Saxby Saronet

A Near-Future Love Story — Day 81–91, 93–94, 96, 99–101

Saxby Saronet wasn’t like other boys. He didn’t like fast cars or bottle rockets or playing with gasoline and matches. He thought pinup girls were unrealistic teases; much as he admired a well-turned breast, he thought it absurd that women should idolize the leggy vixens of twentieth century bombardier calendars, and that men expected them to. Saxby didn’t lust, but he desired, and what he desired, he knew he could have.

It was this unexpected combination of looks and confidence that unsettled Saxby’s male peers. They expected a quiet, bookish twig of a boy like him to be hopelessly pathetic, a pushover, a doddering pariah, one less bag of testosterone to shoulder against for the affections of the fairer flesh. What they got instead was a puzzling specimen, a walking contradiction, a man in boy’s clothing, a silent competitor who outwitted them in the one thing they cared about the most: girls.

There were actually three things Saxby’s peers cared about, the two others besides girls being — in order — excelling at sports and being surrounded by people at the lunch table. Saxby didn’t care a damn about sports, and he preferred respect over the hollow thing that passed as admiration in the halls of the Gilfoyle School for Disadvantaged Youths, that hormonal battleground upon which he spent most of his waking hours.

To Saxby, two things at least were true: girls were far more self-aware and intellectually advantaged than their male counterparts, and being admired had very little to do with being worthwhile. He noticed, where few others did, the desperate, pleading looks in the eyes of those to whom the most attention was given, around whom the most were encircled at lunch, from whom the most blasé attitudes emanated. It was a ruse that fooled almost everyone but him.

Saxby often felt like the protagonist in The Time Machine, one of his favorite novels. He was a man out of time, born into the wrong era; he grew profoundly sad when he saw glimpses of the past: when buildings were made of stone instead of glass, when men smoked and wore ties and never swore. When he watched black and white movies, his heart ached for the lost feminine graces of Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and Maureen O’Hara. To him, contemporary actresses were like stunted chrysalises to the brilliant butterflies of these bygone women.

The other boys couldn’t comprehend the depth of Saxby’s restless longing; they saw only strangeness, as one sees it in old men who have the faraway look of those still living in a lost time, one that is only real in the mind.

They related to him, then, as they would to an elder: with condescending curiosity. Yet, as one of their contemporaries, he was fair game for that merciless ridicule peculiar to the young. It was fueled by jealousy at his effortless ability to attract the admiration of the young Gilfoyle women (whom he spurned), and at his utter weirdness.

There is nothing so paradoxical as a group of adolescents who ceaselessly ridicule variety even as they celebrate its virtues.

“Sucksby Saronet sucks his father’s clarinet!”

The insult, hurled gleefully at point blank range by Otis Ollivander, captain of the school cannonball squad, was appended by a rough shove.

“It’s Sar-oh-nay,” Saxby growled as he rebounded from the wall.

Otis guffawed. “You’re such a fag!” He bent low in a mock bow. “Many pardons, your eminence.” His laughter echoed down the hallway as he disappeared into the press of students.

Saxby felt the warmth of anger in his face, in the quickening of his heart and in the dampening of his palms. In that moment, he despised the weakness of his biology, which made him want to drive his thumbs into Otis’ eye sockets and crush his corneas into pulpy wads of jelly.

He hated that he cared — even on a primal level — what words dribbled from the hole in that insufferable face.

“Actually, I prefer to perambulate about your mother’s perineum with my pinky, Oafish Ollivander,” Saxby whispered darkly.

That would have been better.

Later, as Professor Laravel lectured on the optimal cruising altitudes for zeppelins in urban and exurban atmospheres, Saxby pondered the tendencies of bullies.

His mind fought itself on this. I have better things to do, it muttered, than to dissect the diseased cerebrums of neanderthals.

He isn’t a neanderthal. Most bullies aren’t. They’re simply scared. Scared of the very thing they torment.

You’re giving that oaf a pass.

No. I’m deconstructing him. I’m pulling aside the curtain.

So, he’s the great and powerful Oz?

In a way. Like Oz, he is afraid. Afraid people will see the real him.

Which is?

“…average height of inner-city edifices is forty four and one tenth meters, it thus follows that, on approach, zeppelin pilots must maneuver to below…”

He’s as weird as I am.

