[YD6-60(SHEo) Chapter Code] Alone, Rambling with the Sparrow and the Tower

 

This story is an unfolding suite of chapters clarifying my book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness, aware of her need for a body to reveal herself and exercise her wishes, the narrative leads to her birth and the name she will claim: Sunshine -- Step into this journey of becoming, where the cosmos whispers its secrets, and identity blooms like dawn.

The narrator surveys the French countryside, haunted by memories of Francine. A letter arrives, carrying her enigmatic artwork, “SHE,” stirring echoes of their time in New York. As he deciphers its meaning, the past and present blur, revealing unresolved emotions. Torn between his career and the pull of Francine, he contemplates fate. An unclaimed ticket to New York lingers—an open door to what was, or what could be.

As the sun dips over the French countryside, I dismantle the total station, folding the tripod, and carry the equipment across rough terrain. The shadowed corridor of the TGV -- sleek, futuristic -- linger in mind, the high-speed train slicing through the land from Paris toward the Swiss border towns. 

I head toward the blatant orange Renault miny-panel van parked in the midst of fields. Swing the tailgate open, stretch an arm, and place the apparatus box onto the cargo floor - smack, click -  the door shuts feigning a tinny reverberation. Rounding to the driver’s side, I slip into the seat, tweak the ignition key coaxing the engine to purr, I drive the rutted tracks before veering, bumping onto the asphalt road.

The countryside unfurls ahead, winding toward the disturbance that crowns the shallow hill. Ascending to the revealing village unfold rustic streets unfold, tokens of modernity flicker amidst the medieval chaos — glowing bakeries, a lone grocery, a solitary hair saloon — nestled amid the weathered white stone embrace. 

The silence invites my mind to drift, conjuring ghostly horse-drawn carts, figures bustling in a flurry through the village’s dirt streets of bygone centuries. I arrive before the designated inn’s porte cochère, where a gabled roof rise a former castle gateway, before wings claim a street front -- fenestrated stone walls beneath terracotta-tiled eaves.

I park and step out, retrieving the topographic equipment and my suitcase from the orange van, stepping toward the squad, wide door beneath the tiled eave. Pushing inside, my curiosity kindles — like flames against an encroaching night -- casting shadows of my grandparents as children lingering here, their specters woven into the hall’s fabric. 

The doorbell’s jingles dissipate through the hall, summoning a figure from a door behind a modern front desk. An old woman waddles forth. I offer her fixing gaze. “Clerget,” She nods, eyes crinkling, a familiarity of encountering strangers, with good references. By now, her hand has unhooked from a key from the rack. Hands me a warded key, gesturing toward the edge abreast to a shady opening. 

I step toward the gaping staircase, the wooden skeleton groaning beneath my seventy-four kilos frame as I wind to the upper floor. Wafting through the ceiling, the beams' breath of ancient wood, while the walls ooze the lime of mortar and plaster. Their pores steeped in the smoke of open fires, clinging through the ages to the very bones of the inn upper floor corridor. 

My mind leans against the outer street’s wing wall, tracing the corridor’s rippled floorboards -- an undulation beneath my steps, calls my curiosity. I configure the spaces so far walked, sketching in my mind the architectural overpass spanning the porte cochère, where horse groomers once walked. Leading harnessed horses in from the street. Disappearing through the gapping gable wall, vanishing into the backyard stables to tend their charges.

I venture along a few corridor doors, guided by the cracks of light slipping the seam of the jambs. The key, flimsy through the escutcheon plate, unlatches the door, I step with the swing in a curiosity, set on the clean bedding. At ease, pose my bag and equipment, to pause, rolling my eyes as I piece together a tentative routine. 

Eyeing through the angles, circling my den, settling my mind, I step back out, drawn to the inn’s quiet mysteries -- the absence of the expected. In a twist of eyesight, rounding the corner deeper, I come to facing doorways, hidden from the romance of the inn’s old bones, where poches of waste flow overlap porte cochère, concealed from one’s fantasy. 

The idea strikes -- beating the rush of stranger. I hurry back to my room, fetch my overnight bag and towel, and loop my way behind the door, jolted by the stark contrast of a white-tiled bathroom, the sheen dressed the warping walls. 

