The guilt. The shame. Pathetic. Was it all because of her?

He looked upon her like his elder sister. But that would just be wrong. He always did feel strangely protective over her, even though she didn’t really need anyone’s protection, like he did with his sister. But no, not like a sister. She was much more than that. Beyond that. No, ‘sister’ was just wrong.

Her lips moved. The Universe moved with them. With her. Around her. Around him as well. With him sucked in. Like a black hole. Inescapable gravity.

And as her words flowed around him, and the others whose presence, or rather, existence he never noticed anymore, her casually brief glances would feel like intensely burning hair-thin lines of invisible deadly laser beams searing right through his body, his skull, his soul, his ribcage. Yes, that’s just how it felt. To be under her ‘surveillance’. Like an escaped convict running from the blinding spotlights that seemed to be chasing him one moment, then pass by without a care, until the next beam intercepted him.

But he didn’t really want to run from the deadly beautiful laser beams or confounding spotlights of those emerald green eyes.

So why couldn’t he face them? Her.

“Kieran?”

Oh, the softness of her voice. The sound of his name on her lips. The resonance of the vibrating sound waves, too soft to move quarks, but powerful enough to move galaxies, even send them crashing into each other. But so lacking in any real emotion. Like the winter breeze. Cool, deadly beautiful, and sending chills down his spine. How that felt, good or bad, he wasn’t sure. Just unreal.

She called my name? he blinked. She called my name!

She moved towards him. Like a comet. A shooting star. Shining brightly against the darkness of this cold, empty Universe.

Celeste.

Oh no.

She moved closer. Towards him. Or just his general direction, he suddenly hoped.

And with that bleak half-hearted hope, space-time seemed to suddenly distort. Seconds dilated into aeons. The far edges of the Universe around them seemed to come to a standstill. Sounds became as loud as a vacuum, and it didn’t make sense since sounds don’t exist in vacuums. Yet she still moved.

The comet Celeste still hovered towards him at her steady pace. Her long brown hair slightly lagging in the space-time vortex behind her. And then the comet came to an impossible stop. Right before him.

Towering high above him like a beautiful Angel of Death, she asked him, softly, “Are you all right?”

“Um…” he struggled to find the words, “y-yes, Cel– …Miss Samson.”

“Really?” she asked again, so soft almost mocking, so casual almost teasing, “Have you been following everything I said?”

There it was again. Control.

The shining star was now the overwhelming black hole crushing him to the tiniest worthless particle with its infinite mass. Again.

Kieran only nodded helplessly.

Celeste smiled. Like a beautiful predator. Again that subtle mocking. That which only he could perceive. “Good then. Kieran Pittman, define Planck’s constant to the rest of the class, please.”

Now he was seriously doomed.