Oh, and not that he secretly likes other boys?

Please, we’re better than that. He’s using the insult du jour to assail a minority. He practically yelled it so everyone within earshot could silently remark on how normal he is.

Maybe. His last name is arguably weirder than ours.

Yes.

“…as city regulations require the pilot to pass the requisite Zeppelin Piloting Exam, which consists of six parts…”

We should be considering the implications of our thesis on the Tendencies of Asymmetry in Architecture to Cause Distress Among the Citizenry and Its Long Term Effects on the Wellbeing of the Social Fabric. If it gets accepted —

When it gets accepted, the Council of Enlightened Scribes will extend an invitation, we’ll have our apprenticeship, and we shall finally be out of here.

“…Honorable Association of Zeppelin Pilots recommends a box square knot for securing the lead line to the sky post. If you turn to page three seventeen, you will see an example of this knot…”

She was an exotic stone tossed into the placid, shallow waters of the Gilfoyle School for Disadvantaged Youths. Rumors rippled through the hallways, murmurations of someone new and different. Her hair was pink, they said. No — it was purple, but in the proper light it changed colors, just like Sophia Scarpoletti’s did in the movies. Most people thought it was CGI, but Saxby believed. He knew it was possible.

He squashed his curiosity, much like a child might bury his desire to play with dolls after being told he was too old. This newcomer would be little more than a brightly colored cog in the machinery of his dull generation, surprising everyone but him.

He thought of his thesis, half-finished and utterly mediocre, as he drew zeppelins in the margins of his notebook.

It was lunch. Gaggles of students droned by in lockstep, like mechanical geese, chattering in other languages about pedestrian things.

Saxby sat in a window ledge overlooking the entrance courtyard, where knots of others sat with their pale sandwiches and crinkly bags of crispy puffs. He watched them munch and point and laugh and pretend to like each other, a haughty sneer forming.

Be careful. Too much contempt, and you’ll be just like them.

He took a breath and exhaled deeply, detaching himself, feeling care and concern drift away. He had work to do.

The 2024 study by Messrs. Flack and Aerodyne strongly support the assertion that asymmetrical casement placings on the façades of the first and second floors of street-facing edifices reduce the likelihood and duration of spontaneous pedestrian congregation by no less than forty percent.

The paragraph sounded the same on the eighth reading as it had on the fifth. Saxby crossed out no less than and replaced it with at least, then snapped his notebook closed, gathered his notes, and headed to his next class just as the bell rang.

He would be sixty seconds late, as planned, to avoid the tedious socializing that consumed passing period and bled into the first moments of lecture, before the professor managed to corral students into their seats.

When the professor was speaking, Saxby was safe.

A week passed before Saxby saw her. The rumors had continued unabated, corroborated by enough people that at least some of them had to be partially true.

He was intrigued by this piecemeal sketch of her, even though he knew only that she was “exotic” and had “strange hair.” He thought, not without a little interest, that she was from New Korea. He had always loved the delicate skin and almond eyes of the people from this region.

Saxby was sitting in his favorite window ledge overlooking the courtyard, re-reading bits of his thesis, occasionally looking upon the plebeian masses, when it happened.

A wave seemed to ripple through the living clusters below as they turned their heads and grew silent, collective sandwiches suspended in midair. When he saw the purple eyes under the bob of chromatic hair, gliding through the gray concrete like a weird swan, Saxby knew he would never finish his thesis, and that he would never have to.

“I’m Cora,” she said, extending a pale hand, fingers straight and delicate and tapering into well-knuckled wrists.

“Saxby,” he replied. Her grip was firm, confident, dry without being rough, warm, vibrant. His neck tingled.

“I saw you in the window,” she said.

Saxby knew he cared what this girl thought of him, because he was unable to muster a reply.

She waited.

“I…I sit here often,” he managed.

“I know. I watch you, sometimes.”

“You do?”

She didn’t reply. Saxby took her in. She was exotic, if not from New Korea. He guessed she was about his age, though her bold self assurance made her seem much older. She looked different and acted strangely. She seemed a kindred spirit.

“I knew right away that I liked you,” she said, “and that means you knew it, too.”

In a rare lapse of self control, Saxby goggled, feeling his pencil slip to the floor, where it clattered and rolled into the shadows. No one ever talked like this, not even adults.

