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2024
It’s rare to catch Trinity outside the sprawl of her metropolis. Work and life keep her locked up like the 401 grids during rush hour, she’s busy busy busy. While most of them leave their affairs to admin, Trinity the overachiever sits on her governing council too and finds twenty five hours out of twenty four to manage everything—everything except touch grass. A few years ago she finally had some time to herself and the first thing she did was start planning how she was going to forge a new identity to get her fourth eng major. (Giselle had glowered at her.)
It’s difficult to get her out of the city. Trinity hems and haws and sighs: It’s just more convenient to come to Toronto, centre of the Canadian universe. Giselle huffs and messages back: you are lucky I love you or I would not be paying $100 for via rail each way. High speed rail back in quebec-windsor corridor when. The topic plays itself out for the fiftieth-odd time.
In this newest iteration of the old quip Giselle has a trick up her sleeve. She’s dragging Trinity out today, by jove she will. Come here, she sends a nudging text. Watch the eclipse with me.
Why.
Giselle gives Trinity an excuse she can use to justify to herself. Path of totality.
And it’s almost unfair how quickly she can get Trinity onboard with those words. Because here is a secret about Trinity: she has always been weak for the stars.
It probably started when they were small, stupid, and had nothing but time to burn. Sunny days spent rolling down hills and humming on string-leaves became breezy evenings lying on the grass and admiring the stars splayed out above. Giselle remembers many a night Trinity would breathlessly whispers stories about the constellations, spending hours over each one. (To tell the truth, Giselle had been listening more to the glimmer of Trinity’s voice than the content of her rambles).
Trinity, proud Trinity, had made a declaration to mark the end of those merry days. She looked the Milky Way in the eye and swore: One day she too would be written into the stars.
Poor girl, she worked to the bone to get there even as the twinkling lights stretched further away. As her city grew outwards and upwards stargazing became increasingly difficult, too many blinding lights and skyscrapers and clouds of Uber fog.
Giselle, for all she’s a diligent worker, has never had the same fire nipping at her heels. She does her best, she is content. Montreal is a kindred spirit: classic and steadfast and a slow morning waker.
Still, Trinity is (quasi) human and a few days without the desperate bustle of life will do her well. Giselle is dangling like four different hooks in front of her, Trinity bites.
(Of course Trinity isn’t coming just for the eclipse, or just to get away, though they might both teasingly say so. For though the Earth has spun countless cycles around the sun, and their cities have changed, and they have grown up, Trinity will always, always, make time for Giselle.)
Afterwards when it is Trinity’s turn to suffer the 6-hour long train ride she’ll complain to Giselle the whole time. You are lucky I love you or I would not be spending all of 12 hours on this bumpy thing.
Giselle snorts: Like you’d rather visit Kenedi for this.
Neither of them brings up Tallulah.
-
1934
Trying to bottle the clouds in a jar is a foolish endeavour. You know this, a child knows this, she knows this. Still, Giselle would like to hold the world tight in her arms.
On the other hand, Trinity has always wanted a place on the world stage. She picked up chess in the twilight of the 1800s, devoted herself to the game and getting her name out and became damn good real fast. It’s the '30s now and Trinity has continued to practice and play the game practically designed for her puzzle-logic brain.
It would be foolish for Giselle to think she would have a chance against Trinity. See, she gets called proud often but rarely so foolish, she’s learned when to eat her pride, sit down, and lose. It would be foolish to play Trinity with any expectation of winning, and extremely silly to play her when she’s not in a losing mood.
Today is not really a losing kind of day, the weather’s no good, skies chilly and stuffed with dark grey. She wouldn’t have sat down at the board.
But they both happened to be in little Ottawa, each passing year becoming rarer and rarer for them both to be in the same city, and Trinity had asked. Giselle has never known how to say no to her.
It’s on game five, so far four out of four that she has lost. Some of them were close, and Trinity wouldn’t throw the game, so Giselle can take a little satisfaction at that. But the ultimate outcome of game five doesn’t look like it’s going to be any different: Giselle tries her best but Trinity just plays out of her mind.
