Under the Iridescent Umbrella

The stone wall was covered in moss. The entire backyard had an abandoned farm house look about it. In the middle of the yard there were two white wooden chairs, or rather they would have been white had it not been for a giant iridescent umbrella catching sun rays and painting the chairs pink and gold and teal depending on which way Celestine looked at them.

Celestine hadn’t been home since they’d left twenty years, three months and fours days ago. Then they’d gone by another name, a gender assigned to them by their parents and a pronoun that didn’t quite fit. That was a clunkier time in their memory. When they’d arrived back in their small town, Celestine was surprised by how easily they fit again. Their small town was a haven of artists, and wonderfolk and self-proclaimed weirdos and it felt good to be back among a colony of outsiders.

It was strange though to feel like an outsider amongst outsiders. Celestine’s parents had prepared the denizens of the town for their arrival by practicing their new name and pronouns at every opportunity. Celestine felt grateful to have the sort of parents that had always accepted corrections, and the re-envisioning of the child they had raised. Celestine’s parents had also come to realize later their very own gender divergence after many phone conversations and well-crafted emails. It was a wonderful thing to feel seen and accepted in a world where that was often not the case. Celestine remembered crying tears of joy for an entire day when their parents had come out to them with their new names and genders and pronouns.

Celestine’s parents were currently out at the town’s monthly tea party, and Celestine was a little melancholy thinking about the delightful tiny foods they were missing, but they had a feeling what was to follow would be worth it.

The umbrella beckoned to them, its sparkle a soothing magic for their heart. Under it hung a lone hummingbird feeder, filled with a clear sugar syrup that their parents put out regularly to draw the tiny birds that were more faerie than fowl.

Celestine sat on one of the chairs, the shimmering light dappling their skin with a myriad of colours. They breathed in the familiar scents of the lilac bush with its forty-two flowers spaced just so. Celestine had counted them as they waited for their friend to arrive. The number forty-two calmed them. Whenever they encountered a 42 in the world they felt like something magical was about to happen. It was a beautiful trick their brain had developed to push aside the onslaught of absurd anxieties that plagued them regularly. Would there be enough lemons at the grocery store? Would they have to answer a phone call from a stranger? Would their mother text them that yet another distant relative had died leaving them with the feeling that they were supposed to be sad, knowing it was difficult to summon sadness for a person they did not really know.

The chimes rang, pushed by the wind, and Celestine looked, wondering if maybe their friend had arrived.

The doorway was empty. Celestine counted the lilacs again, and breathed deep. Their friend was supposed to have arrived ten minutes ago, but they didn’t mind waiting. They used to find it irritating, waiting, but one day they realized that the irritation itself was an annoyance and that people often arrived exactly when they were supposed to.

They sat so incredibly still that a hummingbird arrived, ruby-throated and sparkling, under the umbrella to feed at the feeder, and Celestine was at once entranced. The small whirring of tiny wings was akin to a symphony to their tender ears.

The chimes rang again and the small faerie bird zipped away. Celestine felt a momentary sadness at its absence.

”Celestine?” A uncertain voice came from the back doorway to the house.

Celestine turned, and there they were.

A tall thin, pink-bespectacled, rumple-haired shape. The newcomer to the backyard wore a long black shift, and bizarre leggings covered in cartoonish illustrations of crimson cherries, violent elephants and turquoise jack o lanterns. A spectacle of dazzle camouflage. Celestine froze. They had not seen their friend since the both of them had worn awkwardly forced gender presentations like costumes. Celestine stood up too quickly causing pinpricks of bright light to dance about the periphery of their vision.

”Hex?” Celestine’s voice came out in more of a whisper than they expected.

The last time the two of them had met, they were both 18 years old and standing under this very umbrella, they had pressed their mouths together after a very long conversation about magical childhood memories of chimeric significance. That had been followed by a deep sort of staring into each other’s eyes, the kind where you feel as if you’ve been called into each other’s thoughts.

Celestine nearly stumbled at the clear memory of that moment. That had been the same day the both of them had left that small town.

Hex walked over to them, and Celestine went over all the missives the two of them had sent back and forth over the past twenty years. They had never stopped writing to each other. Celestine had never met anyone equal in conversational skills to the person who now stood before them, their eyes still the bright clear orbs of wonder Celestine remembered.

They stared at each other, deeply, and so still were they two that the hummingbird felt safe to return, and Celestine and Hex breathed out a simultaneous sigh of relief, that their love spun of twenty years of letters, and phone calls, and odd packages full of discoveries was stronger than even before.

They both stepped towards one another, that deep stare unbroken, and once again pressed their mouths together much to the dismay of one hummingbird who zipped away while the wind jingled the chimes, and the moss grew ever since slowly of the stone wall, and the forty-two lilac blooms looked on with ancient approval.