She stared at him, calmly, waiting. He noticed that her nose had freckles; he took in the faint scar at her hairline, saw the contours of her waist from the blurry edge of his vision. She seemed to him like an ancient rock, around which the current and eddies of daily life roared without consequence. He desired, suddenly, to be anything to her but a common droplet.

“Yes,” was all he said. Saxby lost himself in her eyes, noting the fine golden flecks in her irises. He saw galaxies whirling in the darkness of her pupils.

“You’re into zeppelins,” she said, breaking the long silence. The halls were quiet; lunch was over. How long had it been?

Saxby glanced at his sketches. His drawings seemed crude, now, and imperfect. He had always been a better writer, sketching only between stretches of inspiration, when the words wouldn’t come.

“I’ve always been fascinated by them, too,” she said, looking down at his notepad. “I’m going to be a pilot someday. Someday soon.”

Saxby’s reply was automatic. “You — you’re — that’s…”

She arched an eyebrow, as though daring him to say what most people thought: You’re a woman. Women can’t pilot zeppelins. That’s not done.

“What I mean to say is, that’s — admirable.”

Her eyebrow lowered, but her guard was up; the galaxies in her pupils had melted away, replaced by the sparks of a repressed fire.

Saxby looked down at the grimy tile of the landing, then gathered himself.

“Listen, I think women would make better zeppelin pilots. It’s foolish to exclude them like we do. The Chairascuro back in ‘28? I did a research paper on that last semester. It was completely avoidable. The pilot did all the typically male things — overruled his co-pilot, ignored his instruments, attempted a night landing in foul weather — and over a hundred people died. Arrogance, ego, stubbornness — I doubt very much that you would have let that happen,” he finished. His hands were shaking.

She looked at him, the sparks replaced with — something else. Something comfortably unsettling.

“Thank you, Saxby,” she said. His stomach dropped at the mention of his name. She said it so…well.

“I believe you. You are a man of principles.”

She looked over him, through the window. He followed her gaze. In the distance, through the rippled glass, a zeppelin floated away from a skyscraper, a silver bean sparkling in the sun.

“I’ll be seeing you, Saxby,” she said.

He hardly had time to think of a reply before she had turned on her heel and disappeared, leaving him on the quiet window with his dizzy thoughts.

I’m going to be a pilot someday. Someday soon. I knew right away that I liked you, and that means you like me, too.

Saxby lay in his narrow bed, hands clasped behind his head, replaying Cora’s words over and over in his mind. He allowed himself to luxuriate under her gaze, recreating every facet of her in his mind’s eye. He spun entire fantasies and alternate paths for his life to take, each involving her, a zeppelin, and hours of intelligent conversation over snifters of port.

I knew right away that I liked you.

She lay superimposed on his cracked and dingy ceiling, a slight grin tugging at her lips, her violet eyes inviting.

I knew right away…

Saxby had known right away, too. Maybe there was something to the hopelessly romantic notion of “love at first sight.”

“Saxby, please. You’re not in love,” he said aloud to himself. “You just met this girl…this…Cora.”

She is no girl.

He felt a sudden resistance to the free fall to which he had happily submitted these past few hours. His mind, eager to protect him, conjured up awful scenarios, from Otis stealing her away to him perishing in a zeppelin disaster.

The revulsion he felt at someone like Otis touching her, speaking to her, or being near her was sufficient to rouse in him a competitive instinct he never knew he possessed. Cora suddenly became a precious thing to defend. She was like a white Pashmina to Otis’ muddy, grubby fingers.

“I guess that makes me all-purpose cleaner,” Saxby whispered, instantly regretting giving voice to such an unimaginative string of syllables. He sounded like one of them, for God’s sake.

His mind took another turn.

Don’t you find it odd she singled you out so quickly, that she was so bold? Be careful, Saxby. It doesn’t seem —

Lay off it. It’s ok for me to actually like a girl who’s into me, isn’t it? We had a connection. A spiritual and intellectual connection.

He rolled onto his side with a huff, his eyes catching the readout on the wall clock. Only three hours until first bell.

You should sleep. If you see her tomorrow, you want to look rested. Even three hours rested.

He slowly drifted off, and dreamt fitfully of a giant Cora crushing zeppelins in her palms like King Kong.

