Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

II. Where Did Cielo's Apartment Go?

The Shade. After 700 years living in the neighborhood, Cielo truly loved it. The way you loved a sibling who's always breaking your heart, getting into trouble, blowing up aer life, and, occasionally, getting locked up.

The Shade. It wasn't the overcast skies that bothered Cielo, whose madre had given aer a name that means Sky for the love of them. Unconditional love brought an acceptance of the cloud cover and the cool air year round. Always nippy, so you would need to carry a jacket, and couldn't leave the house in shorts or a summer skirt — which meant, wrapped in skinnies and a suéter, if you trekked into any other Soliara barrio the sun would sweat you out as you peeled off layers you'd have to carry along with you.

You could always cooling spell yourself, but it got cara as the cost started to add up. As would sending your suéters through a link home.

Better to just stay in the chill relief of home. And upon returning from anywhere else, sweat drenched and sun-soaked, the Shade provided that sweetest windy embrace. The whole barrio was an ice box — free of charge — and Cielo loved how it cooled aer down in the skinnies that were always too tight, clingy to aer wide thighs.

Aeh loved it, and Samura loved it, so why leave?

The people, mostly.

For a century there, the sun came out more and more. No one knew why. For a century or so, Sol rained its beams happily over inhabitants and the weekenders, and word spread, and the barrio became popular — and you would think that would be a good thing, but as word spread . . . it brought . . . change.

You could get sun anywhere in Soliara, but could you get Luz's Arepas or Lamfen's jianbing crepes? The Dosa at Sahan Family had long been a draw — filling, nutritious, its fragrant chickpea sheet encasing potatoes and onions in masala spices. The aroma crossed Lira Street with every cold breeze. People used to link straight in and out of the Shade to get it.

The sunlit streets during that hot spell invited them to stay, though, and wander until they had room for an helado or a fried buñeulo from Benecio's.

The newcomers would stop in their tracks suddenly on the narrow streets to point and capture magic prints of the political murals or rainbow graffiti, or the painted little houses that had survived urban renewal (so far). The newcomers would scoff in their open toed shoes and sandals at the broken bottle glass on the ground, and — often — that of broken moto windows.

They snapped up scarves and tanks crafted by hand, sans magic — and that business heated up, and so along came the booths of knockoffs with replica factory made bags, necklaces, tanks, dresses, wispy shawls and light throws, at a low cost that pushed the old artisans right out. Near identical textiles sprouted up on every corner, replacing the one of a kind goods. And who could complain about that? The magic stuff was high quality, durable, long lasting . . . and it all looked the same. Everywhere you looked, girls had the same hot pink tote, the same flowering blue skirt, the same magic cast leather satchel, the same rose bud gold chains.

And the newcomers would drop solidae in the hats of grayscale homeless who had given up the color spells that replaced the pigmentation leached away by immortality, which was nice. At times, though, they avoided them, steering wide to avoid an assumed smell or an uncomfortable confrontation, thus blocking the way when Cielo was trying to get aer bags of groceries home (choosing to walk and not link for the exercise, but wanting to be quick in case the helado in aer bag should melt so aeh wouldn't need to shell out on a cooling spell during the hot spell).

No one made any effort whatsoever not to bump, slide, meander or wander right into aer way.

And they stayed. Because the weather was nice. They moved in. Fine, the more the merrier. The problem was, the cloud and fog would roll back in. And when it did, the people of the Shade began to grumble. They started to whine and whine. You could overhear them complaining all the time.