Nova's Dawning

After school Osiris sent out the mass text and I told Bee they were doing a thing at their place. She seemed uninterested, but after I practically begged her to go, she agreed and much to my relief when we got there, pizza and drinks were already waiting for us. Once everyone had a plate set up and a red solo cup in their hands, I stood up.

“I have an announcement to make.”

“I too, have an announcement to make.” said Osiris.

I looked at him shocked, but he just smiled at me. I couldn’t help but smile back and Bee made a gagging motion.

“I’ll go first, Osiris. If you don’t mind.” He made a bowing motion, and I wondered if he was drunk. “I just want you guys to know that you are some of the best friends I’ve ever had, and we’ve only known each other for a couple weeks now, but I hope that you don’t hate me after this so that we can have several more game nights from here on out.” Everyone’s faces were lined with worry and confusion, but I didn’t want to let anyone interrupt me. “I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but I don’t have my ability yet, my birthday is at the end of the month, and I’m really scared, because I don’t know what is going to happen once, I get it, or worse, if I don’t. There’s a lot of pressure on me from myself, but also from society to be great and exceed the accomplishments of those before me. You see… my mom is the Seer of the Century.”

I closed my eyes when I finished, because I was terrified. I didn’t want to see their looks of anger, or worse disgust. I tried not to cry, but I opened my eyes and the tears fell. Bee was standing in front of me, and she hugged me.

“Oh, Star. I wish you had said something earlier. You don’t have to carry that burden here, okay? My mother freaking saved so many lives as a healer, and I am starting to think I won’t be able to save any so please, don’t close yourself off to us anymore. We are your friends.”

I smiled through my tears and Osiris stood up.

“My announcement is that we will always be there for each other and this is the new squad, all right guys? We are a team now, and not even the universe is going to stand in our way.”

My stress and fears that this year was only going to get worse faded away, but what I didn’t know was that I was already starting to see where we were headed.

That night, my dreams escalated.

I was in the ship’s library, or what looked like the ship’s library. The image was blurry, but I could smell the books again. He was there, Osiris, and he pulled me into his arms and started to dance with me. We were laughing like we had been earlier that day, but then someone tapped on my shoulder, holding out his hand to me. It was Osiris, but it wasn’t. This was the man with brown eyes. He pulled me into his arms and I felt the warmth and the love emanating from him. We were spinning faster and faster and I started to push him away asking him to slow down, but then it was my Osiris again and he cradled my head as we spun even faster and I began to cry, and when I looked up at him his eyes were changing colors over and over again, and I tried to get away but I couldn’t until suddenly we were spinning away from everything and he let go of me, and the sound of him screaming my name went from hoarse screams to soft whispers.

I jolted awake that night, scared, and burning up. I heard Bee toss above me, and then I rolled over to go back to sleep, suddenly feeling very drained.

After that first day it was very easy to fall into a routine. Go to school. Hang out with my friends. Hang out with Osiris, who wasn’t officially my boyfriend, but he might as well have been. I stopped being able to remember my dreams after those first couple nights, and I was hoping that they were gone for good. It was clear that Sam was a talented writer, even better than me, I’d say, and Jack was the pro behind a camera, it was like his calling. He really knew how to bring to life the images he had in his head, it was quite amazing. Mo was good with numbers and Bee said that in their math class he was the top student. Bee however soon rose to that “mom” status within our group. I was a close second, but the way she cared about all of us was really inspiring. She taught me a lot about cooking, and Osiris taught me a lot about the ship.

Her name was Violet, or at least that’s what everyone called her, due to the violet color of all of her rooms. He told me her story over and over again, about how she was built to get people across the oceans about sixty years before that time, but she never got to take people, instead she ended up being bought out by a cargo company, and Violet’s rooms became storage compartments.

When the ship went into the school’s possession, thanks to the owner’s generous donation, the students immediately began the interior restoration, and soon moved into fixing its insides that way it would make it for sea travel, this time, carrying the people it was supposed to take.

Osiris wanted nothing more than to get it running and see it cross the sea and back. He told me it was his destiny.