“Hello, Saxby. How is your paper?” she asked.

Saxby snapped out of his reverie and met Cora’s eyes. He had been staring out of his favorite window, frowning absently at the masses lunching below.

“Not well,” he said, surprised by his honesty.

It had been three weeks since he’d last seen her. He had thought very little of his thesis, spending the majority of his lunch hour sketching zeppelins, most of them with a tiny Cora in the gondola.

“Your zeppelins have improved.”

He blushed.

“I — I’m stuck. I’ve been writing this paper for so long.”

She sat next to him on the ledge, her thigh brushing his shin. Saxby’s heart raced; his palms grew cold.

“Let me see,” she said, touching his notebook delicately.

“It’s not ready,” he said, even as he handed her the notebook. “I haven’t checked it for grammar or anything.”

She held the notebook up close to her face and studied the open page for a while, her features inscrutable.

“The…you’re looking at the last page. The paper starts here — ” he began, his fingers reaching out.

“Is this me?” she asked, flipping the notebook around and pointing to a smudge of purple in the margin.

“Well — yes.”

She stared at him, and again Saxby saw the whirling galaxies in her pupils. Time slowed to a stop. The dull, distant throb of students moving through the halls crescendoed and vanished into silence before she broke the spell.

“Saxby, do you want to come with me?”

He couldn’t keep his astonishment in check, and inhaled sharply, audibly.

Again, silence.

She was comfortable with it, wielding it as most people spent idle words.

“I…” he began.

“Don’t think,” she said, placing a hand on his knee. “Feel. What does your heart tell you?”

He knew right away what his heart told him; he had known for weeks. He had likely known before he even met this strange woman. He summoned his courage, feeling safe and vulnerable in her presence, and answered,

“It tells me to run away and never look back. To forget this thesis. To quit this school, with all of its dullards. To fall heedlessly in — ”

Her eyes sparkled.

Saxby blushed more furiously than he’d ever done in his life. The heat radiated so fiercely from his face that his glasses began to fog.

“Ok,” she said, standing, a faint smile teasing her lips. She turned to go.

“Wait,” he said, a little too loudly.

She paused, turning slightly.

“What does — your heart tell you?”

She laughed lightly. Saxby thought it sounded…real. Not as musical as the laughter he expected, but…real.

“I’ll be seeing you, Saxby.”

And then she was gone.

Saxby didn’t see Cora for another twenty six days. He told himself it was absurd to count the time — that only they did things like that — but he couldn’t help it.

He didn’t see her in the hallways; neither was she anywhere before first or last bell. He spent every lunch hour at the window on the landing overlooking the yard, his neck tingling in anticipation, his mind wandering, his hands unable to draw zeppelins.

Every day, he told himself he would see her, but she never came.

Saxby’s thesis was due in three weeks, but he had written hardly a word in the two months since he’d met Cora.

What am I even writing about? he wondered for the umpteenth time. What’s the point of this wending monstrosity, steeped in common grandiloquence, muddled, garbage, shit? Who cares!

He flung his notebook across his small room, and then his pencil. He hated his thesis, and wanted to rewrite it, but couldn’t: he was too caught up in the allure of escaping his life with… her.

He was suddenly mad. She had upended everything with scarcely more than a touch and a handful of well-placed words. She knew his deepest desires, the ones even he himself didn’t know he had. His writing had been going just fine, the thesis on point, and then — her.

He felt weak. Typical.

Like Otis.

A pang of jealousy stabbed through Saxby as he wondered if Otis would crumble like this for a girl, forgetting to practice his cannonballing.

Not likely.

“Next time I see you, Cora, I won’t be such a doddering fool.”

Even as he uttered the words, he knew they were untrue.

A week later, Saxby was in the library. He had stopped sitting on the window ledge, and considered it a small victory over his own incessant desire to be found by Her.

He wedged himself into the furthest, smallest nook in the dusty old space: a built-in desk barely wider than his chair, fitted between two bookcases full of faded tomes on people long deceased. An old window, cloudy with age and neglect, provided ample light but little at which to look.

The most compelling argument in favor of elevated retail frontages along thoroughfares, regardless of average traffic, is —

“Hello, Saxby.”

His heart leapt and his neck tingled before his mind shouldered in and made its displeasure known. Saxby tensed his shoulders and pretended not to hear, then decided it would be a useless ruse, as the room was utterly quiet.