Her friend calls out all of her moves before she reaches to place them: Pawn E5, Bishop C4. Giselle suspects Trinity is trying to be helpful, but if there’s something she’s supposed to catch on to there she really doesn’t see it. Trinity calls out another move, takes first blood, and now Giselle is down a piece.
So the turns go like that, a smooth slide downhill with Giselle’s pieces systematically swallowed by a black hole as she fights to recoup half her losses. It’s her game to lose. Trinity’s queen sweeps the board and takes and takes and takes:
And ends the turn in an odd position, to the diagonal of one of Giselle’s pawns and with nothing in place to protect it.
Giselle looks down at the board. Stares. Back up at Trinity, who looks composed and thoughtful, already planning her next move. (It’s not bait. Trinity just has a blind spot.)
Slowly, Giselle extends her hand to her pawn—Trinity’s face does some funny flips and she groans—grabs the queen for free—and they are even again. It’s refreshing.
Soon enough the game draws itself out to endgame: Giselle, a queen and a king. Trinity, a bishop, a knight, and a king. Giselle has just taken a turn, it’s Trinity’s move. Trinity studies the board then does something unexpected.
She raises her hand to a handshake and asks, “Tie?”
It’s touching. Trinity really thinks enough of her that there’s a chance, even distant as Pluto, that Giselle could snatch victory from her. Trinity respects Giselle enough not to play it out, and really, she’s flattered.
And again and as always, Trinity leaves the decision to Giselle.
Giselle wavers, ever slightly. She would like the win, she’s in a position where she could try to push for victory. If Trinity is offering her a draw it means she sees a path where Giselle comes out on top. On the other hand…there is an equal risk of getting too greedy, blundering her whole board and ending up with nothing to show for her luck early on in the game.
A second later—she shakes Trinity’s hand. Good game, well played, she takes the draw.
This isn’t a loss. This isn’t a win. But content works its way across Giselle’s face.
-
1848, 1954
Over the years, they have danced together once or twice.
The very first time was little Odette’s débutante ball.
They didn’t know each other back then—really, none of them did. A baker’s dozen of their kind and everyone too shy to even wave at anyone out of province, conversations exchanged only at formal events.
(The long empty years probably did that, made them all guarded and wary. You’re born eighteen and an idiot child and nobody can tell you who or what you are, in the time it takes your favourite human to die you’ve aged two-maybe-three years.
Later, Giselle would call the era, "like lost airplanes flying solo in the night sky," and it had tickled Trinity so, she’d demanded Giselle say it again and again.
How lucky they had been, to grab hands and find another to fly alongside the years by.)
All eyes on Odette, Trinity had taken the chance to march up to Giselle and make a move. With the greatest dignity, she’d asked for Giselle’s hand for the next song, then immediately dashed the image by hurriedly confessing, "Well I don’t really know how to dance."
Giselle had thrown her head back in nervous, boastful laughter. “Well, me neither. We’ll figure it out.”
They had. Clumsy, giddy, half a century old and eager to pretend they knew more than they did, they’d terrorized the ballroom. But they’d figured it out that time, and another, and they’d figured each other out.
Soon they knew each other as the Earth knows her moon, to this day celebrating the longest-running friendship north of the Saint Lawrence.
Giselle likes the Galop, Trinity prefers the Viennese Waltz. Giselle’s an autumn girl, Trinity basks in spring. Neither of them likes math too much, but they are both very good at it. They similarly think the best conversations have a bit of peace, a small place to breathe. Giselle hopes things won’t change, Trinity hopes something exciting is just around the corner.
They’d traded letters, multiple a day, before long the mailboys not sparing a glance at the delivery address before shipping them forward.
Decades later now, Giselle has a whole Rocky’s worth of boxes of letters from back then in her closet, conversations covering every subject anyone could think of. Each of those thousands of papers are adorned with Trinity’s looping script, her signature closing—
"—Your friend always, Trinity."
