Chapter 4

Shape and Sky

April

Amelia Shape rested her head on her thin arms, face-down on the table. The early-morning noise and activity of the bustling diner washed over her. Her dark hair made symmetrical swirling patterns where it fell upon the peeling plastic surface of the table. A steaming mug of black coffee sat untouched before her. The steam formed into elaborate shapes as it rose from the hot liquid: snowflakes, pyramids, tessellated triangular patterns, perfect spheres. They shifted rapidly on their ascent into nothingness.

Elmer Sky detected agitation in the shifting figures, and he expressed concern as he prepped his family-platter breakfast for ingestion. “Whatever’s the matter, dear? Here, have some coffee. You’ll feel better in a snap , I daresay!”

The coffee steam took the form of dancing lightning bolts. Elmer Sky glanced around to see if anyone nearby was taking note of this vapor’s strange behavior. The interior of the café, hazy with smoke from the fryers and lit by solid golden rays of the glancing morning light, murmured to itself and paid no attention to the two of them. Satisfied, he dug into his breakfast with double-forked enthusiasm.

Amelia Shape slowly raised her head to blink at her companion.

“Elmer.”

Elmer Sky finished swallowing a mouthful of pancakes and washed it down with a swig of milk. “Yes, Amelia?” He patted his mustaches with a napkin to remove any residual milk and crumbs, then wiped his pudgy hands and neatly laid the napkin aside.

“I can’t remember anything.”

“I know, dear.”

“Neither can you.”

“Well, yes, I suppose that’s the case indeed. Quite! But there’s no call to be upset about it!” He gave her a cheerful wink and returned to the business of breakfast, a business he took seriously.

Amelia gradually rotated her head to gaze out the window. She squinted against the morning sun beaming across the overpass.

Elmer scowled briefly down at his meal, as if in thought. By coincidence, a cloud passed over the sun at that moment, shadowing the diner.

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“Thanks,” said Amelia, still gazing outside. “We’re being followed again. Grey van.”

“Oh, your perspicacity is as delightful as ever, Amelia! I do hope we won’t have to make another mess. Er, speaking of which, you still have a bit of blood. No, no, on your cheek. There—got it!” Elmer resumed his meal. “But seeing as how we—mmph, excuse me—how we don’t know who they are, or what they want with us (or even what we want with us for that matter!), what’s the use of being upset? Come now, Amelia, cheer up! And, er, could you stop with the coffee steam? I think one of these lovely civilians is looking at it.”

The coffee steam assumed a more normal form of ascent.

“You should get some breakfast,” continued Elmer between bites. “You could use a breakfast or two, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Amelia, her head on the way back down to her cradle of arms, stopped to glower at Elmer, but he seemed not to notice. She sighed and rested her head on her thin arms once more. “I’ve always hated early mornings,” she mumbled.

Elmer froze with a forkful of hash browns on the way to his mouth. “Have you? Indeed? Aha!” His cry of delight caused several heads to swivel in their direction, but he paid them no mind. He stabbed the forked hash toward Amelia. “There, you see! Already you’ve remembered something. And now that I consider it, there are quite a lot of things that we remember entirely without effort! For example, I recall that you are quite marvelously beautiful in the morning sunlight (or indeed any light, as well as any darkness), and I love you dearly, as I sense that I have done for many years. There, you see? The important things are not lost to us, and they are all that we require.”

Amelia did not respond, and her expression remained obscure, facedown as she was on her folded arms, but the fading steam arising from her mug of coffee assumed a series of heart shapes.

Elmer cheerily examined the sky outside as he swabbed grease from his plate with a wedge of dry toast. He winked at the sun, which then reappeared from behind a cloud. A propitious rainbow manifested around it, vibrant and grand, baffling any meteorologists who chanced to glance that way.

No, things were never so bad when the sky was around. And the best part was that it always was! Elmer was quite sure that everything would be just fine.