Blue Light of the Frozen Rain - excerpt

     Mother stirs a pot of color. Color me green, blue, yellow. Color me, color me, color me. That phluffing sound of the wooden tongue slapping against the wall of turquoise liquid, slurping it up. Beside the pot is a black, sooty rock twice the size of mother's head, its crater deep and disturbing, its surface porous. It's the surface I caress not the cavity as I prepare to transform the object, dreaming the story. Bits of nature, delicate twigs, fine sand, small berries, clumps of bark, a root as thin as an animal hair, these are my characters. "This is Earth," she tells me cradling the rock, careful of its fragility. "Earth was different then. We had this gardenia bush...so intoxicating and the magnolia tree with its white, velvet blossoms. I was Spring's disciple, Ciel, when the shoots were lime and the air was milky with spores. Spring, never again. Not here, not on Amber Sea. Too hot. On Earth, nature was my religion. I lost it when I lost my youth."
     She gazes longingly at the rock. "You never get your youth back. Don't let anyone fool you."
     She looks up as though recognizing for the first time where she is. "Baby girl, don't worry. You're different. Come. Come sit on mama's lap. Come help mama paint."
     My favorite activity, this painting thing. Waving my hand like a magic wand, drawing the paint to the rock, concealing the flaws that disappear in broad strokes of color so rich I hunger for mother's milk. Like mother's lost youth, the milk has turned to water. Nothing has tasted the same since.