(Can you promise that, will you be by my side always?
Wishes are made on shooting stars, maybe promises on starry eyes count too.)
The last time they dance together is ’54. Their age, of parasols and polaroids and petticoats and phonographs, is sunsetting at last, but they swing through the music one more time for Charlotte’s debut. It’s the second last ball like this in Canada.
For half of the evening they sit and sip and gossip, lounging a distance away from the enthusiasm of the main scene. There’s so many of them now, so young and excitable, who skip across the room to strike up eager chatter. It’s unrecognizable from the heavy hesitation in the room a century ago—Giselle’s struck by a wave of dread, do these newcomers even know their past?
"Let’s go for a dance," Giselle suddenly says. She’s struck by a desire to mark the occasion—anyways, it will all be over soon enough.
Trinity raises an eyebrow and makes an accusation, "Last time you stepped on my feet." There’s no malice in the statement.
Giselle makes no response, pushing herself up off the seat and offering her hand. She looks Trinity in those star-blue eyes until her friend sighs and takes her hand.
“I hope you’ve gotten better.”
“It’d be really embarrassing if I hadn’t.”
Hand in hand, breath in breath, they flit across the floor. Step, swing, dip, spin. Step, swing, dip, spin. Step, swing, dip, grin. Giselle has gotten better, but more importantly Trinity is a damn good dance partner. With flushed cheeks they spend the rest of the night together in dance.
It’s a memory that will last.
The last time they dance together is ‘54. Three years after that, Tallulah makes her debut.
-
1980, maybe
"What’s your type?"
At some point soon after post-Tallulah, Trinity asks this at the dead of night. They sit side by side on the edge of an empty stone bridge, posing the sort of questions you can only ask when basking with a friend in the pale luna light.
It doesn’t take Giselle long to come up with an answer. It’s horribly tender and far too honest for her on most days, but today has a sentimental kind of feel. Besides, it’s too dark for anyone to see the red on her cheeks.
“You.” The words are even softer aloud than in her head.
For a second it’s just the two of them, breathing.
She feels Trinity shift and blink. Giselle wonders what she’s thinking.
Giselle wonders what she’s thinking, herself, acting so impulsively. The statement had burst out of her like a solar flare. It’s pretty out of character for her, she who holds her cards so close to her chest she struggles reading them herself.
Like, the statement’s true. Trinity is her type: brilliant, stunning girls that make her forget how not to stare. Fierce like fire, grand posture, and a mind so bright. Someone who could be the world to her.
The fact that the statement’s true makes it stranger: getting an honest truth out of Giselle is harder than getting Trinity out of Toronto. She deflects, she reflects, she doesn’t usually slip up so badly. Something about the summer air and the pitch-black sky has drawn out an honest side she didn’t know she had. Right now, she couldn’t tell a lie even if she tried.
You know what it is: she’s too comfortable pressed next to Trinity. It’s dangerous.
It’s not like the truth is hurtful or spiky or any of that. It’s not scratchy, not a sudden fright. Giselle knows she loves Trinity, it can just be that simple.
You are so very important to me.
Please don’t ever leave.
Can I be special to you?
None of this is the kind of thing you can thrust onto someone in the thick of day. It’s mortally heavy, and the two of them already have enough going on. Even hours ago at twilight it would be a little much.
She can’t say it. (Not without the risk of letting Trinity go.)
But god, if she doesn’t sometimes want to yell it to Trinity to the furious drum of her own heart. She wants Trinity to know.
Well—of course Trinity already knows. They have shared too many long gazes, too many gentle touches, too many careless implications, for her not too. But there’s a light-year difference between knowing something and being told something. Until they shape the words, they can make themselves cozy in plausibility deniability. Until she says it, Giselle never has to risk losing her.
Trinity must be of the same mind, because she too has never commented on it.
