1st 5 Pages Oct Workshop - Loftis Rev 1

Name: Taelor Loftis

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Title: Veil of Sparks

I am Cailan Murray and weak has never been my name—the affirmation rings through Cailan’s bones as her eyes scan the jagged peaks of the Sangre de Cristos in a last ditch effort to hold herself together. The chaos of students and parents scurrying around amidst a maze of boxes, furniture, and other various belongings becomes a distant reality as her eyes search the horizon for anything to focus on to settle her mixed emotions. This shouldn’t be hard to find, considering she’s often seen an enigmatic glimmer between the airy aspens and stately piñons of this northern New Mexico village.

Aspen Springs, with its beautiful and haunting surroundings, has always been the kind of place that makes her peer a little more closely at things, convincing her that she’s glimpsed the unfamiliar sky of some other world beyond her own or noticed a phantom sparkle swimming in the depths of a passerby’s eyes. Across the parking lot, someone’s possessions tear through the bottom of cardboard box and scatter across Aspen Springs University’s cobblestone pavers, echoing off the granite, moss-covered buildings, tethering her back to reality. College move-in day is in full force, but for Cailan it’s come to an end—her few belongings tucked away safely in her new dorm room, and her uncle readying himself to leave. Despite the anxious excitement buzzing through the atmosphere, today serves as a gentle reminder of times spent with her mother hiking these very mountains, and as a whispered promise to believe that she is not sorrow, that she is not pain, and that her past is what has happened to her, not who she is, and not who she will become.  

“Are you all right?” her Uncle Oliver asks, searching her stormy eyes for the truth they both know her words won’t say. “You look just like Fiona when you get lost in your thoughts like that.” His voice is calm and smooth against the chatter and commotion around them as he speaks of his older sister.

“I’m…good,” Cailan murmurs half-heartedly while flashing an even less stellar smile. She supposes another half-truth tagged on to the endless stream of them she’s told throughout the years won’t really matter. Indeed, she’s not even sure she has the ability to express how she really feels anymore.

And while Ollie’s crystal blue eyes seemingly search the pages of her frayed and tattered soul, a sharp talon of a memory claws its way up from the dregs of her mind like a nightmare sprung to life—her mother’s funeral on an unseasonably cold spring day. She pushes back against that memory, willing it to fade into the darkness where it resides. But her relief is short-lived. Another memory replaces the first—this one a still-life image of Ollie’s two-bedroom house in Williams, the home they’d shared for the last eight years.

Cailan swallows hard against a sob rising in her throat, fixing her stormy eyes on the ground and absentmindedly toeing at some loose gravel. Ollie starts to speak but she waves him off and cuts in. “You’re the only family I have left.” She wipes at a single tear that breaks free. “Mom was the last person I ever said goodbye to.” Her voice cracks on the last few words and she feels the endless well of emotions, emotions she’s meticulously caged inside of her for so many years, working their way up from the depths of their vault, threatening to consume her. “I’ve been saying goodbye to people and places my entire life. I don’t want to ever say goodbye again.”

Furious at herself for allowing tears to form, Cailan kicks the pile of loose gravel towards Ollie’s truck. He peels himself from his resting spot against the old, blue Ford, nervously adjusting and readjusting his worn and faded ASU cap atop his sandy curls, before embracing her in a giant bear hug. His arms tighten around her to the point where she finds it difficult to breathe, and as her tears betray her, spilling over the seams of her eyes and slipping down her face in a silent flood, the soft knit fabric of his t-shirt collects them.

Cailan feels Ollie’s words resonate through his chest. “Cai, I think you’re worrying about too many things you shouldn’t be worrying about today. You’ve got this.”

When Cailan’s trembling slows and the nightmarish memories grow dim, she releases Ollie and dares to meet his eyes. His lopsided grin stretches across his face, a trait he shares with his sister. For a moment, the bitter taste of jealousy coats her mouth as she thinks about how much he resembles her mom and how little she does.

Ollie’s gentle voice pulls her from her envy. “Don’t be afraid to have fun, Cai. You have your whole life to be adulty and serious. Enjoy your time here. You only get to do college for the first time, once.”

“I promise I’ll try—will—I promise I will have fun.” The sound of these words tumbling from her mouth are strange and foreign to Cailan. She’s always been more of a work first and play never type of girl, though she supposes Ollie is right. After all, her mother’s memory lives here, nestled amongst the grotesque gargoyles with their ever-watching eyes and whispering through the pale, silvery leaves of the towering aspens.

As Ollie makes his way around his truck, Cailan takes a wishful glance at the Sangre de Cristos surrounding the sprawling, gothic campus, her eyes climbing higher and higher until nearing the top of the tallest peak. It’s there, in the midst of the dense pines, that she spots a flicker of light—a vibrant indigo spark against an evergreen canvas, vanishing before fully forming. Her blue-grey eyes linger on that spot, anticipating something more—an answer, perhaps, that there’s more to life than what’s perceived.

Cailan’s mind wanders to glimmering memories of moments like these throughout the years—moments where she feels more than sees veils of worlds beyond her own. She wonders if her mother saw them, too, as she always had a fondness for these mysterious mountains.

The sound of Ollie’s rusted truck door slamming shut pulls Cailan from her reverie.

He leans across the tattered bench seat speaking to Cailan through the parted passenger window. “Cai,” he begins, “I won’t say goodbye. Goodbye is permanent.” Again, his lopsided grin spreads across his friendly face. “So instead, I’m saying later.”

And in the words between his words Cailan finds grace against her fears. “Later,” she says, daring to let a smile slip across her lips.

As she listens to the old Ford’s engine echoing off the granite buildings as it winds its way down the street and out the main entrance of the university, Cailan vows to herself that she will carry on in her mother’s memory and chase the secrets of these mountains.