Chapter Text
Suletta’s words die on her lips as she focuses and her eyes adjust to the change of light. There is a singer on the stage.
She forgets her protests at her friends, she forgets her anxiety and shyness when they cleared through the bouncers and the dimly lit hallways of the establishment.
There is a singer on the stage.
And she is blinding.
Suletta swallows, dumbfounded among a crowd that goes wild, jumping and dancing and chanting to the rhythm of a song she has never heard in her life but goes through her heart all the same. Somebody crashes against her and she barely realizes it, adjusting her strong shoulders to let them dance away. Instead, she takes a couple of steps and barely moves forward, toward the stage, toward the singing which is now taking the mic from its stand and looking at her.
No, she couldn’t be looking at her.
Could she?
Concentrate, Suletta.
Oh shit, how she wishes Aerial were there.
She takes another two steps forward and she is now surrounded by the deafening roar of the public at the mercy of their star. The singer still looks at her, or so she thinks. Her hair changes color alongside the lights on the roof, and the white smoke makes everything seem blurry, like a dream she hasn’t realized she is in yet. Suletta blinks and the lights change once more.
Red, green, blue, they change non-stop, swelling and decreasing with the music. She feels her own heart elated and stolen by a woman that she longs to reach, a world of distance away from her.
The singer smiles, a wicked smile some would call,a spell Suletta walks into happily, and drops to her knees, her white hair —now she sees it, white and gray as a late evening blizzard— rocks with the movement and she points at a couple of the front-rowers.
Suletta has completely lost sight of her friends by now and she could not care less. She joins the roaring crowd, her heavy boots acting like springs to her trained muscles, soon she is at the front, her mouth agape and her lips parted instead of mouthing the lyrics of a song that has taken a hold of her. The singer sees her, she knows.
She knows.
And winks at her, before getting up and making her way back into the center of the stage, veiled by the dry ice in the stage and the lights, sheltered by the love of all of her fans in that room, followed by the blue, focused eyes of Suletta, that can’t keep at the front and gets pushed back by the crowd.
Her world has completely changed and she has not yet grasped the implications of it.
How can she know?
She is blinded by a star.
Her universe was ready to start to expand once more.
“There there.” Nika tries her best not to laugh in her face, as she offers Suletta a glass of simple water and pats her shoulder.
“Only you would be an idiot enough to fall in love with a person you haven’t even spoken a word with.” Chuchu is not kind, looking at her friends sideways from the bar with a glass half-full of beer in front of her and her elbows on the counter. “A singer for all fuck’s sake! Suletta you really have been living under a rock until now.”
“But she was… she is… I mean, d-did you look at her?” Suletta gestures as she tries to explain herself, turning to face the stage the band had just disappeared from, leaving the floor in front of it deserted, the crowd dissolved after their gravitational pole had left the stage. Chuchu looks in that direction and sighs, rubbing her temples with one hand. Nika just laughs and shakes her head.
“You see? It was good getting you out of your dorm and into the city, for once.” Nika waves for Nuno to join them from the other side of the room and she sees him pull Ojelo with him. “Now we can all remember this momentous night, and maybe we can go to more of their concerts?”
“Thank you, Nika…” Suletta deflates in the bar, letting her forehead drop onto the wood and her shoulders fall. “I suppose that’s a plan.”
“I think they are close to making it big, you know? Maybe this was the last time we could watch them live,” Chuchu says, downing the rest of her glass in a sip. Suletta whimpers and doesn’t raise her head when their friends arrive.
Maybe it was a once in a lifetime experience.
Maybe she was just starstruck by that stellar performance and music that had been too impactful.
Maybe she would never see her again, just through the screen of her phone when looking up the new songs the band would put out.
Maybe she would never see her again at all.
Her friends laugh around, patting between her shoulder blades every now and then, a reminder they are still there, waiting for her to join the party.
Suletta looks up, now her chin on the bar and sees the hundreds of bottles that cover the wall, the lights not changing now, the muffled conversations she couldn’t make sense of.
Maybe this is just another flick of fate in a universe that sometimes feels too empty and too cold for her to continue to traverse on her own.
It’s winter, and winters in the big city are somehow kinder than the harsh months she would spend with her mom and Aerial out in the open spaces away from anywhere that she calls home.
In comparison, she can walk around these streets avoiding people like she was dancing, her coat open and her scarf barely secured on her neck. Suletta keeps her bag by her shoulder as she avoids a couple with an agile twirl and starts her way up the stairs to the metro station. This is one of the rare occasions she has to go outside campus and to the skirts of the city, where the ground tests were conducted and all pilots tested in the sharpness of their skills.
Suletta covers two steps on each stride, barely thinking about what her body does out of memory and years of training. Her mind is far away, pulled into different directions that make it hard to concentrate on anything at all.
Her mother calls after a night out she didn’t approve of.
Her upcoming exams that will define the rest of her semester and should be the only reason she is there in the first place.
In the white hair and changing eyes of a singer on a stage late at night, making her heart swell alongside music she hasn’t stopped humming in her alone time.
Suletta sighs and jumps the last three steps to get onto the platform.
The hour is early enough to still be called morning, but past the rush hour that makes that city alive and boiling, a bustling hub of people and connections that had swollen her whole the first days. She has learned now to avoid the rush as much as possible, even if it means longer waiting times and lonelier trips —that’s fine, she is used to being mostly on her own after all.
And Aerial, of course, Suletta would never forget her sister.
The hour is early enough that people roam around, waiting for the train near the spot where the train will stop and open the door that works for each the most. Early enough for the cold to still be stiff and hard around, tearing white wisps of air from their mouths and noses when they breathe. Suletta walks to one side of the station, the one she feels nobody will wait for the train and she will have more chances to catch a wagon with empty seats to enjoy.
Her bag rustles against her coat on her shoulder, she grabs both straps with her right hand and accommodates it. The clock on the ceiling says there are still some minutes before the next train. She walks around, looking at the dark floor under her feet, similar to the heavy boots she wears.
Suletta sighs and white air surrounds her face, like the dry ice that covered the stage the other night.
A strange jab crosses her heart and she wishes she could understand her feelings better than she does now.
She clears her throat and looks up, at the other platform and the advertisements there.
But her eyes meet the singer instead.
Her mouth hangs open and she stops, frozen in time, only the fading white air from her nostrils moving.
She’s there, it’s her. Yes. Is it her?
Yes.
She’s wearing a beanie hat over her white hair, but it escapes, incapable of covering her untamed bangs that adorn her face like a crown. She’s there, looking at her phone, headphones on and a frown Suletta can tell apart despite the distance.
She’s there, in a heavy jacket and slacks, high heels, an outfit Suletta would never use but she can help but register piece by piece.
Suletta looks at her, but she doesn’t look back.
She bites her bottom lip.
Shit—
Suletta looks at the clock, a minute or less for the next train, she looks at the clock on the other platform, maybe the same, but she can’t tell for sure.
Without understanding what she is doing, following her heart that has started to hammer in her chest, she runs.
There’s an overpass to the opposite platform.
Her universe was exploding and she couldn’t know yet.
But it would tear her apart before it would offer hope and light.
A promise she hasn’t heard yet.
Suletta runs and the few people on the platform look at her with raised eyebrows and disapproving eyes.
Suletta runs.