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It was a warm, calm evening when it happened. When the wind would brush the trees only gently rather than harshly. When the farmer's dogs would snooze the night away and dream in their little houses and under porches. When no one was out on the road, to see anything strange or unusual. Not even the cows registered her, hearing a soft boom in the distance as she walked.
The hotel walked like a thick shadow through the woods, her form slow and moving, much like the wind that covered her steps. Her very breath acted like the wind, as her gray wisped hair followed suit, covering her tracks as she walked, slow in her large form. If you were to see her, you wouldn't have the chance to. You’d be swallowed in fog and mist before you could find her body leading the way, and to fall into one of her tracks and be swallowed up again. She conceals herself in her hair, and she walks on her hands, carrying the whole load of a building known as her body like tiptoes. Her breaths huff, releasing more foggy white air to dissipate and cover her arms, as they came down like bent supports to bury into the soft and mushy earth. Her arms were made of brick and mortar, wood and cobblestone, metal bent and angular, resembling deformed muscle and bone, but they’ll never fall apart. Never as long as she’s alive.
The windows on her chest sparkle, and glitter with the glimpse of the moon, and she doesn’t bother to change them. They hide in her aura of foggy hair, her breaths sounding like the wind itself, the illusion of nature moving all around. Her eyes are dark, but she can see, seeing the trees before her and the illumination of the earth under her. She knows she’s getting tired, but she moves on and on, feeling every piece of furniture and object in her moving here and there, making parts of her heavy, and sometimes off-balance, but she pulls through, pulling and still moving, still going.
She makes it into a clearing, standing above the trees on both crooked palms, loose mud getting into the crevices of her material fingers. Before she was long grass, yet it looked just like peach fuzz to her, and a barn far away. Cows sit here, but they are far and cluttered to hide and sit among one another. She hears them drone softly, a soft gentle noise as they snore to one another.
“Are we there yet?” She heard a grumble in her ear, somewhere in the cluttered living room of her stomach.
She smirks, a noise of disgruntled wood perking up a twitch of a smile on her expressionless face. She tilts forward and catches herself with a quick hand, cold earth sinking into her multi-knuckled talons, grass churned in her wake as she heads away from the cows, and into the open clearing. She rumbles and twists, and the cows that are awake watch her, this shape going by like a slow-moving train.
She huffs, water lines leaking down her back into light mists, and she pauses, surrounded by a fog of her hair. Looking down, she creates spotlights in her eyes, to see if there are any creatures under her like she is a UFO dotting the empty land under her torso. She lowers herself, her nerve endings touching the cold ground, brick against dirt, and she raises her arms a bit. Inhaling, filling every room and hall with chilled air that the AC could never produce, she releases a whirlwind of air to clear the fog around her. It swirls, and flutters, like a whistle in the wind, it curls and pops, before flowing only behind her and clearing most of it around her structure.
“Sorry about that,” she said softly. “Didn’t mean to make everyone cold, if I did.”
She didn’t get a reply and giggled, before reaching down and opening the latched door against her stomach. Light flooded against the blown back grass, shadows emerging. The Manager came out first, having a picnic blanket covering her shoulders before having the Lobby Boy in tow, his poor body shivering slightly as he wore her coat. She grabbed his hand and pointed to a spot, before taking off her blanket and having the both of them fan it out. They sat down on it as the Owner came out, wings covering his shoulders as he carried a chair and an ottoman under his arm from the lobby. He places it adjacent to the two, and sits down in it, before kicking his feet up on the ottoman. His wings grow small, and they act as a blanket to cover himself, as he falls back deeper into the chair. The Hotel closes the doors and illuminates all the windows slightly to give off a little bit of warm light, so they could see, just a little, and wait.
Wait for it to happen. Watch the stars and wait.
A few moments passed, and the lobby boy and manager huddled next to one another as they laid against the blanket, the owner adjusting his legs to cross the other way, the hotel letting her eyes wander. Crickets chirped in the distance, answering their silence. She hoped, for once, she picked the right spot for them to see it.
Then, one by one, streaks moved across the salt-peppered sky, occasionally one or two, some long some short, all in the same direction. The lobby boy sat up as the manager perked up a bit, the owner watching as the lights were reflected in his black spilled eyes. A meteor shower and it was growing more and more streaks and rocks falling, some disappearing moments, some continuing.
“You could make a million wishes,” Lobby Boy muttered. “Or would that count for one?”
The manager looked at him, seeing his eyes glued to the sky, watching the fire-covered rocks streak across the sky, eyes dotting to one and then another. He was in pure awe. He still wore her coat from inside, even though it was big for her, it fit him somewhat. He fiddled with the ends of it rather than the ends of his long hair, worn down fingernails in the fabric cuffs. Her lips curled, thinking of a wish already as she followed one. “I’m not entirely sure”
The owner watched the sky dotted with fires and watched them disappear, not having much to say aloud or to anyone at the moment. This was much different than being in the void, or what he imagined to be meteors, much less them being like strings of fire that disappear like pieces of a burning fire itself. Though he watched, for once glad that these didn’t have any noise to them or they weren’t overly bright. A wish came to mind in his head, having remembered that these were like shooting stars, and he focused on one before it fizzled out before his very eyes.
The hotel watched the streaks fly and dissipate, but nothing came to mind for a wish. Soft creaks in her chest came through, softly, like her chest was filling a pair of lungs. She watched them, rather than put any thought into them. She forgot the employees below her and focused on the flying stars.
To be up there.
Flying.