Again in the present, Giselle feels Trinity shift. Then she’s trembling and a laugh, loud and hearty, passes through Trinity’s body.
Not missing a beat, Giselle wraps an arm around Trinity’s shoulder and joins her in that wild laughter.
They talk long into the night. They’ll have more days like this, they’ll be alright.
-
1925
The last time they watched a total eclipse together was 1925, Giselle had been the one to uproot and relocate.
A hundred years ago, says Trinity wistfully.
To be exact, it was 99 years 2 months, 15 days, not quite 100. Giselle knows this but she repeats, A hundred years ago. She suspects Trinity knows the exact day too.
Honestly she doesn’t remember the event itself as being particularly special. The clouds in Toronto were in a foul mood, squatting over the sky and blocking the view so it ended up being not much different from an ordinary day. Trinity’s earnest scholars had spent the week afterwards grumbling and swearing up at the heavens.
What Giselle remembers much, much better is the time spent waiting for the eclipse. It could’ve been hours, could’ve been minutes. It’s possible they set up camp at dawn or got there bare minutes before, the two share a kind of paradoxical recklessness and dedication that multiples when they’re around each other. Regardless, time always passes like a dream when she’s with Trinity, fast and slow and just right.
They sit on the campus lawn, kick their legs up, and talk about all their pointless things: Spring, old favourite students (they shouldn’t play favourites, but they do), the pond over there from perspiration or spilled glass bottles (“That’s not a pond, it’s a puddle.” “You’re a puddle.”)
There they are, chuckling and play-teasing and killing time, when something catches Giselle’s attention and she skips a breath. Trinity’s eyes.
(Have they always been this bright?)
The common metaphor for eyes is gemstones: sapphire and aquamarine and lapis lazuli. But those wouldn’t be the words Giselle would choose for Trinity.
No, Trinity’s eyes are a thousand times brighter. They’re like stars, blue blues that gleam and burn and swallow the world around them. Giselle has gone quiet, she can do nothing but stare. Trinity is speaking again, lit up by some idea and her voice rises in pitch and her eyes, those eyes, spark like distant Spica waving.
She finishes her spiel, turns to Giselle, and beams.
Giselle’s throat is dry. She can’t find any of the right words to say.
The conversation drops to quiet. Giselle’s still staring. (If she opens her mouth, she might say something incredibly reckless, like Can I kiss your eyes.)
Noticing her gaze, Trinity stills. Giselle has just a moment to flush with self-consciousness, that vulnerable feeling of being so seen, before in the next second:
Trinity leans back on the grass and says a phrase that changes everything. Or, or, she says a phrase that guarantees nothing will ever change.
"Have you ever wanted to kiss someone?" Trinity treats the sentence like a passing thought spoken aloud, like a balloon let go to drift up to the clouds.
It’s not.
The statement isn’t voiced like one of their usual hypotheticals, dumb would-you-rather what-do-you-imagine that they trade like favours. Trinity is being terribly transparent, but even if that wasn’t the case Giselle has a hunch she’d still be able to read her. Trinity is a logical creature and the calm Tone to her voice is practiced: maybe she has been thinking about this for a lot longer than today. She sets her gaze up to the sky and gives Giselle the space to form a reply.
Mind reeling, Giselle scrambles to think.
She pictures Libra before her, two plates delicately balanced on a scale.
Here is one side. She turns, kisses Trinity now. For a hundred years they embrace and have a romance that burns brighter than the sun, and then. And then. All stars would burn out, and what happens next? There’s no guarantee their friendship would survive, they know each other too well. Giselle’s greatest fear is that she would lose Trinity forever, that the day would pass where Trinity pauses before she says something too candid, smiles ruefully and answers, “I’m not sure we have that kind of relationship anymore.”
The other side. She lets the distance between them stand and doesn’t move to close the gap. Giselle will never call her ‘lover’, never whisper secrets in bed nor breathe “I love you” on Toronto soil. But five hundred or a thousand years later, they can swap tea and quips at the end of the world.
And that is terribly worth it.
