Diamond Dust

Rizine  opened the cupboard and gathered the beautiful antique Blue Willow plates that were made from china nearly as fragile as ice crystals. At  the same instant she  thought longingly of her upcoming glorious trek in the clouds. Before beginning the tedious yet exhilarating task of finding the entry foothold into the upper spheres once again, she must attend to her daily morning obligation. Arranging a lavishly aesthetic breakfast table would consume her earthly self while her otherworldly self envisioned the nearing adventure. To begin the morning tableau she must place the tablecover she had selected earlier from the storage pantry. A  blue and white canvas striped highly starched linen topped with  individual placemats of Turkish silk in a rich blue and white filigree pattern. Today Rizine chose as a compliment, cobalt blue Colony Glass water goblets,  blue and white hand etched crystal juice glasses and cornflower blue cotton napkins with white ceramic rings to hold them rigid until use. The silver would be the heavy Rennaisance pattern. An exquisite floral centerpiece of Iris and Paperwhites, arranged by Seth, the gardner, at Rizine's direction, added the finishing element. A grand flourish that  held the crisp blue and white breakfast table composition together. Rizine was visually delighted with the end result knowing it to be artistic perfection. That was her gift in life, a superlative. innate artistic sense. George would expect nothing less than perfection as usual. Perfection in all things at all times, relentless perfection, and not only here in the dining room. Perfection in everything she did in the entire house. Perfection demanded from her at all times and above anyone else in their existence. She knew that was her punishment from George. The others delt her punishment by alternate disapproval and  disregard, often pretending that she did not exist at all. Her eyes misted , her chin trembled thinking of the unkindness she endured in her own home. She shook her head and lifted her chin with a little twist. Must not think of those anxieties now with the discovered adventure and new thrilling life direction waiting upstairs for her. She was pleased in knowing that Mrs Asher, the cook, would be responsible for preparing and serving the required ,by George of course, compatible foods to her table composition. Most likely starting with a blueberry compote. Stepping into the abundantly stocked and enormous pantry, Rizine surveyed the shelves for tomorrows breakfast tableau. Eyeing the red, yellow and white Moroccan print tablecloth, Rizine made a mental note of elements to combine with it tomorrow morning and to inform Mrs Asher. The Cooks starter for tomorrow would probably be strawberries with lemon zest and heavy cream. She was pleased knowing George would approve at least of this vibrant tableau for a mid-week service.  Pleased as well to know a headstart for tomorrow would mean an earlier time for preparation of her ascention. With the relief of finishing her daily task, Rizine bounded for the attic stairs with winged feet.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          # Climbing three flights of very decorative curvilinear stairs in this old Victorian Romanesque style house would tire most, however, had little effect on Rizine in her excitement. She arrived at the elaborately carved rosewood attic door with calm breath and high expectations. The heavy black forged hinges made an extremely loud creaking sound as she opened and swung back the elaborate wooden door. This had become as music to her. Not many sounds penetrated her hearing impairment. Up the twelve stairs to the fourth and final floor of the house, the attic. Here, a place to be away from the disapproval by George and the others. Away from the incessant house caretaking. Her own space to be free in all senses, to create and think self truths. A space not to be judged and governed. The necessity of acquiring solitude had forced Rizine to seek a private space in this remote section of the house. The trajedy had created this space for her. At first she could do nothing in her new found space but mourn her loss.                                                                                                                                                                                                  #  At        some point in time the  immense attic had been made into a finished suite except for a small section saved for storage of such things as  seasonal and sparsley used items. The remainder of space had been whitewashed, both gabled wood walls and  wood plank floor. The result was a very bright and spacious atmosphere with high ceilings pointing in many angles. The vast, light space enabled Rizine to endure her own darkness of spirit, her heart felt lighter here. She felt the possibility of peace in this expansive space that she felt no where else. At the Northwest corner of the attic, as was prevalent with this style of architecture, was situated a rather large turret. This is where Rizine had discovered completely by accident, the foothold, some months before. While still in the greatest stage of mourning she had decided to move her easel and paints to the turret. This would allow her to gain the most natural