A Talespin fanfic by Lizzy Spencer (KarmaCat) Page 7

 

        Shere sat as his desk and the phone rang.
        He picked it up. "Hello?"
        "Oh, Shere. How are you doing?"
        "How nice to hear from you, Patricia! Things are going well."
        There was a pause. "How can you say that?"
        "Why do you ask?" He turned his great chair to face the window.
        "I heard the news, Shere," she said gravely.
        "What news?"
        "Why, the news that Sarabi is dead, dear, she's dead!"
        Shere sighed and dropped his forehead into his hand. Old Patty was getting sicker and sicker every day. "That was August, and fourteen years ago, Patricia...."
        "No, Sarabi...or was it August?"  There was a pause. 'Who is this?"
 
 

        There was a knock on Sarabi's door.
        "What!?' she demanded. She was reading the files she had collected.
        Her little sister opened the door and rolled her eyes. "Geez. Something for you," she said, chucked the letter into her room, and closed the door, but not before Gabriel could throw in a "Hi, Sarabi!"
        "Good evening, Gabriel." By then the door was closed. Sarabi crossed her meticulously neat room to where the small envelope had landed on the floor. The room was almost bare, white, with a desk and a bed and a chair. The furniture was, of course, very expensive, made of stainless silver. There was a nice full length mirror and a few meaningless objects on her shelves, things Sarabi was sure she could have easily lived without but kept for the sake of having something to look at. Behind the glass door there was a small balcony where she could sit and look over her city while she read novel after novel.
        "What's this?" she asked, fingering the envelope. A small spot of red paint streaked where Orly's thumb had touched it. The front just read, in stylistic calligraphy, "Sarabi".
        She raised her eyebrows with interest, extended a claw, and ripped the envelope open in a straight, smooth incision.
        There was a folded piece of notebook paper inside. She opened it, and it read as follows:
 

Dearest Sarabi -

     It may seem that, being eighteen, I am too old to send letters like this. But this seems to be the only way that you will hear me out. I know you are busy, but if you would simply take a few minutes out of your schedule to read these words from me, I would be greatly honored.

     As I said in the file room a week ago, I have been watching you. And, to say it simply and cleanly, you are the most beautiful, graceful, intelligent creature I have ever laid eyes on. You have a sensuality that you are not even aware of-and I feel there is so much I want to give you-
 
 
 

        The rest of the letter neared explicitness. Or at least, what Sarabi considered explicitness, which didn't take much.
        Sarabi crumpled the letter in a furious hand.
        Who the heck did this boy think he was?
        How DARE he?
        The thought of someone looking at her and thinking thoughts like those disgusted her beyond belief.
        For a moment, she considered showing the letter to her father and having him do something about it. But no. She was an adult now. She could take care of this herself.
        She took the elevator down to the fifth floor, where she knew that James would be cleaning up this time of night. She tried to plan something to say to him, something civil but rough, but the trip down went too fast.
        She stormed through the floor, looking for him, peeking into every door until she finally found him arranging things in some office, a wastebasket in his hand.
        When he saw her he smiled. "You got my-"
        "Yes, I got it," she stated. "I can have you fired, you know. I can have you fired, your father fired, and everyone who had ever laid eyes on you fired."
        He seemed taken aback by her reaction, but a sudden aura of coolness came over him. "Well gee, Sarabi, that would be just about the entire staff - kinda inconvien-"
        "Quiet!" she said. "And don't you call me Sarabi. Don't call me anything. I want nothing to do with you. Don't even glance in my direction or you'll be out on the street so fast the door won't even have time hit you on the way out."
        She shoved the crumpled letter into his chest. "You can have this back. The nerve of you, to send me a letter like that! You don't even know me! And even if you did, you would wish otherwise." She hit the elevator button.
        James's face softened. He seemed about to say something, but didn't.
        She got into the elevator. "    GoodNIGHT, Mr. James.'
        James stood in place, holding the crumpled letter in his hand, listening to the elevator take Sarabi up, up, and away from him. "Darn", he whispered. "I knew that was a bad idea." A tear fought its way out of his eye. His heart hurt from the stinging needles of her words.
        And he threw the destroyed letter into the ready wastebasket he held.
 