“Oh, hello,” he said, without turning. He scribbled some lines on his paper to make it seem as though he were still writing.

“You’re upset with me,” she said.

In spite of himself, Saxby turned to face her. The late afternoon light cast her in a stark half-shadow, accentuating her exotic features. Every primal nerve in his body hummed with excitement, drowning out his mind’s fury.

“No,” he lied.

“I can’t blame you,” she said. “I came out of the shadows, said crazy things to you, and then disappeared for weeks. I must have left you in quite a state.”

She paused, and looked at him earnestly.

“I’m sorry, Saxby.”

He wasn’t expecting an apology. Her humility made him feel absurd. And the way she said his name…

He forgave her instantly.

“It’s ok,” he mumbled. Then, “Where have you been?”

He disliked how much he sounded like an accusatory spouse. “I mean — where did you go?”

She smiled broadly, her dark eyes glinting. She stepped closer.

“I found a zeppelin,” she said softly.

Saxby raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

She moved close enough to touch Saxby; then, bending down so that her lips brushed his ear, she whispered, “I found our zeppelin.”

Every nerve in Saxby’s left side snapped to attention at her touch. His mind reeled. The floor heaved.

“Our zeppelin?” he asked, astonished.

She stood slowly, then nodded.

“But — what do you mean?”

“Exactly as I said. I found our zeppelin. The one we are going to take around the world. Away from here,” she said, tossing her head dismissively at the musty shelves.

“But — zeppelins don’t exactly fall from the sky — ”

She laughed. “Yes, Saxby, they do.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you talking about stealing a zeppelin?”

“Of course not, Saxby. You know the punishment for theft. And stealing something as valuable as a zeppelin… We’d be sentenced to death.”

“Then… I don’t understand.”

She wedged herself onto the desk, sitting on Saxby’s notebook. He felt compelled to move out of politeness, but resisted the urge. Her legs dangled from the desk and brushed against his.

“You don’t know who I am, do you Saxby?”

He shook his head slowly.

“I’m very powerful. I have the means.”

“Then — why didn’t you get one before? Why now? Why me?” he asked, not wanting to be suspicious of her.

Beneath her characteristic insouciance, Saxby thought she seemed mildly flustered, as though her mind were racing to craft the right answer.

“Isn’t it obvious? We’re mad for each other. I’ve wanted to run away for years, but it wasn’t until I met you that I found the person I wanted to do it with.”

“Why not just run away on your own?” he asked, ignoring her boldness.

She studied him seriously. “It’s no fun being alone. Is it?”

He blushed, suddenly ashamed. She had struck a nerve. Damn her. And damn that I am mad for her. Damn, damn, damn!

“I didn’t mean —” she reached out and touched his cheek lightly.

Saxby didn’t know how to react. He wanted to slap her hand away and kiss it all at once. He did neither.

“I — I have to finish my thesis,” he said, quietly.

“Oh. Yes, of course. But — I am leaving tomorrow night. I’d… I’d like very much if you came with me.” She gave him a meaningful glance.

“Tomorrow night? But — I have to finish. It’s due in a week and I need every last minute to edit it.”

“Can’t you work from up there?” she said, pointing out the window.

“Are you serious? You want me to just… run away? And where would we go? How would we survive? I haven’t money for food, or helium. And — come to think of it — how are we going to fly this zeppelin of yours?”

“Ours,” she said.

“Whatever,” he snapped.

She looked hurt. “I’ll fly us.”

“You? But — just a few weeks ago you said — “

“I said that I’d be a zeppelin pilot, and someday soon. I’ve spent the last few years learning, and once I met you I — accelerated my studies.”

“You mean to tell me that — that you’re a…a zeppelin pilot? Really and truly?”

She slipped a hand into her back pocket and pulled out an identification card. He took it and looked at it in astonishment.

Cora Maginot has been found by the Honorable Association of Zeppelin Pilots (HAZP) to be properly qualified to exercise the privileges of Private Zeppelin Pilot, and to enjoy all the rights and privileges thereunto appertaining.

He was speechless. “But how… you’re a…”

“Woman? Yes, Saxby, I am. And not just any woman. The first woman to ever be licensed as a zeppelin pilot.”