light from it's conjoined circular bank of  oversized windows. Often having tears of sadness in her eyes she had not been able to always see well enough to paint in the interior of the attic, in spite of the whitewashed brightness. She needed the added daylight of the large turret windows. She believed,  at that time, that her painting would be her way out of grief, her salvation. She had no idea then that her way out was soon to come from a much more evanescent  and celestial source than painting beautiful landscapes. As she moved the cumbersome, rigid, heavy wooden easel to it's new place within the turret, it happened. The easel was very large at about seven feet tall, handmade of solid hardwood and too heavy to lift. Rizine managed to move the awkward easel by alternately shoving and pulling it toward the turret. Just as she reached the turret perimeter and gave the easel a good final shove, it caught on a wide crack in the floorboards. As she watched in dismay, the easel toppled finial first with the huge force of it's weight directly into one of the extra large floor to ceiling turret windows. Startled, she pictured the huge shattering of glass and hoped no passersby would be on the street below to be harmed by the broken shards raining down. Powerless to stop such weight, she held her breath and closed her eyes waiting for the event of cracking glass. It never came. Rizine opened her eyes and was astonished to see the pointed wooden finial atop the easel and the full upper third of the easel itself  piercing the pane of glass and protruding through to the other side. The outside. No shattered glass to be seen. Tentatively she approached the easel. In disbelief, she gingerly ran her fingers up the side of the easel where it intersected with the face of the unbroken window pane. With trepidation she forced her fingers to follow the left support of the easel out through the glass panel all the way to the finial. It was scarcely believable, that her entire upper body had gone through the unbroken glass pane. With a sudden realization of her terrifying position coupled with the fear of falling, Rizine tried to pull herself back through the window. Losing her balance, she grabbed for the easel, missed and instead felt the hard surface that surrounded it. She could not fall, there was substance under her. She felt the invisible substance with both hands in exploration of this new found surface. Excitement and curiosity had joined her feelings of fear. With further cautious exploration, the surface seemed to be approximately four feet in width and had raised intermittant edges. Like a staircase she thought. She noticed then that in spite of feeling the solid surface she could still see the street below with people strolling along the brick walkway. Could they see her, she wondered? She managed to gain a foothold on the solid feeling surface and climb back through the glass of the windowpane into the attic. Perspiration covered her brow and upper lip, her hands were trembling, shaken to her core she collapsed on the attic floor. She remained still on the floor for several hours in bewilderment trying to discern what had just happened. When she had managed an acceptable amount of composure, she got up from the floor and surveyed the situation. Expecting all events to have been conjured by her creative mind as an illusion, Rizine was startled to see the easel still jutting out of the window. Before thinking further she stepped forward and managed with all of her might to pull the errant easel back through the window pane upright into the turret. Is that the end of this supernatural development, she thought? What is it that just happened? Curiosity brought her to the window. Delicately pushing her hand through the mystifying glass pane with continued astonishment, she again felt the solid surface beyond. Having lost some of the fear and timidity of the situation, with more extensive exploration she determined that there was indeed an invisible staircase through the ethereal portal she had found quite by accident.  Where it led she did not know. Darkness was now covering the house and street. Rest, she thought, would help her gain the courage to find out tomorrow.                                                                                                                                                                                                              #  The mysterious discovery exhausted her physically and emotionally. Rizine crawled into bed under the covers too weary to undress in the darkness.  