I surrender beneath the shower’s rose sprinkles. Steam rising at embracing me, softening the edges of my body’s dive-suit skin weariness. Until feeling neither skin, flesh nor fatigue -- bodily in spirit, just a ghostly warmth, I step out, drying, and reclothes, looping back to my room to drop my bag and towel before heading downstairs.

At the bar, the crews gathers in camaraderie. Over dinner, the night stretches -- then back to the bar, unfurling in long conversations, laughter, the easy rhythm of shared stories. Then, a dispersal -- each retreating to their rooms, leaving only the echoes of the creaking floorboards to fold into the hush of the sleeping village. 

And then, as if rising from the very bones of the inn -- the dried beams and rippled floorboards, from the breath of those who passed through -- the cosmos suscitates an a cappella, unbound by time, echoing through the silence:
“My heart cries for you;
Sighs for you, dies for you;
And my arms long for you;
Please come back to me. . .”

My heart craves to fill the void, pulling my thoughts across the Atlantic, tracing regret -- missed chances. Seizing a Romeo and Juliet row on a barge with Francine. She wanted Central Park to mark her arrival in New York, but instead of a romantic drift, my restlessness flared -- frustrated rowing against the wind. There, in the middle of the pond -- reasoning that the water couldn’t be deep, as I envisioned simply waddle my way to shore. 

Aetheria sent me Francine’s message -- when a little sparrow landed on my window’s stool cap and tethered itself there, firewalking -- its nervous little legs pacing on the spot, watching, mirroring in the shadow. We faced each other -- me in the dark interior of my studio, behind my Compaq Portable; the sparrow, blinded by the two-way effect of the pane of glass, unable to see me. The little bird lingered, leaving me amazed by those nervous legs -- spinning in place, continuing its dance before skittering, fluttering its wings, and darting into the azure sky, as a fly on the windowpane, it became a vanishing dot.

Next, the phone rings in my studio. Francine’s flight from France has landed. Francine -- SHE. Her story begins again, woven into my journal. 

I close my NEC UltraLite, its clamshell liquid crystal display, folding over the body like a book cover. The notebook I bought with six postdated checks -- now resting in the amber glow of a beautiful evening over Belfort’s exurb, her hometown, its reflective white lettering flickering through a dark screen. 

‘My little sparrow.’ The words echo in my mind, carried by a breeze to no one. Fragile, private, clinging to my dreams like smoke, dissolving into the edges of memory. 

My Citizen wristwatch stirs me, ‘Seven o’clock!’ I dress, step out to a groan of floorboards underfoot, rushing before the bathroom falls into demand. 

With my overnight bag shelves, the mirror captures my reflection over the washbasin, glistening among white tiles grafted onto medieval walls with a quiet sense of defiance. I defy my privacy!

A tune lingers in the stillness, drifting through the morning hush, rising, folding into the rhythm, as the bristles of my toothbrush pounce my teeth. 

“Quand le soleil dit bonjour aux montagnes; 

Et que la nuit rencontre le jour; 

Je suis seul avec mes rêves. . . 

Une voix m'appelle toujours. . . --

When the sun says hello to the mountains; 

And night meets day; 

I'm alone with my dreams. . . 

A voice always calls me. . .”

The shaver whirs along my jawline, and cold water splash over my face. With a towel, I wipe my face and hands dry, pass a hairbrush over my head, pocket everything into my night bag.

I loop back into the room, then descend the stairs. A creaking murmur lingers upstairs, where the dining room crouches beneath rough, dark joists, swallowing what weak morning light seeps in. The restaurateur catches my eyes, amused. 

As along the stone slabs, a sarcastic gesture escapes me -- my gaze pushing the exterior door. He reads the weight and mocks it. “The door’s been open since five o’clock.”

“Yes, maybe. But last night it wasn’t — not at ten o’clock when I wanted to step out,” I counter. 

He doesn’t respond, so I add. “And if there had been a fire? What then?” 