Cora said she had spent the last three weeks taking the Zeppelin Piloting Exam, and the previous sixteen months convincing the HAZP that she was just as qualified as any man to take it. It had been no simple task.

Saxby wondered aloud why there hadn’t been any publicity around her achievement. They wanted to keep this as quiet as possible, she told him. It was the only way they’d consider letting me in — if no one knew. They have a reputation to uphold.

Saxby’s estimation of Cora trebled, and he worried that he was falling — or had already fallen — hopelessly in love. He felt very unaccomplished by comparison, and cast about for ways he could prove to himself that he was good enough for her.

My thesis.

His thesis was an opportunity to gain admission to the Council of Enlightened Scribes, one of the most respected groups of creatives in the world. Being admitted to that distinguished group would surely —

Wait, Saxby. Are you doing this for you or for her?

Does it matter?

Saxby had pressed Cora on her reasoning for wanting to leave the next night. Why tomorrow night? he asked. What’s the urgency behind it?

She had looked uncomfortable — hadn’t she?

I — I’ve just been dying to get out of here. To go. And now that I have the chance, I want to take it. Come with me.

The words still resonated with him hours later as he sat on his narrow bed, chewing his pencil. The overwhelming pressure of trying to finish his thesis overnight frayed his normally calm nerves.

Come with me.

“Why couldn’t I finish it up there?” he asked himself aloud.

He knew he never would. While he had never ridden in a zeppelin before, he imagined that being so constantly near her — with the world spread out below and nothing but the silent whisper of gravity to keep them company — would be unbearably distracting.

He thought, for the twentieth time, about simply forgetting his thesis and running away with her.

The prospect was thrilling and frightening all at once.

He was tempted by his fear.

All of his contemporaries talked about chasing fear and flinging themselves after adventure, but none of them ever did. Just like all of the people in his parents’ generation, who talked about saving the planet, even as they clung to their air conditioning and automobiles.

He was a man of action. A doer. Wasn’t he?

Saxby sighed. Everything had seemed so simple before Cora. His whole life was the thesis; his only path was to become an Enlightened Scribe. Now he was willing to ignore all of that and run down a new path, one he’d never wanted until a few weeks ago.

I never thought I’d be one of those people.

Who lives? he asked himself.

No. Who falls in love.

In the morning, Saxby was uncharacteristically out of sorts. He arrived at the Gilfoyle School for Disadvantaged Youths with only a few moments of sleep, snatched on his tram ride from home. He wore the same rumpled clothes he had the day before, when Cora had surprised him in the library.

In the waning hours of the night, he had decided he was not going with her. He could always look her up later and find her. How hard would it be to find the only woman zeppelin pilot in the entire world?

He dreaded seeing Cora. The last thing he wanted to do was disappoint her, and this news certainly would. Even after hours of self-convincing, the part of him that wanted to run away would not be silent.

You don’t have to disappoint her. Just go with her. You can finish your thesis on the zeppelin.

No. I never would. How could I, with her so near? With the world spread out beneath us, and vaporous kingdoms our only neighbors?

He slipped into his chair several minutes late, earning a severe look from Professor Laravel and snickers from Otis and his friends. A moment later, a crumpled ball of paper struck Saxby in the ear. More snickering.

He was too tired to focus on being angry. Instead, he sketched idle zeppelins in the margins of his notebook, the unfinished conclusion to his thesis taunting him.

The morning passed in a blur of exhaustion. At lunch, Saxby trudged to his old spot at the stairwell window overlooking the courtyard, and fell asleep.

When he awoke, the halls were quiet, though it felt he had only just closed his eyes. He felt a soft touch on his arm just as a warm scent of lilac and cinnamon reached his nose.

He looked up.

“Hello, Saxby,” she said. “Were you working late?”

“Cora…” he said, his eyes widening as he took in her appearance.

She was transformed, her natural features sharpened by rouge, lipstick, and powder. It wasn’t the kind of garish transformation most girls underwent at Gilfoyle; it was classy, like — Ava Gardner.

Like something from another time.

“I thought I’d freshen up for my maiden voyage,” she said simply. “What do you think?”

She turned slightly, her leather pilot boots creaking, the low slung, tight-fitting pilot’s jacket revealing the smooth swell of her décolletage.

“Goodness,” he said. “I think you look very — very sharp.”

