“How do you feel about what happened to Lora?” Louie asked.
Sarra stared through the brand new panes of glass leaning against the living room wall, waiting to be installed. Sarra sneered and rubbed her bruised shoulder.
“I had plans today…” She muttered and turned to the window.
Louie nodded.
“Time waits for no man.”
Sarra sat cross-legged on the floor.
“Yeah, but the man waiting has plenty of time.”
Louie curled his lip. Sarra threw the question back
“How do you feel about what happened to my sister?”
Louie shrugged.
“I’m still processing it; give me some time to mull it over…” He said. Sarra nodded, they shared their answer.
The two sat by the new glass, taking a minute or two to stay cool on the parched August day. The drawback of living closer to sea level in Southern California was the intolerable heat that made itself known for two thirds of the year. This was not a good deal for both Louis and Sarra Summers.
A comet of light flew through the open windows. The light crashed into the new sets of glass, shattering all but one pane. A pair of silver gauntlets formed from the comet in front of Sarra. Both father and daughter looked at them dumbfounded as the glass tinkled to the carpet. None had been given any time to react.
Serena marched out from the kitchen, having heard the crash.
“What on earth is…?”
Sarra grabbed the gauntlets and held them up for her mother to see. Like a switch being flicked, Louie went past furious and into a deep, white-hot ethereal calm. Louie pointed at the new gauntlets, spouting wordless syllables with a smile.
Serena looked at the shattered glass, Sarra, and the gauntlets. She knew how angry her husband was, and she knew what the gauntlets were. Although Serena worked to be a tough woman, relatable to both of her daughters on each of their extremes, the events of the day topped off with a second pair of EnWol gauntlets was too much for her to take. Serena grimaced, turned on her heel, and galloped in another direction.
Sarra looked at her father; he was smiling with a bit too much pleasure for his standards. Sarra could feel the fury radiating from him. She curled her lip, stared at the gauntlets and shrugged.
“In a void, why not? There’s been too much shit on this sundae today anyway; let’s put the cherry on top.”
Louie nudged Sarra with his foot as she undid the first hinge. She glanced up at him and he threw his tape measurer at the last pane of glass, making a hole in the wall as well. Louie looked at Sarra, well past caring. She stood up, mindful of her intense father, and put the gauntlets on. The pair emitted a bright light that spread across her body. Sarra rose into the air and both of her forearms went numb.
Sarra felt odd, she could no longer feel her hands, or tell if they still existed. She looked down to get a better idea, but her intense light washed out all detail. The absolute numbness spread to the rest of her arms and down her torso. She started to panic when the numbness hit both her hips and nose simultaneously. She thought of the worst obscenities as the numbness overtook her entire head.
Sarra blacked out.
Louie watched the progress, wondering if he really, really should have stopped her. Sarra was losing her shape, her limbs merged into her torso in an amorphous blob and then to a perfect sphere. The light faded and Sarra became a mirrored ball with the clothes at her feet. Louie presumed that it was still his daughter.
“Sarra?” He croaked; his anger did not dissipate in the least, but his concern pushed it aside.
The ball rippled at the mention of its name. Louie looked at his reflection and thought ‘like father like son.’ Sarra was proud of her feminine side, but her own style and attitude swayed her toward male activates. This was enough for Louie to relate with his spunky daughter, and in turn, Sarra with her father.
Sarra regained consciousness right away. She did not know what to do, or what she was. Her field of vision broadened in an unbroken three hundred and sixty degree viewpoint. Sarra felt for her body after realizing that she had become her own pupil. She didn’t know how to explain what it was like to be a perfect sphere. If she were to explain it in simple terms, she would say that she was physically whole.
Sarra was getting restless. She figured that she had become EnWol and she wanted her old human shape back. She saw Louie step back as her ‘whole’ sprouted some lumps. Her field of vision was cut by half as her eyes were put in their proper place. She closed her new eyes to feel the reversion from sphere to Sarra.
Louie watched Sarra’s five lumps become her head and extremities; her main glob stretched into her torso. Louie searched for something to say as Sarra’s silver body gained some color.
“You okay?” He asked.
Sarra held her hand up. She felt exactly like her old self but with an overwhelming sensation of… softness and fluidity. Sarra opened her eyes and found that she was wearing an exact replica of Lora’s Pink Lemon uniform. She curled her lip and hoped that she did not find what she was expecting.
“Shit, my hair isn’t pink, is it?” Sarra grabbed a lock of her hair and got her answer. It was hot pink. She looked at her father with a screwed up face. He nodded.
“Two Pink Lemons in the family… The second is mortified more by her hair color than the gooey change.”
Sarra moved her arm and a leg. Her body felt like it finished a hard days exercise that was preceded by a good stretch, but bluntly oversaturated and without the discomfort and weariness that comes with it.
She could live with that.
“Two Pink Lemons? I don’t want your lemons. What am I supposed to do with those? Let’s do Crimson Cherry.” Her voice slurred a little, making the S sound like a Z.
Sarra’s first thought was of red and purple and she changed to reflect those colors. She looked at her purple hair and smiled.
Louie raised an eyebrow.
“Crimzon Cherry? Spelled with a Z?”
Sarra nodded.
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
Louie shrugged.
“The world’s English teachers are going to hate you… and your mother is going to hate me for letting this happen to you…”
Louie walked off; there was a tipsy swagger in his walk. Sarra could tell that his anger was returning.
“Listen Sarra, I need to lie down. If there are some Orange Apricot gauntlets for me and Violet Plum gauntlets for Serena, than I not only don’t want to know about them, I want them destroyed.”
Sarra nodded as her father left. She floated in midair and studied her new form. She realized with both a cold certainty and her father’s choice of words that she would never be able to change back.
Sarra’s old body was destroyed and that was that.
“Well, I leapt before I looked so now I’m stuck, so far so good.” Sarra told herself. She looked at the forgotten glass, and felt a hollow cloud cast itself over her.
Sarra could feel a nonexistent heart shrivel up and deflate with terror inside her chest and she was unsure why. She looked at her arm, her ‘elbow’ hanging loose like a rope. She let it drip to the floor and detach. It didn’t hurt. She stepped on the silver goo and her foot reabsorbed it while her arm reformed. Sarra felt her heart knot up and shudder again. A hint of nausea floated in her stomach, even though she knew that it was no longer there.
Sarra continued to analyze her terror based illness, but a rational reason never came up. She knew what was coming. She had daydreamed about being EnWol before, and she knew that it was a one-way trip. Sarra had no idea what was bugging her about being EnWol, since she figured that she wouldn’t mind so much.