“I grew up in and around Toronto, where it’s just a whole lot of city, but what makes this ship my destiny was, well, it was my mother who donated the ship.”

When he had told me, we were drinking coffee at a small table in the ship’s library. I nearly spit out my drink.

“You see, the cargo company belonged to my family for three generations. They built it up from literally the planks they used to make their own boxes. They worked so hard and about sixty years ago, after their business had been up and running for twentyish years, they bought her from a man who realized he wouldn’t be able to get anyone on the ship, thanks to what happened on the Titanic. Far ocean travel by boat isn’t really a welcomed thing anymore, and it hasn’t been since.

So, they bought her to try and save her. She served them well, and when I was little, I would visit my grandparents and they would always tell me about their plans to sail her as like a historic cruise. However, they passed away before I was even seven...”

He stopped talking for a minute, and I took a sip from my coffee, not sure if I should say something. Suddenly his eyes clouded over. I put my hand on his and he snapped back to me.

“When they passed away, they gave the company to my mother, who saw no use of the boat, due to everything being done by plane now. So, because she was a former student here, she donated it. I want to continue my grandparents’ dream. My...”

He stopped again, his throat getting thick. “My mother passed away last year. She had been sick for a while, but it’s still hard. Luckily, she passed the company on to a man that we trust, but... I just want to make sure that everyone can see that I didn’t give up, that I persevered and followed my dreams.”

A single tear dropped down his cheek and I wiped it away quickly. He smiled at me and I kissed him softly. I was learning a lot by being in college, but I was also learning a lot about people.

Bee’s famous boyfriend had finally made his way into Canada exactly a week and a half before my birthday. He was able to get a job pretty quickly and he found a small studio for a really decent price. One time I went over there with Bee and we ate PB and J and drank homemade lemonade while some cartoon played in the background. It was easy being a third wheel with Bee because she always tried to include me in decisions or conversations, which I liked.

However, now that he was here, I rarely ever saw her.

I couldn’t blame her, because I found myself hanging out with our friends more and more, also because Osiris lived there. I would hang out with them almost every day, and sometimes I would crash on the couch. School was an experience that was beginning to grow on me. Everything was hands on and we found ourselves spending classes on the ship rehearsing or filming or even testing. I can still remember almost every detail of the marvelous vessel, the way the rooms smelled like lavender and the feel of the paint chipping on the railing along the staircases.

The day before my birthday I wasn’t feeling good at all. In between classes on that day I ran to the bathroom, throwing up everything I had consumed for breakfast and lunch. Osiris came looking for me when I was late to class and he called me as I hurled once again.

“Hello?” I answered the phone, sounding like garbage.

“Babe? Where are you? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” his voice sounded out of breath, as if he had been running a marathon.

“I’m in the girl’s room downstairs. I’m sick, sorry.” I hurled again trying to move my phone away, but it fell out of my hands and it slid out of the stall.

I heard the door open and then my phone was pushed back under as he climbed under the door, so he could hold my thick blonde hair out of my face. He sent a message to someone, and then he rubbed my back.

“Why can’t I stop throwing up?” I asked, tears in my eyes.

“I’m sure you’ve just got a stomach bug. Do you think you can make it home? I’ll get you some water and then I’ll take you back to your place.”

I nodded, and he squeezed my hand as he unlocked the door and walked out. I wiped away at my mouth and I flushed the toilet, sitting back against the stall. I felt so heavy as if I was going to sink to the bottom of the ocean, the room was spinning, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to fall asleep so badly, but something was telling me to force myself awake.

“Star?” I didn’t see Osiris, because I had lost the strength to open my eyes. He put the tiniest amount of water on my lips and I licked at it, trying to get the awful taste of bile out of my mouth. He kissed my cheek, and somehow managed to get me on my feet. I tried so hard to stay awake, but the best I could do was cut in and out.

I do remember getting in my bed though, because Osiris was there. He kissed my forehead, and my cheeks, and even my disgusting lips. I could hear him laugh at the face of embarrassment I probably made.

That night the dreams came back, and they came back tenfold.

Everyone was there in my friend’s apartment; except they were different. They were only different by tiny features, but they were there, I tried to call out to them, but they weren’t responding.

