J - Thyme Out

School had been out for a week, and Thyme was beginning to relax.
The hunt for a babysitter was abandoned within days. She couldn't
tolerate them, and they couldn't stand to be around her. Thyme solemnly
promised to stay out of trouble, and Sharon trusted her. She really had
no choice.

It was mid-morning when Thyme woke up that day. Nocturnal by nature,
thyme lived upside down from the normal waking world. The clock on her
bedside claimed it was 10:30, but the sky through her window disagreed.
It wasn't the blue black of night, but a uniform dark gray. Her first
thought was of Tera's eyes, followed by realization. A storm was moving
in, and she'd almost slept through it!

She took the time to pull on some shorts and a tank top, then headed
for her backyard, feet still bare, hair uncombed. The vibration, the
tingle were both there! She could sit out the storm with no
interruptions. Stretching out on her back, palms to the ground, Thyme
watched as the tones of gray lightened and deepened with the moving
clouds.

When the first flash came, she didn't so much as blink. A few moments
later, the familiar vibration came from under her, then up through her.
She had released it and waited for the boom to follow. As the next bolt
lit the sky, she caught the shaking and pulled it to her, hoping to
shake herself loose from other and see it standing alone, but soon the
vibration escaped and the sound came.

Lightening again lit the sky, and Thyme realized it was dark where
herself hid, or at least the path to herself. The rumble ran it's
course, and she concentrated. If she could pull the thunder, she could
channel the light, the power of the lightening.

Lying perfectly still, feeling with each inch of her skin, she
recognized the preceding tingle and pulled. The streak came closer, the
shaking deeper afterwards. Just a few more times and maybe it would
work. The winds kicked up, swaying even the trees older than her
mother, groans silent to most filled the air as the old ones bent long
stiff trunks. Birdsong had ceased and squirrels huddled together in
those trunks, startled motionless by the movements.

Thyme held on to the lightening and thunder, but turned enough of her
mind away to "look". Frustrated at the void, she pulled harder. Tera's
eyes drifted back through her mind, followed by the eclipse in motion.
Separation. There was no way to separate who people were from who she
was, from herself. Why not, her mind asked. Lightening flashed, the
thunder rose up from the earth, through her, and then again the boom
sounded. Thyme knew, knew what she did not know. She did not know
herself.

That was the problem with separation. Too many people she had "known".
She'd been too young before. The world was still her then. She had
never acknowledged Other. For the first time, she fought through Other,
and words poured in a torrent, feelings slightly thicker and slower,
but fighting for recognition. But she didn't want them; she wanted
more.

The lighter grays dissolved, leaving an almost black yet starless sky.
Thyme fought to "see" as the lightening flashed closer and the thunder
rose quicker until it seemed every flash burned away the feelings and
every vibration disintegrated words, speeding in her mind and in the
sky, blurring till the electricity struck faster than the thunder could
rise.

The people in that neighborhood still speak of that storm, when sound
caught up with light, the laws of nature itself bent, as a searing
white bolt was accompanied by a boom of thunder that literally shook
paintings on the walls, one awful instant of terror. Collapses and
heart attacks were reported all over the town.

One little girl lay on the grass of her backyard, a blackened ring
outlining her small form, wisps of smoke rising around her, but not a
mark to be found on her perfect skin. Thyme's eyes were still open, but
she saw nothing, nothing outside herself. In that awful split-second,
Thyme had "seen" herself.

She never noticed the jolt that ran through her, the smell of burnt
grass, the rain that poured in torrents, it's floodgates loosed by the
convergence. Nothing else existed.

She was still lying there when her mother found her that evening.