 
 
        Sarabi held on to the railing inside of the elevator, thinking that perhaps she could have handled that better, but it was nothing, really. Experience, if nothing else. Nothing like that had ever happened before. A love letter! Fancy a love letter, to her! Of all the idiotic silliness. She decided then and there not to inform Orly of the little incident or she would never hear the end of it.
        "A sensuality that you are not even aware of-"....she hadn't read much past that part, and some little demon in the back of her mind began to wish that she had. She pushed the desire away. So she was a little flattered. There was nothing wrong with that. Despite how incredibly inappropriate the whole situation was, there was nothing wrong with that. And maybe this James was a little handsome...she swooshed her hand in front of her face in a dismissive notion, as if she were swatting away some annoying insect.
        This was the same elevator wherein which, according to her father, he had first fallen in love with their mother. Sarabi did not often think of August De Sante, but she began to think of her now. She could barely remember her, but she remembered her scent - a soft, flowery scent. Some lost perfume that Sarabi could never again locate.
        She remembered her father's face when he told her of her mother's death, and she remembered the spurt of anxiety that arose in her chest then and hadn't, she hated to admit, ever gone away. The look of anguish on his face, that moment when the stone that was his constant expression shattered as he said, "Your mother is gone, Sarabi". His face was limp and haggard - looking, and there were tears, she swore, in those stoic eyes of his.
        Tears terrified her. She would never admit it, but ever since then, they did. She could not stand to see people cry, not because she felt empathy but because wetness in the eye brought back that fatherly memory. Tears were a weakness. Tears meant that her entire existence was in question. Why they were such a grave thing to her, she did not know.
        But she never cried. Ever. Deep inside Sarabi's mind, the day that she cried would be the day that her body would shrivel away into nothing, though she knew such a thing was impossible.
        "A sensuality that you're not even aware of..."
        What else wasn't she aware of?
        She got off the elevator, absently swinging the key around her index finger as she had often seen Orly do. When her father learned that her mother was pregnant, he had the entire top floor of the building, excluding his office and what had already been his apartment, converted from offices to bedrooms and bathrooms and such, until the two highest floors of the building were just about as good as a ten bedroom, five bathroom house. She recalled that when she and her sister were little, the glass doors that led out to the many balconies were always locked so they wouldn't jump over or something. He was always so paranoid about that.
        Her childhood. Such a strange, meaningless stretch of time.
        As she got off the elevator, old legends came flooding back to her, the silly stories she had heard about tigers like her, with white hair and blue eyes. It was nonsense, she knew, but what if....
        What IF.......
        "No, no, Sarabi," she mumbled to herself. "Too late for that now."
        But then what was this great sense of missing something that invaded her every moving step? She constantly felt as if an entire chunk of her life were gone, that there was more, more to life than reading the newspaper and stocks....the 'more' that Orly had and that she could not identify.
        Your mother, of course, she thought to herself. You lost your mother when you were very young. That would cause a sense of loss in anyone. Nothing to be ashamed of.
        But no, it wasn't that. Not all of it, at least. She always had this sense of deep, deep....deep what?
        The answer came to her almost as quickly as she asked it.
        Restriction.
        As if she were holding so many things down-
        There as a hand on her shoulder. She gasped and jumped, turned, and saw her father before her. She nervously lifted her white hair away from her face. "Oh, father. I'm sorry. I didn't know it was you."
        He was dressed in a red smoking robe. "It's late, my dear. Why not go off to bed?"
        "I was just about to. Goodnight." She turned to walk to her bedroom, but then turned back again. "Father, what do you really think of all those old legends about me?"
        He stopped in his tracks, surprised. He took a breath. Sarabi almost never mentioned them. "All pure drivel, Sarabi. Old superstition to be employed by the brainless. Why do you ask? Have you been thinking of them?"
        "Oh, every now and then. Nothing to be concerned about." She yawned. "Well, goodnight Father."
        "Goodnight Sarabi. Were you going to go to that...er...what was it again?"
        "What?"
        "Something with Orly tomorrow.. oh yes, the Friendship Festival?" He shook his head. "My memory. I must admit the lack of it startles me sometimes."
        "Oh yes. That. We're going."
        "Hmmm. Well, have a good time," he said.
        "You know I always do," she replied, voice dripping with sarcasm like so many of Orly's tennis balls.
        And she went to bed with no more thoughts of any legends.