Then there was Bee, who was practically identical, and she seemed to respond just well to her name. She waved at me with a smile, but she called me something else. The names were muddled, and everything started to blur out again, as if the scene was suddenly melting.

Then I saw Osiris, the picture snapped to, and he was waiting for me at the end of a long white aisle, surrounded by redwood trees and orange leaves. There were tears in his eyes, and everyone cheered for me. My friends were in the front row, except they were also standing off to the distance, their faces sullen.

They didn’t say a word when I called out to them and they just stared at me as they seemed to get further and further away from me. I walked straight past my groom and went after them, but the closer I got the further they became.

I shook my head and suddenly I was at a hospital, holding a newborn little girl. I said her name, but it came out muffled. It couldn’t be heard, not to me. Everyone around me oohed and ahhed, but I was confused. What was so bad about her name that I couldn’t speak it?

“Which one?”

This time the voice belonged to Bee and I was sitting on her bed, yet I looked, different; I pointed at the make-up pallet in her left hand. She was sitting at a wooden vanity, putting on her makeup, just as skilled as ever. A cat walked in the room and we laughed. We weren’t in our room, because here there was only one bed and the walls were decorated with things I had never seen before.

I laid back on the bed, closed my eyes and I wondered, why was this so familiar?

When I opened them again, I was on the floor of someone else’s room. The walls were blue again, and I sat up, confused. Osiris walked in the room.

I smiled, but when he turned around, I realized it was the man with brown eyes. He smiled back at me and leaned over for a kiss. I kissed him, realizing that this was in fact Osiris, but why on earth did he have brown eyes? And, where were we?

Suddenly I was back with my Osiris, staring into his green eyes, a small baby in between us.

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Yes, she is.”

I kissed her tiny head and when I looked back up, I was back home, with my mother and father. He was making mashed potatoes, and my mother was making meatloaf. It was a usual night in our household. They loved each other, but I know that in my heart they only ever stayed together because of me. My mother was young, and she wanted to dedicate her life to making sure I was happy. My parents became stronger together that way, but deep down I wondered if they had ever craved more for themselves.

I enjoyed this part of my dream the most, because I got to see my parents again. Being in college so far away, was harder than I had originally anticipated.

Suddenly I was even younger, and my parents were in a house, that I barely remembered, when my mother suddenly packed her bags and left. However, unlike what I remembered, she didn’t come back, until her belly was big and round. I was told I was going to be a big sister. Then I was older, running around a house I remember very well, but there was another baby there, one covered in hair. I stuck my tongue out at it, and then ran into my parents’ room, where their screaming could be heard by even the neighbors.

I didn’t want to be dreaming about this anymore. They were yelling about wanting to have a divorce, and how they couldn’t wait, and that was not the childhood I remembered. I whimpered, suddenly fast forwarding about thirteen years, and I was in a car with a guy I had never seen before.

“Please?” he said. I just kind of sighed in defeat. So, he drove somewhere remote, and we went to the back of his car, and he forced me onto the seat and started pulling up at my dress, and I did not want to be dreaming these awful things any longer.

Suddenly I was laying with Osiris in my bed.

“Good morning.” he said.

“Hi.” I said, covering my mouth, even in my dreams I was conscious of morning breath.

“Hey, don’t cover those beautiful lips.”

“But my breath stinks.”

“I don’t care, you know why?”

“Why?”

“I care about you, Starlite.” and he kissed me.

I woke up, suddenly very aware of my surroundings. My sight seemed to be heightened to the extent. Osiris was still with me, concerned but with me.

“Good morning.” he said.

“Hi.” I said, covering my mouth, remembering that I hadn’t brushed my teeth since I threw up for an hour.

“Hey, don’t cover those beautiful lips.” That’s when the deja vu hit me, hadn’t I just dreamt this?

“But my breath stinks.” Again, deja vu.

“I don’t care, you know why?”

“Why?” I asked, this time nervously, feeling like I knew the exact answer.

“I care about you, Starlight.” and he kissed me.

I had no idea the chaos that was about to ensue.