Art – Skyline – Maia Storer

Reader held himself. “Oh but don’t be so sad, it happens to all of us. Even me,” he said.

At this, the Reader turned his head to stare at the Figure in the raincoat’s gas mask. He didn’t believe them all that much yet, “Really?” He asked.

“Oh yes! Happens to the best of us all the time. Sometimes we get so caught up in doing something that we forget to fully grasp the reason why we’re doing something and what the consequences of the thing we’re doing have,” the Figure said as smoothed their bright yellow garb with one hand while holding the boy with the other. “It’s not enough to just read or look at anything. We have to process it, internalize it, think about it, and, most important of all, understand it,” he continued.

“How do we do that?” The boy asked. He loved listening to any scrap of advice that the Figure in the Raincoat had. He sensed that this was one of the most important lessons he had ever listened to.

“Well we have to-‘’ The Figure cut himself off. He froze and jerked their ear to the right like a bird cocking its head. It was barely a noise, more the tiniest bit of pressure on the drum of the Figure’s ear; nothing more than the minutest vibration, but it had been enough.

The Figure in the Raincoat had set the Reader down and was on their feet in a mere heartbeat. Moving fast and without so much as a rustle. If he hadn’t been staring at him with his own two eyes, and clutching the edge of the coat, then the Reader wouldn’t know they were there at all.

The Figure in the Raincoat stared out into the dark hallway of the building and listened.

The Reader tried to search along with the Figure in the raincoat, trying to extend awareness into that dark hallway. Over and over again, the Figure had said previously that sight was just one of the five senses, and, to survive, they had to use every single one at their disposal. The Reader had practiced every day honing his young senses, sharpening them as much as he could, but he still hadn’t heard the “sound” that set the Figure in the Raincoat off, and he couldn’t sense anything in the hallway.

The Figure turned to him and moved their hands in the shapes and patterns that he had been taught to recognize as speech without noise. The Reader was by no means 100% fluent in the language, but he knew enough.

“Move that way as quietly as you can. Don’t look back. I’ll be right behind you. Keep your senses sharp,” the Figure motioned, looking back at the kid for confirmation.

“OK,” the Reader signaled back. The Reader let go of the raincoat,

Skyline

Maia Storer, 10

digital art

turned, and moved the way that the Figure had directed, away from the mysterious noise.

Then, with his ears tuned to as much as he could process, the Reader heard a sound. It was tiny, barely comparable to the echo of a rasping breath in the dusty concrete hallway, but it was enough to make the Reader’s heart dance. He gulped and began to make silent, speedy progress towards where the Figure in the Raincoat had pointed him. Eventually, the Reader reached the falling apart stairwell that he and the Figure had used to make it to their sunset view.

The Reader turned, intending to ask the Figure what was going on in their special hand language, but found nobody there. Ethan Flores-Rothmund, 12