Rizine had  remained in a rather fragile state  after the disfiguring accident of her early youth.The very unfortunate incident had tinged her life and those close to her with sadness. Rizine and her beloved older sister, Ronnie, had been happily playing with their new dolls in the playroom that  snowy winter afternoon on Rizine's sixth Birthday, just after Christmas. The boiler and furnace were directly below the playroom. Through a malfunction the boiler exploded and the partially destroyed playroom was engulfed in flames. By the time their mother managed to pull the two little girls out of the burning debris, Rizine had been greatly burned  around her head and face. In addition to the deep facial scaring she was left with the  loss of her ability to hear normally. Ronnie's burns were only on her hands where she had tried to free Rizine from the intense flames. Rizine was always a quiet child with a love of the creative. Paints and crayons lit up her eyes and made her heart skip. After the disfigurement, she spent most of her time alone, creating her works of art and became reticient to spend time with anyone but Ronnie. She cared very little to be with her Mother and Father. It caused great pain and guilt when her parents looked at her. They were not strong people emotionally and did not know how to deal with such a tragedy in their own child. Rizine felt their great sadness. Ronnie was her angel. She registered no sadness, only joy when they spent time together. Ronnie was nearly her only contact with the outside world.  Miss Tedesco, Rizine's at home teacher, came three times weekly for tutoring. That was her only other contact with the world outside in addition to the occassional dentist and doctor appointment. She could always feel even their discomfort in her presence so she dreaded those visits outside too.                                                                                                                                                                                                                #Rizine's entire happiness came from creating art. As they grew older, beautiful Ronnie developed a full social life and tried to find one for Rizine as well. The kind longtime family friend, Mr Baumgartner, owned an art supply store in the community. Ronnie convinced him to allow Rizine to come work for him part-time in his shop. With her love for art she would be a great help. Rizine loved being in the shop around all of the intoxicating art supplies. She became so excited over new shipments arriving and discovering new materials she sometimes forgot her scarred  and mishapen visage. She was always brought back to the present quickly however, when someone came in the shop door and looked at her face. Their horror or at the very least the discomfort they registered were all too apparant.  After two months of Rizine being in his shop, Mr. Baumgartner discovered a number of his clientele were going over to Harrington's Art Shop in Bridgewater so they would avoid seeing Rizine in his own shop. It was with tears in his eyes that Mr Baumgartner told Rizine he could no longer have her at the shop. He wanted her to know she could still keep her employee discount and that he would special order any art supplies she wanted.  Rizine lost the fledgling confidence that had been growing with her new found outside life and was saddened not to be part of the exciting art shop existence. She did not blame Mr Baumgartner. Ronnie felt sad for Rizine and did not know how to further help her cherished little sister. Soon after this, when they were still young women, their parents died. First their mother died of a debilitating illness and the following year their Father died of a heart attack. Their big Victorian house had been in the family for a few generations and now became theirs. Rizine's sadness, at the loss of her Mother and Father, could be seen in her eyes but, she was very glad not to have to leave her home. Ronnie married George Reynolds of the Reynolds & Reynolds Accounting firm in town. He did not  have the sparkle of beautiful Ronnie and indeed seemed to have very little animation at allShe found the evenins a br. Ronnie felt they needed a level head in their house and life. So George Reynolds moved into their big Victorian house immediately following the wedding.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    # The next morning when Rizine awakened she thought of the events in the attic of the day before and concluded it must have been a dream. She raced up the attic stairs to the turret, pressed the palm of her hand against the window to prove to herself it would stop there. Her hand went through the glass like a hot knife through butter. It was real. She felt for the solid but invisible staircase. It was not there! Her hand bumped against something to the left of the window, with relief she found it was the staircase but had moved by a foot or so to the left. She did not want to cause any suspicion in the house so she returned to her room and readied herself for the day She completed  the Moroccan breakfast table service for George and the others in the dining room and spoke with with Mrs Asher and Seth. Having completed her duties she hurried back to the turret. I must decide what this means she thought. What shall I do? She decided she must do some exploring.                                                                                                                                                                                                                # The first journey up the celestial staircase was both frightening and exhilerating. Once she got a foothold on the slightly skewed and transparant staircase, the climb was easy. Feeling her way first with her hands she made sure her foot would land on a firm surface. Actually the surface felt that it was covered with something similar to moss. Velvety and spongy over a hard rocklike surface. She watched below seeing her neighbors leaving for the day walking along the brick walkway and going about their lives, they grew smaller and smaller as she climbed higher. She wondered if they looked up, would they see her climbing up into the sky.  