* Better version in three parts starting here: http://www.readwave.com/rewind-the-clock-part-1_s21633
Rewind the ClockTo when we were young, wild and free."Hark ye peasant and observe the mistress of time bidding us good morrow...", the girl with the sandy brown hair and face full of freckles paused with a sigh, her voice dropping to a low monotone concealing something else underneath the feigned accent, "Wicked is the Witch who knows not of her enchanting ways."
Joy Harrison couldn't help but roll her eyes at her delusional friend, leaping and prancing about putting on a one-woman play for her own entertainment.
She was a bit of a history buff in the sense that she liked the way the people sounded and knew little about the actual historical part of things. Skie had thought it fitting to drag her out here and re-enact The Witch of Cedar Point for some odd reason. Joy hadn't complained too much at first because it gave her a reason to sneak out of the house, but now it was getting to be a bit much.
"Aye mi'lady but it's very warm today and you're making me dizzy by just watching you. How about sitting down and resting yon tired eyes and we'll study up on the classics later, m'kay." Joy called out to her friend, condescending in the most light-hearted of fashion, who turned with faked elegance shooting her a huge thumbs up.
"Deal!"
They were sitting side by side now in their little patch of paradise they often escaped to, when the weather threatened to scorch the Earth. It was a tiny grove filled with lush green grass and weeping willows, a small pond to cool off in and the occasional fruit bearing trees to sate hungry stomachs and fill grubby hands.
It was the place that Joy and her best friend Skie called their home away from homes, within the sprawling hillside of the southern country side that confined them. It with littered with salt-of-the Earth type of folks vastly different from them, outside the groves golden gates in the shape of low hanging willow branches. But being unlike those that surrounded them only strengthened their unique bond.
"You're silly you know that?"
"Why, because I'm a dreamer?"
"No. Because you drag me out here every summer and practice your lines for plays you'll never take part in."
"Ouch, Joy, there is such a thing as brutally honest you know."
"It's true though." Joy nervously rebutted as Skie laughed it off. Skie truly was an egnima to her even after years of being by her side. Like her name implied, she spent most of her life a sleepwalker lost in a world much more colorful and exciting than her own above the clouds. Try as she might to understand her, Joy found herself always clutching at straws, an outsider looking in, when it came to Skie's many misadventures.
They'd meet by sheer coincidence and by fate own blessed hand if you asked Joy. She'd been crying and had run away from the biting comments of a recently divorced and twice widowed mother of two when Skie had found her. She'd never fit in until she befriended the quirky girl who dreamed of being something so much more.
Joy had tried in earnest to enchant her with tall tales from the city and life beyond those hills, because why else would the very embodiment of the sun and blue skies befriend a raven haired pale outcast such as herself, if not to get away from here vicariously through her...?
"I can't help it I suppose. I was born to reach for the stars." Skie slumped back and did just that, pretending to capture the sun rays in her heavily freckled hands as Joy sighed away. If one looked closely they could make out tiny scars criss crossing the dreamers wrists, thighs and ankles, so thin and transparent as if to be imagined.
What had become of them?
That question pledged Joy even then, looking to the girl she'd called her friend for so long and hadn't had the faintest idea of her internal turmoil.
Could she blame her?
She never asked and Skie never pressed, so instead they sat and soaked in each other's healing presence while pondering heavy handed "what if" scenarios if only they had been brave enough to ask other what was wrong back then.
"Wouldn't it be magical Skie, if we really could live forever. Just as the book had said, just as we've always wanted to and imagined. Cast a spell and everything be okay..." Joy was referencing the famous scene from the play, when the Wicked Witch revealed to be an angel ascended into the heavens after the spell cast on her had been broken.
It felt like a spell had been cast here too, frozen, time was frozen in that glorious in-between before tragedy had struck lower Eastbrooke.
"Of course Joy but things usually never work out that way. Especially for people like us."
"What type of people are we to make us so different, huh? What can't... why..." Joy spat angrily, hating the fact that she sounded so much like her mother.
Why couldn't they have a chance at happiness too? It wasn't fair...
Skie took a long time to answer, propped up on either side by her elbows, as she looked off into the pink, orange and red distance, melting, mixing, mesmerizing as the sun skimmed low in the sky. Finally she whispered,
"Because we're the type of people that can't let go and get real sad when others pass on. You can't raise the dead but at least you can live assured you'll join them some day."
Skie turned little emeralds towards the glistening coal that was her friends eyes, reaching over to wipe her friends tears away.
"And just like The Witch that had to leave her loved ones on Earth behind, we all have to face the truth someday. The truth that everyone dies no matter how much we try to stop it. Including you and me. We aren't invincible Joy and that's quite alright. We were born to be human and to be human means to be finite. Dust to dust and the like..."
A quiet wind blew over the sunny hilltop cooling the otherwise baking landscape. Joy wept then, wept for her friend, who's smiling face was still frozen as it had been in death.
A smile that could make someone surrender their soul and much more. One that invited, one that enchanted, one too bright for this world and had been extinguished.
She remembered the way, down to the very last detail, she'd smiled at her before she'd come here to meet her maker on a quiet afternoon much like this. The Devil was in the details, he'd surely been the mastermind of the events that had transpired that day.
Had it hurt...?
Had she been afraid...?
The way they'd found her body sprawled on the grass at ease made one believe she'd died carefree. Joy prayed her friend had with the fervor one prayed to saints to ensure their spot in Heaven's eternal embrace.
Turning tired eyes to the rain clouds gathering up above, she remembered those dog days of summer, the heat of her surrender, their sweaty palms pressed together, the gentle laughter that had carried them far beyond those sweltering hills as they concocted mischievous plans behind innocent, doe like expressions.
Ah yes, those enchanting, fleeting, innocent times of their youth. Uninhibited and beautifully tragic in that it would also be the shortest lived moment of happiness in her life. For it truly had been just that, moment, a blink of an eye, in a cast sea of time that seemed to drag on forever.
The days since had passed with little laughter, Joy had become a walking shadow. And for Skie? Well the sky had been confined into a little wooden box, nailed shut, anointed and buried six feet deep inside the Earth.
How Joy wished she could cast a spell and rewind the clock and have an angel deliver her her friend so that sweet memories be relived again and again.
"I miss you Skie..."
And a gentle wind brushed against her tear stained cheeks, playful, before passing through her to the far reaches of the Earth. And she sat alone in that little patch of paradise, a shadow of her former self, trapped in a living hell, still trying to handle the realization that her Skie had left her to pick up the shattered pieces of their forever friendship by herself.