Magenta

It is a flurry of lights, and they drown out the sky.  Whichever way I look, it is another sensual overload.

There are children playing in water fountains and screeching at game shops, and the thick evening air carries the sound through and above the street.  At the bars, open or closed but with doors and windows flung open, adults, young and new, and older, clang their glasses together and chat up a mile a minute.

And they call children chatty!

The entertainment is stunning too, in the most literal sense.  It is a beehive, and an ant colony, a cactus that I am not a part of but trapped in nonetheless.  And yet none of these words are quite descriptive enough.  The world is buzzing and busy, and stinging if I touch it the wrong way, but it isn’t colourless or monotone.  For every voice I do not recognize, there is a colour combination I have never dreamt of. Sometimes the costumes repeat, but never their colours, and even when the colour repeats, it’s never the same make-up, and even then, it’s not the same attitude…

The brightness of everything blurs into one, blinding me in its light.

“Você está bem, querida?”

I turn.  The voice belongs to a lady darker than the sea and older than one, too.  Her eyes are a vivid brown, and she’s reaching towards me with a soft hand.

“Estou…”  I mumble—

And the crowd takes her away.  I don’t have the time to get used to a singular colour of her before everything else rushes in to drown it out.

Surely, this is no surprise.  The thing with festivals, I think to myself as I search the heads around me for that lady or for my lady, is the people.  And sounds: not the loud buzzing of a group of people but the occasional abrupt burst of sound.  The fireworks going off is an extreme case but a good example.  I cover my ears and continue to scan the area.

The thing with Brazillian festivals is the abundance of languages.  That one, though, might be a thing with me rather than anybody else: I still don’t speak a lick of Portuguese.

“Senhorita!”

I turn but I’m not the one they call to.  Where is my one?

Another explosion in the sky.  Another burst of laughter from everywhere above ground.  Another storm pulling me in, and my body fits right in, colourful and strong, while I do not.

The thing with people is skin.  Far too much of it on a good day, and even more now.  It is a wonderfully interesting case of coming together, both spiritually and physically, and bleeding into one; a giant, multi-armed and multi-headed creature roaring from a fragmented mouth so loud that the sky screams back.  Or rather, it would be a wonderfully interesting case of the human experience if not for my own inexperience of a particular human by my side.

I lost her just a few minutes ago; we were separated by a hurricane of people, moving and dragging the world with them in a kaleidoscope of sound.  She said, Wait right here.  Right here disappeared the moment she did, and now whenever an arm touches mine, I turn, half-mad and half-expectant, but it’s always just an arm: no warm eyes beyond it, no gorgeous smile, no painted face.

I close my eyes for a breath of air.

“If you twitch one more time,” Mary says, carefully enunciating every word, “I will give the brush to Mom.”

Lora laughs somewhere outside my field of vision, and the sound travels right through my skin to fill up my stomach to bursting.

“And you know exactly how good she is with her right hand.”

“Better than with the left one!” Lora supplies unhelpfully, and a whisper of a smile passes on Mary’s lips.

It dies immediately when I say, “I find her hand rather adequate.”  Lora gasps and wraps it around my chest, kissing me on the shoulder. 

“Alright,” Mary steps back.  “At this rate, this is the best I can do with you.”

The brush is out of my face, and Mary shoves a mirror to it.

“Oh…”

It’s very clearly a bird.  It’s not any bird that I know of, though.  There is the red outfit, of course, framing my face with soft collar feathers but they transform to skin to fire to flames around my eyes.  It’s supposed to be a Vermilion cardinal, or at least I think it might be one, or perhaps, a Scarlet Macaw.  The way Mary got it, though, it’s a full-on firebird.

In the reflection, Lora is watching us through the mirror from behind my back.  She’s smiling underneath the mask of ice and water, and deep blue feathers that adorn her hair.

Us, framed together like that…  It prickles my eyes in a way that isn’t uncomfortable.

“It’s…  Uhm… It’s really good.”

“I think Jocelyn means to say, Thank you, Mary,” Lora touches her hand to my shoulder, and I burn.

And the world around me burns too.  I find myself spinning with a destination in mind only, and when I fear I will fall down, a hand catches mine.

And a voice jingles, “Ah!  I dirtied your costume.”

I turn, and at last, it is her.  All the light around us clears to red and blue, and before the current draws us apart again, Lora grabs me by the arm, tender and strong, and pulls me out.

“Sorry,” she smiles.  “Lost you for a moment there.”

“Lora,” a breath escapes me and nothing else, and Lora frowns, deep lines etching in her forehead.

“You okay?”

“It’s… It’s a lot—”

“We can go if you want to—”

“No, no, don’t worry,” I smile, too.  “It’s good now.”  I squeeze her hand in mine. “It’s all good now.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

It is a flurry of lights, scarlet and indigo, sapphire and ruby, and they drown out the sky.  Whichever way I look, amidst all of it, it is her, and she holds my hand.