“Oh. Not really.” Three words to try and say a galaxy’s worth of feelings.
“Are you sure?” Trinity’s eyes dart over.
Giselle leans over and looks straight into those diamond eyes. She swears she’s keeping those eyes in her life at any cost: the scales tip and creak and come crashing down.
“Yeah. No.”
Giselle gives her a smile and Trinity returns it. They draw back.
That settles it, Giselle squeezes Trinity’s hand and says nothing more and they go back to waiting for a total eclipse that no-shows.
A hundred years later, they will talk a little less than do they now. Giselle will go a month without hearing from Trinity and think back to this moment and doubt the choice she made—but she can rest safely in the knowledge that Trinity has not left her life. Giselle can call her on late nights and ask, “Lol which of us would make the better tradwife” and snort and smile and stay up until the moon bows off stage.
-
1957
Who is Tallulah? Who is Tallulah?
A new girl in Ontario.
Trinity meets her before Giselle, at some gathering west of Toronto. She comes back starstruck.
Not outwardly so, but she describes Tallulah, the stranger, with just two words: she’s cute. Trinity says it with a casual touch but Giselle raises an eyebrow.
Trinity is honest-honest. Often people meeting her for the first time will come away with the impression that she’s docile-shy, but it couldn’t be further from the truth: Trinity does everything fullheartedly, wears her thoughts on her sleeve. Giselle may be the poet but Trinity’s the one who will agonize for verses about the people she can’t stand, write serenades about the things she loves.
Holding her tongue? That’s new.
Giselle pokes her from a few different angles and Trinity still doesn’t give away thing away: a smile, a shrug, and some carefully placed space. You’ll see when you meet her.
It gives Giselle a dreadful feeling.
When she first meets Tallulah for some corporate thing, she doesn’t see it.
At first she doesn’t even see Tallulah. She’s expecting someone grand, someone who everyone in the room would gravitate to—why else would Trinity be so awed? But honestly Giselle could’ve glanced right over the girl. She’s tucked in the corner, and Giselle only realizes she’s one of them after asking Rayann where she could find a Tallulah.
She goes up to introduce herself, small-talks, and struggles to find anything extraordinary about Tallulah. The girl is nice, (nice, that’s the word she would’ve used), but special? Meek even by her standards, Tallulah is just a slip of a person. You can tell her age by how lost she looks.
That changes when she sees Tallulah with Trinity.
Trinity shows up late, she lights up when the spots their awkward duo.
There’s an instant, if subtle, change in Tallulah. Her shy smile becomes something gentle like dawn, she stands an inch or two taller. She greets Trinity with a tap on the shoulder, and Trinity, notoriously “Do not touch me.” Trinity, doesn’t say a thing.
For the past hour Giselle has been forcefully leading their conversation, painstakingly pulling out the smallest input from Tallulah. But when Tallulah talks to Trinity, she seems to have to show restraint not to have words spill out. They talk like old friends, Trinity eyes gleaming as she goes on about something techy Giselle can’t begin to understand. Tallulah covers a laugh with one hand then snaps back something quick that makes Trinity split into a grin.
Giselle quiets as the conversation seems to drift further and further away. She feels like a satellite observer. Neither Trinity nor Tallulah notice, so lost as they are in their breathless conversation. If she stepped away now (and the thought is manic and admittedly selfish), would they even notice?
Suddenly it seems like Trinity’s a solar system away.
Soon Trinity is travelling hours westward every week and she doesn’t seem to know how to explain whenever Giselle asks. Trinity, at a loss for words. It’s like if the Earth suddenly stopped spinning, it puts Giselle off-balance.
When Trinity and Tallulah finally get together, Giselle is less surprised than either of them.
-
2016
Giselle knows a generous majority of Trinity’s secrets. This isn’t one: she’s openly a huge germaphobe.