Soaring without mortal instruments or illusions. To burn like ambers tossed across a blacktop, burning with no consequence or to no end. She has her light, but even then she becomes burnt out or stays still as she’s stiff and still for some time before the guest dies. Even she has to repaint her nails at that time, and once they refill the bright red, she knows she can get up and fold into the night. Closed that moment, opened up elsewhere.
She imagines her hair flying behind her like red and orange northern lights, and she can swim in the blackness like a jellyfish without restraint. Yet… her light would die, as she’d slow down. She’d get hungry, hungry for journey and speed. Here, she eats on the energy of these guests, eats what the sun gave them in the first creation. It's small, in morsels and drops, but it leaves her continuing more than the meteors above. There’s so much in these guests, that they have it here on this planet, that they don’t waste it flying across galaxies, or else they’ll get sucked into the vacuum of space without protection. She takes them, and she regains their materials and proteins into structures, illusions, and power. There are whispers in her, ones her structure does not make as it moves and shifts. The spirits left behind… they are stripped of their atoms and materials, but they still chatter of secrets even she didn't think they had.
Power to fill the lights and water in the halls, to force her employees to work harder, to drive the monsters insane with hunger and destruction as she once felt.
But even then…
She misses swimming in endless space rather than being stiff and hiding. No one here loves looking at her true form, no matter how many times she shows it. No one goes to hotels unless for vacation, getaway, or escape from their life. She waits days, weeks, months sometimes.
Right now she waited just moments.
It was hours later, and the sky was dark again, save for the stars that were different than before. The moon peeked out through the clouds, moved inches over.
She looks down and opens the lobby doors, watching as her employees pick up their items and walk to her, lobby boy and manager close to one another, talking about the event and not a spot of rot on them. They stop to glance at the owner, who didn’t move from his spot at all.
Hotel squints, leaning over and towering over the little chair.
“Oh my gosh guys he’s sleeping,” she said, and soon the other two follow, and sure enough, said man was fast asleep. He was slumped into the chair, wings around him like a blanket, and knocked out cold.
The manager snickered as Lobby Boy clung to her, his eyes drooping a little as he watched their tempered boss peacefully at rest. He couldn't keep his eyes on him and leaned his head on Manager’s shoulder, his stringy curtains of hair covering his face. She looked at him and wrapped the blanket around him, not caring if dirt would be on either of them at the moment.
Meanwhile, Hotel let the cables and electrical bits from the innards of her lobby floors slither out and grab onto the chair, each thin and thick like little grabbers, wrapping around the legs and the back of it. It tilted the furniture back, and lifted him off the ground, his legs dangling as his arms gave away from their rests. She carried him back into the hotel, setting the chair to the side and letting the black cables disappear back into their holes.
The two with the picnic blanket slipped inside as she did so, Lobby Boy setting the ottoman aside and letting Manager take the blanket from him. He stopped, before wanting to give her back her jacket. She saw his intent, and shook her head, letting him have it, as it would change some other time and return to her all the same. At least it’s his tonight.
He nodded, and hesitated, glancing at the material in his long fingers. She gathered his attention by putting her hands over his, small and thin against his long and scraggly skin. She kissed his cheek and told him goodnight, before heading to her reception desk, and slipping through the office door behind there. He stood there for a moment, for two nearly, as the Hotel was beginning to lift herself, and he was in that same awe again as he looked at the material and back at the door she left through, before heading to his closet. His door clicked shut, softly.
The hotel felt shaky on her hands, the strength had changed as she finally rested and got up. She could feel her bricks nearly go through the ground for how long she sat there, and she had to twist herself out of the ground to make sure not a piece of her ripped apart. She stood tall, as she had to gather her breath and let her hair swamp her, covering her existence and view. She took one last look up at the stars, seeing the plethora dotting and coloring the sky in close whites and very light colors of yellows and pinks.
Her view was swallowed by her hair, swirling like a slow storm and for once she had to let it go. Let it go, no matter how far she could reach or will herself. It was only something behind her, as she stayed here, roaming and hiding. For now. Only for now.
She picked herself up and walked away from the open field, letting herself fold up into the night, one and two-fold, as the sounds of sleep and creaking and whispers filled her hollowed body. She disappeared, in a clip of fog and mist, the sound of metal and mortar chips left behind for the cows to smell and the dogs to wonder what was ever there.
Stuff that didn't make the cut but funny:
(Meanwhile, Hotel flicked the back of the owner's chair, startling the guy out of it and onto the ottoman and healthy ground. The Manager would laugh, but she was tired so she smirked slightly at seeing the Owner fall over before getting up. His face and front hard dark hue of browns on it, and he shook his head, tired.
The two with the picnic blanket slipped inside, leaving the Owner to gather up his things. Hotel grabbed his chair with looped cables, pulling it up and inside her stomach, placing it back where it originally was, stuck by the lobby couches. She turned her attention to the Owner, to which she did apologize for disrupting his sleep.)
("Did you enjoy the show?" She asked him, smiling her metal teeth at him. He looked up at her, and he seemed so tiny, so small with his small ottoman.
"I did. It was very beautiful tonight," he said as the crickets chirped softly. He looked around, as though expecting to forget something else, before looking back up at her. "I wished for something."
"Oh really? You wishing on things doesn't seem likely."
"For once, I wished for something of my own."
She watched him, squinting slightly. "What… was it for?"
He looked at her, before marching to her, saying "oh I just wished for more birds this winter season to stay with me all the time. Something I know you wouldn't like as they would poop all over the place."
Hotel scoffed, going to slam the doors on him but he slipped through quickly, the door catching a feather of his.)