Gray Skies

Only four words were scrawled on the otherwise empty blackboard this morning:
End of Gray Skies
. Under the words, a seldom seen thinning swirl of chalk dust clung to the blackboard’s surface, emphasizing what day it was. As Declan Chambers took to the seventh row to find his seat, he heard the first of many whispers. A buzz of excitement was beginning, and he felt an anxious tingle inside. As much as he tried to dismiss the day and push it away, for fear of disappointment, he couldn’t help but let himself feel some of what was spreading throughout the class.

From face to face, he scanned the classroom, and saw smiles adjoined with cupped hands over attentive ears. Gleeful whispers grew into a fevered chatter of children’s voices—some young, and some old. All were anticipating the announcement; even Ms. Gilly seemed to sit a little taller in her aging chair. Her hands were clasped together and resting on her desk, with fingers interlaced so tightly, that her knuckles turned white. And unlike most days, her hair was fixed high in a bonnet of heavy dark curls, making her look younger than she was. While the classroom filled, hints of a smile crept up the corners of her round cheeks, and her face flushed, as if she too, held back her own elation.

For some of the younger children in the class, this would be their first time hearing the announcement. For Declan, it would be his third time. But, at seventeen years of age, he didn’t remember the first
End of Gray Skies
announcement. He remembered the second one though, as well as the disappointment that had followed. That somber moment of failure had crippled his Commune, the community that he lived in. Their Commune was one of largest in the territory, and maybe even in the entire region. The disappointment from the failed End of Gray Skies had no boundaries. He’d heard stories of other Communes, and their descent into lowly times; he’d even heard about depression, and mass suicide. Like the centuries-old fog hugging their world, those memories were dim, and lacking detail. By today’s end though, surely new memories would erase what hadn’t happened five years earlier.

Maybe… maybe this time, the End of Gray Skies will be the last announcement
. Declan blinked, and enjoyed the thoughtful wish.

Sounds of chairs being dragged from underneath their accompanying desks drowned the growing chatter. Clunky scrapes of metal against the wood floors followed as the class settled into their morning routine. He had spent ten years in the same room, and only now did Declan notice the wear of the chairs on the floorboards. The room was their only classroom for every grade, from six years of age to eighteen. For hundreds of years, generation after generation of students had sat in these chairs, and had read from the same blackboard.

Reaching back the stretch of a child’s arm, the feet of the chair legs had carved thin paths into the wood floor. The planed tracks glinted soft reflections from the skylights above. Declan wondered who the children were who had walked these floors, sat in these same chairs, and took notes from the same blackboard for the generations before him.

Could they have been the ones, the ones who had caused the accident? Were they responsible?
He shrugged the thought away, dismissing what couldn’t be changed.

With his own seat under him, he pulled from his desk the remains of his monthly parchment allowance. He brushed his hand over the wrinkles, and played with the fraying pulpy fabric at the corners. He pushed his thumb over the black smudges that stained deep into the weave of threaded fibers, and knew that a cleaning would be one of this evening’s chores. How many cleanings was that? Enough for a generation… maybe more?

From a shallow pocket in his coverall, Declan revealed the black nub of his only writing stone. He paused; his guessing of generations stopped. Huffing out a sigh, he gazed around the room to see if anyone had noticed his dilemma. Worry stole some of the thrill of today’s announcement. He’d been writing again—more than usual—and now he only had enough writing stone to get through the day.

I can’t ask for more
, he thought, but then shook his head, and considered borrowing from, or maybe trading with, one of his friends.
But what do I have for trade? And with whom?

Declan felt the familiar touch of a hand on his back, and then saw a petite ball of fingers appear just below his elbow. It was Sammi Tate, and almost at once, his heart swelled. He couldn’t help himself, and leaned into her touch, as she opened her other hand to reveal nearly half a piece of writing stone.

“Here, take some of mine,” she whispered into his ear.

“Thanks. I’ll be more careful—” he started to say, but was cut-off by her hushed laugh. He loved the sound of her voice, especially when she laughed.