Goodness? Sharp?

Cora affected a blush. “Thank you, Saxby.”

She sat next to him, her lilac intoxicating. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

After a pregnant pause, she asked, “What have you decided?”

Saxby’s mouth went dry and his palms froze.

Go with her, you fool!

My thesis…

Thesis nothing. You can always write another, but this — she is once in a lifetime, man!

“Well, I…” he began.

She gazed at him meaningfully.

Another, agonizing pause.

“Don’t you want to come with me?” Cora asked, grasping Saxby’s cold hands with her own. They felt so warm. Saxby grasped them back, and was overcome with a blissful feeling of possession, of having hold of something he never imagined could be his.

She could be mine. All I have to do —

“Of course I do, Cora. More than anything in the world. It’s just — this thesis. I don’t think I’d ever manage if I were with you.”

She released his hands and looked down.

“I understand,” she said softly.

“I — ”

She rose and looked Saxby in the eyes. She looked strangely hopeful.

“It’s been very nice, Saxby, to know you.”

She turned to walk down the stairway. Out of his life, maybe forever.

Fool!

“Cora — wait,” he said.

She paused midway down the stairs.

“I’m coming with you.”

Once he said the words, he was certain of them, and his fears evaporated.

She turned, then, and stilled Saxby’s elation with a look of pity and bottomless sorrow.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” she said in a small voice, barely a whisper.

“What? I — I don’t…”

Almost mechanically, she straightened her back and stared off at a point above Saxby’s shoulder. He saw the emotion drain from her face and her eyes became cool; her features relaxed. She suddenly looked like a different person entirely.

Without looking at him, she turned about and walked down the stairs and out of sight, the staccato of her steps echoing in the hallway below.

“Cora!” Saxby stood quickly, his notebook clattering to the floor. He wanted to run after her, but something held him in place.

He knew, with a sudden, sinking dread, that she was gone.

Three days later, Saxby received a letter in the mail. He heard it slip under his door with a little whisk, and fought the urge to leap instantly from his narrow bed and tear it open.

It’s from Cora. It explains everything.

He rolled over and popped up onto an elbow. From across the room, he could tell it was an official letter. Not from her.

Puzzled, he wrested himself from bed and walked over to his door, kneeling close to the letter to read its return address.

It was from the Council of Enlightened Scribes.

Odd. My thesis isn’t due for another four days.

With trembling hands, he opened it, and read:

Mr. Saronet:

It has recently come to our attention that your dedication to the admission process of the Council has been called into question, and is beneath the rigorous standards that our organization demands; I, therefore, regret to inform you that submission of your long-form entrance thesis will no longer be necessary.

Admission to the Council can, therefore, no longer be considered, either at this or any future date.

Respectfully, and on behalf of the Council,

Ainsley Aloysius

“Fuck,” Saxby said, for the first time in his life.

He knew, suddenly — dreadfully — that Cora was the reason he was holding this letter. She had to be.

The Council sent her. To test me. And I failed.

He’d heard rumors of the Council doing such things; several years ago, when he first brought home the application, an itinerant on the street had seen the telltale golden envelope and stopped him.

“Careful, boy. It isn’t easy getting in, and once you’re in, you can’t get out. They’ll trick you good. They tricked me. Offered me money. I was hard up, could’ve used it. Some guy shows up, makes friends with me, eventually offers to help. I should’ve known.”

Saxby didn’t understand then, and soon forgot the man, but it came back to him now with a jarring ferocity.

It was all a ruse. She never liked me. She was just…testing me.

“And I failed,” he said, his voice cracking, a sob welling in his throat.

He read the letter again, held it up to the light, scanned the envelope — just to make sure it wasn’t a forgery.

But it was all real. It had to be.

And it had to be her.

Saxby let the letter flutter to the ground. He walked slowly to the single, musty window in his small room, and dropped his head against the glass. The pale light of the setting sun cast deep shadows on the tall buildings and obscured the streets below in darkness.

“I loved you, Cora,” he said, lifting his face.

In the distance, a small silver speck flashed in the darkening sky: a zeppelin, turning for the great beyond.

This is but a small piece of my lifelong daily writing practice, and also part of the Ninja Writers June Post-a-Day Fiction Challenge. If you enjoyed this, you may also like some of my other writing.