Celestial

Chapter 1

Celestial:
Origin:
1350–1400; ME < ML c�"lestiālis, equiv. to L caelesti(s) heavenly (cael(um) heaven, sky + -estis adj. suffix) + -ālis -al 1
–adjective
1. pertaining to the sky or visible heaven.
2. pertaining to the spiritual or invisible heaven; heavenly; divine: celestial bliss.
3. of or pertaining to celestial navigation: a celestial fix.
Synonyms:
2. angelic, seraphic, blissful, ethereal.

Los Angeles, an ordinary house, an ordinary night

She just stayed there, perfectly still and unseen, silently observing the woman running back and forth, over and over again. Bedroom, bathroom, bedroom, bathroom.

An endless motion.

Useless, the stranger thought to herself, smiling the tiniest of smiles.

It was a smile full of compassion and, at the same time, fatality. There was nothing she could do. There was absolutely nothing that any of them could do. As far as she was concerned, the stranger

– unseen, perfectly still and unseen, perfectly silent, wearing that black coat of hers, showing the tiniest of smiles to no-one in particular –

thought, she could only stay there and wait. Patiently. She wasn’t in a hurry. She knew well what was going to happen.

The woman in the house, on the contrary, didn’t. Or, if she was nailing it somehow, she was clearly not going to accept it. And she was definitely in a hurry.

She was around forty and a little overweight. But she must have been beautiful once, the stranger thought ducking her head to a side and narrowing her eyes. Once she must have been beautiful. Everything can be beautiful. Everything must have been beautiful, at one point or another.

The woman ran toward the bedroom door for the tenth time in the last thirty minutes and the stranger closed her eyes and sighed, when she heard the little girl whimper.

She heard the woman reassuring her, whispering, then she came back and now she was switching on the abat-jour on the nightstand, frenetically.

She was panicking, and the stranger looked at her with sympathy. The woman’s eyes were fixed on a thermometer, her hands were shaking.

“I don’t really pray…”, the woman whispered to herself, or maybe to God, or to what she considered to be a higher Being, “…but if you could just help me out here… I promise…”.