“No you won’t, but I don’t mind,” she finished, and lifted her open palm. Declan placed his hands around hers to take the writing stone that she’d offered. Rather than turn around, he held her hand. When Sammi closed her fingers on his and squeezed, his heart swelled a little more.

They were both so young once; innocent and pure in a way that only children can be. He still remembered the day that she had first walked into their classroom, uncertain and awkward, like one of the newborn goats from the farming floor. Back then, he supposed that they had both been like that. But time had transformed her into a young woman, and to Declan, she was perhaps the most beautiful person in this glum, gray world of theirs.

Declan wondered when it had started. When had they first shared a look that had meant something more than just classmates exchanging a glance? Had it been that first day? Or had it been sometime during their first year, when they’d shared a childish naivety, and the freedom of not yet knowing about the world in which they lived? He didn’t know when it had started, but he wasn’t sure he cared.

He’d sometimes catch himself staring into her green eyes, stopping only when she’d spill a nervous laugh, or stick out her tongue to tease him before turning away. Over the years, they were sometimes classmates at odds, arguing a history lesson, or a math problem. At other times, they were classmates working together to finish a project, or to help Ms. Gilly with the younger children. But when had he first begun to feel something more? He thought that maybe he always had; maybe he’d loved her from the very start, and just didn’t realize it until now.

Sammi Tate was different. It wasn’t just because she was the girl who’d sat behind him for the last ten years, but also because her skin was as white as the chalky writing on the blackboard, almost radiant. Next to the darker complexion of his hands, her delicate fingers shined bright and beautiful. But it wasn’t just Sammi’s skin that captivated him; her hair was fire red, like a flame.

It’s an anomaly
, Ms. Gilly once told the class. She spat the words after the children had begun teasing her. Sammi was just seven or eight, at that time, and the older children had pounced on her with their mockery and cruel words, leaving her to stand in front of the class, crying. Ms. Gilly was quick to scold the class, in an attempt to smother the heckling.

In their Commune, and in all of the neighboring Communes, nobody had ever seen a person with fair skin, or red hair. Virtually everyone shared the same brown hair and brown eyes, with dark skin.

Amidst Sammi’s sniffles, Ms. Gilly explained to the class that after the world had changed—after the accident—people had slowed down. Travel became impossible; people just stopped. Wherever your feet were standing was the land that you would call home forever. Nobody travelled after that.

Over the years and decades to follow, people had found one another, and had made new families. Any lines that had divided them before simply melted away. After dozens of generations, the color of their eyes, hair, and even skin began to take on the same look. But, every now and then, their ancient traits could surface. They saw it only rarely in the form of red-colored or blonde-colored hair, or with blue or green eyes. It gave them a brief glimpse of their past; a reminder of their variety, and diversity.

Sammi Sunshine
, Declan heard in his head. It was the name the school kids used when they teased her. A small twinge of regret hit him then when he considered that those were the first words Sammi had ever heard from the classroom. He recalled hearing the words, soft at first, like whispered classroom secrets that were being kept hidden from Ms. Gilly’s ears. But then more voices joined in, and the name-calling grew louder. They squawked and razzed, with the low hum of the older children singing along. They repeated the chant until Sammi had cried. He had been guilty of saying it too; he didn’t want to be different, or to stand apart from the rest of the class. But Sammi was different.

Images of that first day played in his head: Sammi, as a young girl, walking across the front of the class, a large round ball of curly red hair bouncing above her with each step. Her skin seemed to glow as she passed in front of the blackboard. The only thing familiar about her was the gray coveralls she wore—the same gray coveralls that every person in the Commune was issued. They came from the repurposing ward in five different sizes, but all of them were the same cut, feel, and color. Yet, Sammi’s coveralls were different: she’d taken a lock of her sunny red hair, and had made a small bow out of it, pinning it to the front of her coveralls. It was color, and color was different. Declan loved that she had done that.

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