Would they believe their eyes if they did see her? Did she become invisible while on the invisible stairs? Eventually she forgot about the earthly events and concentrated on the beauty of the climb. As she continued to climb that first day the beauty became intense. A haziness began to obscure her view of the  world she had left behind. A range of  blues and whites that she had never encountered appeared. A dazzling world of  luminous whorls and mists became her new existence. She felt to be in the midst of  a mysterious  carnivale covered in sparkling cotton candy. She wanted to go higher and experience more of the ethereal beauty surrounding her. She wondered if she went higher could she ever go back? This thought frightened her and she began her climb back down to her earthly existence. When she had reached the bottom of the celestial staircase and climbed throught the window to her much loved attic, she was both glad to be home and deflated to leave the celestial beauty behind.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          #The next day she was told the others had been looking for her to perform their chores. To not arouse suspicion, she decided to ascend the staircase only in the later part of the day when she would not be missed. She would make her preparations for ascention in the earlier part of the day in order to be ready. She no longer created a tableau for the evening meal in the dining room, the memories associated with this act had become too painful for her to endure. Her evenings were her own. How she missed Ronnie. The tears clouded her vision and desolation nearly stopped her heart when she thought of her beloved beautiful sister. Since George had moved his dour sister, her husband and three demanding children into the house after Ronnie's death, she felt more  alone than ever. She was the outcast in her own home. George had always been a remote and unfeeling person, unkind to Rizine since the day he moved in after the marriage. Ronnie tried to make things pleasant between them.George never accepted Rizine's existence in their life. He adored Ronnie in his own way. She was everything he was not and he felt  that some of her sparkle must surely spill over onto him. Ronnie would never part with Rizine under any circumstance. George knew that. Now, Rizine knew if her name were not on the house deed, George would have banished her from her home immediately after Ronnies death. Indeed, George blamed Rizine for Ronnies death. Rizine had been in the dining room composing a tableau for the evening meal. It was the Cook's day off, a Wednesday. Ronnie was in the kitchen preparing the meal for the evening, something she immensely enjoyed doing. When the intruder broke into the back kitchen door he took whatever he could find including beautiful Ronnie. They found her battered body floating in the Mill Pond that following Friday afternoon. Rizine, happily caring for the dining table in the other room had not heard Ronnie cry for help. How she had cursed herself and her feeble ability to hear. George blamed her for his loss of Ronnie and of his bid for borrowed sparkle. His punishment of Rizine was relentless and fueled with distaste for her very being. Ronnie had been Rizine's joy. Her whole existence revolved around Ronnie. This was still Rizine's home but, she was bereft in it and had no where else to go. That was why it was so extraordinary to actually find a way to rise above it all, to ascend her staircase into the clouds. She had thought about this wonderous event intensely and decided Ronnie had sent her the celestial staircase.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          # After that first ethereal climb Rizine learned many things of value concerning the extraterrestial beauty and maneuverability of merging with the clouds and atmosphere. She would begin in the early evening when she knew her tasks were complete in the house and she would not be saught after. She learned of the breathtaking beauty of climbing in the evening when the stars and other visual beauty would surround her. She spent her intermittant free time in the afternoons studying star charts and constellations, planets, cloud formations, the stratosphere and atmospheric changes. That is when she learned about Diamond Dust. That was to be her most important element of celestial learning related to her ascentions. She knew in her inner being when she found the upper stratum that contained  Diamond Dust, that was as far as she could serenely climb. Strata Diamond Dust, the ultimate frost at this upper level. A frost so cold it could stop a living breathing body in mid air. Frost burns at this level from Diamond Dust, she learned, could nearly polish human skin to a translucent sheen. The Diamond Dust found closer to the earth was nothing compared to Strata Diamond Dust. She had seen it in the distance on her climbs. Tiny ice crystals, individual crystal glints like miniscule daggers conjoining and forming breathtaking halos and beautiful arcs that lit the upper atmosphere with an encompassing erie glow. Possibly as beautiful as Heaven's