Maybe it could be blamed on Trinity’s perfectionism. She doesn’t spare a glance before discarding anything “dirty”. Trinity won’t use public washrooms, clutches hand sanitizer like a good luck charm, never emotionally recovered from everyday gloves going out of fashion.
Most of their friends know not to bother asking her to trade food, it’s so far out of the question.
At least, it should be?
This time, they are meeting at the new Chatime on the corner of College and St. George, Trinity’s pick. (Trinity has such a sweet tooth and Giselle is definitely enabling her but that’s ok 👍 .)
Between jumping into chitter and chatter they order their drinks. (Are the kids waiting in line freshmen or high schoolers? Why do they get taller every year? How’s the school? The school is school. Kenedi and Esther are back on again, huh?) It’s always so nice to catch up with Trinity and hear the range of all the flashy projects she’s been working on, even if Giselle can only nod in a daze.
“Oh the blueberry’s really good.” Trinity peers through the clear side of her drink and swirls the straw around twice. “Try some?”
There it is.
There’s no point to overthinking it. Trinity certainly doesn’t think twice when she says it, when she points the straw to Giselle. The action, the show of trust, is so thoughtlessly casual, it caught Giselle off guard the first dozen of times until it became routine. It’s nice to have something come easy.
Giselle tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, before swooping down to steal a sip. “That’s really sweet,” she comments before offering her own drink back.
“Yours is good,” says Trinity.
The exchange isn’t special, the exact opposite is true. Sometimes the sky is just blue. Sometimes an utterly mundane thing means the world.
-
2024
They find a spot to watch the eclipse by Redpath, near the ledge overseeing Lower Field. Giselle’s request, she has a hobby of people-watching and the flurry of her students below makes her heart trill.
Trinity scans the area and leans forward over the balcony. “What’s that line for?” Giselle follows her gaze towards a stream of people flowing past a lone cart booth.
Giselle snorts. “Hot dog guy’s getting a lot of business.”
Trinity looks back at her blankly. “Who?”
“Ah. Guess the last time you were here was, what, 2017?” It’s been too long. Well, at least it gives Giselle a chance to tell Trinity stories about all the things she has missed, share silly stories to make her laugh.
Trinity laughs warmer than their sunny day.
The sun above is running away, minute by minute swallowed by the rising moon. Giselle traces its path with her finger, humming. Time is ticking away. There’s an overpowering feeling of sentimentality—she always gets in that mood around Trinity. Her eyes flicker over to blue eyes and blue hair. (The other girl is here now, but for how much longer.)
Trinity was always going to be on top of the universe. Giselle desperately wants to wrap her arms around her and keep her tethered here, to the Earth, next to her.
As always, Giselle has more to say. As always, she settles. She says this:
“I’m really glad you came.”
“Of course.”
And there’s a beat of calm. Background chatter around them pulses in volume.
“You know," says Trinity, "I hope we can watch the next eclipse together too."
“Of course.” Giselle doesn’t have to think before giving the answer. It’s a promise.
They have a moment to enjoy their quiet, the sort that melts into comfortable, where Giselle doesn’t need to say anything at all and she can trust her company is enough. There’s something intimate about inviting someone to share the silence.
Then suddenly, a whoosh of dark and cold as the sun takes her last gulp of day. The crowds hush.
Giselle lays her head on Trinity’s shoulder as the world goes dim.
For a precious moment, it’s as if all the world was still and staring and holding a breath.
Then a sliver of light. Then the sun is a silver ring.
The silence breaks by a shout. A roar builds up from the people around the them, crescendoing through all corners of the field. Whooping laughter, a couple claps, someone shouts an expletive. Glee.
It’s stunning and loud and so so overwhelming:
But all Giselle can hear is the thrum of her heart and the matching rhythm of Trinity’s. It’s all that matters here and now. They’re just existing, in their pocket universe that fits right for two.
A breath, a beat, a moment more:
Far above, light flows free as the moon brushes back over the sun. They’re on diverging paths, completely different horizons, they may not meet again for another hundred years.
But at least for a minute, they can share the same sky.