Sublime

Sublime

“Hello, Glim. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“You could always imagine me a bit older, Lil.”

“I could always imagine you with horns and flippers, but this feels right.” Lil swept a hand invitationally toward a small, square, pressboard table just near the window.

Glim sat in the offered chair, idly swinging her dangling legs.

“When we last spoke, was I the President, an astronaut, or a veterinarian?” Lillian mimed pouring motions with an empty tin teapot over a small, garishly painted plastic cup.

“All three! It's been a very long time, hasn't it." Glim wasn’t asking a question, but stating a kindness, a recognition.

"Yes, Dear, ages. I'm so terribly sorry for not sitting down with you earlier." Lil pushed the cup toward her on a paper circle crayoned up to look like a China saucer.

Glim blew delicately on the room temperature nothing in the cup before having a sip, setting it down gently on the plate. Her face was kind and earnest. "Yet you remembered just how I like my tea. You owe me nothing, apologies least of all. I never had to worry if we were really friends or wonder if I'd overstayed my welcome; I exist because you created me."

Lillian blew on the cool water she'd poured for herself, holding it as if it gave off a heat that soothed her arthritic hands.

Glim accepted a refill on her cup of atmosphere. "I think imaginary friends and places serve a purpose, like a cocoon in which real children create their future selves. Did you become an astronaut, Perhaps a veterinarian president?"

"Not quite. I studied medicine and found I had a knack for chemicals; I got my degree and worked at a pharmacy for ten years, until..."

Lil had to remind herself that she was not across from an actual child, even if Glim looked like a twiggy tween, and that she could speak frankly. "...I was a pharmacist until the pharmaceuticals ran out in The Collapse. If there are no pills, you don't get paid to distribute them. For the next forty years, I was busy surviving and helping other families."

Glim nodded, looking around the room at the monitors, the testing equipment, the bed. "This room is very different from the rocket palace I'm used to."

Lillian got up from the table and paced a little. "Well, this room is real. It's also the product of many people's imagination and a lot of hard work over decades. We had to reclaim materials, refurbish the equipment, rebuild the manufacturing lines. I myself put together the extruders that made my IV tubing." Lil pointed to the thin, clear leash that connected her to an inverted glass bottle.

Glim nodded, "No time for play, then."

"Oh, I played pretend with my children and their children, and then had to go to other places. Not very different from being their imaginary friend. Oh, Glim, you would have loved them."

"Would have? Are they gone?"

"All but one grandchild, who is grown now." Lil waved her hand at a table of phials and distillation hardware. "I discovered the compound that saved his life in an old textbook that was never returned to its school. It was just sitting on a shelf in a boarded up house, hidden and waiting like The Grail of Legend. It healed him, and it's simple enough for us to make more, so it's also saved a lot of others."

The imaginary girl shifted, uncertain how to convey the condolences for something of that size. "I'm... Hm. That's a lot for you to take on. You've done so much and helped so many, but also lost much."

Lil breathed a sigh that seemed to reach her from the center of the Earth itself. She returned to the table, had a sip of water, and opened a box of candies made from bright clay, setting them near Glim, who picked delightedly through them. "Yes, I have lost many important people, but I've cried as much as I can for them now. There may be more later. You and I may have a good cry in a moment."

Glim stopped chewing the non-toxic dough.

"What about?"

"I finally have the opportunity to play with you, but not much time. I've lived a long life and it's almost done. That's why nobody's bothered us. I've been made modestly comfortable, but the doctors are needed elsewhere. Someone drops off clean water, medicines, and a little food, but there's no cure for growing old."

They looked out the window at the cityscape far below. Buildings in the distance, decorated with mixtures of sparse lights and dense foliage. Rain water glinted and shimmered in rooftop catch containers. Precious time passed, carried off on the shadows of clouds across the market stalls and ad hoc restaurants on the ground.

Lillian grabbed a shoe box from under the bed. "I don't know if it's all still here, but there should be enough pieces for a game. It's the Grandy Run set we made the summer before I left for boarding school. Do you happen to remember the rules?"

Glim dabbed the corner of her eye with a little kerchief. "Whatever seems fair, and no cheating."

"That's what I remembered too. Here, help me set up." They quickly filled the oblong grid with tinsel poms, paper cones, and bright glass droplets: a child's lawless paraphrasing of chess and checkers.

Lillian ceded the first move to her guest, which was a customary formality.

"Tell me..." Glim maneuvered her question as thoughtfully as the paper cone in her fingers as it covered and captured a blue glass bead, "does that mean I am also near the end of my life?"

Lil slid a cone over an unaffiliated pom, moving it into a blocking position. "I hope not, but I don't know." She grimmaced thoughtfully as a cone from her side was covered. "I don't believe in an afterlife, per se, but that doesn't mean there isn't one."

"If there is, I hope you'll invite me."

"That, at least, is a certainty."

A few turns passed without comment.

Glim moved a glass piece between two poms, but didn't remove her finger for several thoughtful seconds. "What do you believe happens? Nothing?"

She tested a few alternative placements, but decided on the first.

Lil was reaching for a green paper cone, but picked up her water instead. "Not nothing; matter isn't created or destroyed. I become something else. Many somethings. Plants, dirt, animals, rain, wind. If that's true, maybe it's the same for you too. It's your turn."

"Oh! Thank you." Glim had been looking at her reflection in her tea. She frowned slightly at the moves she felt were open. "I like that idea. Maybe some of me becomes a painting or a poem." She moved a pom under a neighboring cone for safekeeping.

"Or a speech. A bit of a beautiful dance. A flock of invisible, sabre toothed burlidangos."

Glim laughed. "I'm going to guess those haven't been invented yet."

"Not yet." Lil promoted a cone to a double cone.

"Well, I'm sure they'll be majestic." Glim's last bead was against a wall, penned in by paper and tinsel.

Lillian blew her nose into a tissue after drying her eyes. "Glim, will you stay and play games with me until we find out?"

The girl was already moving the pieces back to their original spaces, and paused. She finished the contents of her cup, slid it near the pot as a request, and went back to setting the pieces.

"What else are friends for?"