Gate may be, dangerous however and in no way  as welcoming. She had only seen Diamond Dust Halos and Arcs in the distance so far. To this point she had explored the lower cloud formations.She  learned she could leave the staircase and trek along the crest of a stratus cloud and lightly step thru the more substantive whisps of a cirrus cloud. It was all so exhuberent and ebullient in feeling. She had learned how to dress for her climbs, layering her clothing, never knowing what amount of cold or moisture she may find and desiring to be prepared for any exploration that may come her way on her celestial excursions. She continued to find delight in going higher and higher in her exploration until Diamond Dust was no longer off in the distance. On her most recent climb she could feel the encroaching deep chill. To continue on in further exploration, into the reaches and beyond that included Diamond Dust she knew may cost her her human existence. She had sensed, in her closeness to the Dust, another existence, perhaps a call of other beings beckoning beyond the forbidding realm of Diamond Dust.  The pull was irressistably strong to know what may lie on the other side of this known life ending expanse of Diamond Dust.  She knew she would have to make an unreasonably important decision.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            #  For the tableau this morning Rizine selected the shimmering tablecover woven with silver threads, next came the diaphonanous silk placemats with silver and white crystal snowflakes serigraphed on them to top the tablecover. From the cupboard she choose the Finlandia frosted glass plates. The water goblets were of the most delicate crystal with a wide band of gleaming silver circling the rim. The juice glasses were of handblown opalescent glass set into highly polished stainless steel holders. The napkins were starched linen with silver embroidery in the pattern of clouds. The flatware, spiky thin frosted stainless called Icicle.  Rizine would not need Seth to create the centerpiece today. She had found large clear glass crystal orbs and stars in the attic  storage. She simply piled all of these on top of  deeply textured white fleeced felt  on a large silver tray. Rizine placed a low buffet lantern lit with batteries on each side of the centerpiece creating a lighted halo effect over the whole. What a beautiful end result Rizine thought. The table had a very palpable ethereal ambiance. Almost feeling it had a living existence apart from the environment in which it was found.  Rizine was very proud of her artistic creation. I think I will have pleased George as well with this magnificient frosty and sparkling display. She thought, perhaps he will not disdain me and my talents quite as much after he sees this  perfection of frost embodiment wrested from my very soul experience and created by my own hand. She believed Mrs Asher would probably start with starfruit in cream on ice.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  # Rizine had thought very long and hard and had reached her decision. She was anxious to return to the the fourth floor for her celestial climb. She calmly made her way up the beautiful curvilinear grand stairway to the elaborately carved door with the musical hinges, up the 12 steps to her beloved bright attic space.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          #It was close to Midnight when George rounded the corner and steped onto the brick walk of Parnassas Street where his large old Victorian house was located. In the street light he saw a small crowd gathered down the block near the front entry to his home. As he came upon the scene, he saw Rizine's lifeless body crumpled upon the walkway directly in front of the house. In a state of shock, wordless breath rushed from his inner being. It was an unspeakable sight. A great wave of remorse washed over him and made him churn with sickening internal discomfort. How he wished he had reached out to Rizine with compassion while she was still alive. He thought how he would miss her lovely artistic influence in his home. After discovering that George was the owner of the home and a relative of the deceased, the officer protecting the cordoned off scene introduced George to the Medical Examiner. The Examiner had been puzzled by his findings and needed to question George. It had been determined with the location of the body that  Rizine had jumped to her death from a fourth floor turret window. On inspection it was found that the turret windows were stationary and constructed with no ability to be opened, in addition no glass in any of the turret windows was broken. Further, the Examiner found it odd the deceased was dressed in so many layers of clothing on such a warm Spring evening. Finally, the Examiner was most extremely befuddled of why and how the deceased could have encountered frost burns and  frost burns so severe that her dermis seemed to be polished to a translucent sheen. The later was especially puzzling to the Examiner for he knew frost burn this extreme would be unbearably painful yet  the face of the deceased held an almost angelic and beatific countenance.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            This short story, Diamond Dust, is approximately 3400 words.