I step past the middle-aged man, who could have been the son of the old woman, where the bar counter Ill-fitted the narrow entrance hall. It is quiet now -- ghosted by the clatters and voices that had busied it the night before. A stark reminder of the surveyors’ conversation drift back -- One man spoke of another surveyor, figuring that could easily have been me, who confused the plus sing with the minus sign. Their joke echoes: “Fill a mount, and excavate a trough.” But there is no humor in how the truth lingers. It shadows over our work.

To the side, reed-woven baskets cradle a few cuts of baguette. Tables and chairs cram the ill-proportionate rooms, inconvenient obstructions as I push forward to start my day. As I'm slowed in my stride, a quiet charm that subdues my eagerness, distracts me from the work ahead. 

I lower myself backrest - Twock, Twock - wood knocking into my chair, knees bumping against the table leg. I linger over an absurd thought: ‘Breakfast?’

The restaurateur brings over coffee, pouring me a cup. I remind myself: ‘You’re on a diet until noon.’ Dismissing the stirring of hunger with foresight of a grand lunchtime feast. ‘We’re not missing much!’ I think.

Hard to resist the pull of gratitude, I'm aware that each bite will melt in my mouth. I pick up a crackling crust of baguette between my fingertips, slice through its airy fluff with a butter knife. Foregoing the sweetness of jam, opting to smear a thick layer of butter -- preserving the purity of taste. I savor each bite in silence. 

Suppressing the urge to call the restaurateur for more, my body teased by the promise of food. I wash the lingering greed down with coffee. Then, rising to my feet, I cast a regretful glance over the basket of baguette pieces, finding the entrance hall. 

I pick up the topographic case, brought down earlier by the door. I linger, casting a glance back, “Merci -- Thanks,” I say to the restaurateur. 

Stepping out into the quiet street, I map my route as I approach the orange van. I load the equipment through the tailgate, round to the driver's side. I tweak the ignition key, coaxing the engine to purr. 

From the church -- the initial benchmark -- I steer out of the village, following the country road. The route unfolds in my mind, shifting from grids of calculation to live each segments, recalling by stetting up the tripod and the theodolite over weathered boundary stones. Geodetic marks becoming waypoints along the road, the church spire -- it’s triangulation point -- diminishing in the distance as I push further afield. 

Driving through this unseen grid, the land shaping through futuristic map contours road changes traversing the countryside. Measured segment zigzagging with familiar markers from these past days, I veer onto branching field tracks, tracing the path I’ve taken before, instinctive noting the absence of weathered boundary stone.

I stop. Set up a total station. My assistant walks the prim -- until, instead of the prism, he grips the club hammer, wields, driving the long steel stake deep into the earth. He steps away from the bright-colors cubic plastic caps settled into place -- a permanent marker. He heads to the next, staking another claim in the landscape, subdued to calculated advancements.

The day stretches ahead, mapped not just by memory but by method — segments measured, positions fixed, an invisible grid network grounding the vast openness into known certainties. The morning is broken by lunch. Then, the afternoon slips past, the land yields, until the evening gathers over the land. 

I pack the topographic equipment, stowing it away, with the familiar purrs driving away, steer the van back on the asphalt. Through the rhythm home, cosmic music carries the lyrics echoing in my mind: 

“… have I told you lately that I love you? 

Have I told? 

Have I told you how much I love you? 

There's a love. . . 

And at the end of the day. . .” 

By Wednesday evening, returning from the fields, I step into the inn. The door jingles behind me, the old woman lady approaches, leading with a letter in her hand. “That's for you,” She insists. I shrug her off. 'I'm in the middle of nowhere -- unknown to the world, far from phones, far from messengers, in the Middle Ages -- look around you?' But the letter remains in my face, blocking my path.

I relieve the woman of the pale yellow envelope. ‘How could the letter have found me?’ The thought lingers as my gaze falls on the calligraphy: “Rue the Sources -- Street of Springs.” Affixed with the United States postal stamps printed without monetary value. 

The letter seems to have cascaded from Ingrid's best friend, Jacqueline -- Francine’s mother half-a-dozen houses down the street -- to downtown Belfort, Clerget’s office secretary, before reaching my topographic base. 

The Warthog in me, snubs the scribe's Calligraphic elegance -- but the Gemini in me can’t help wonder. ‘How had the sorting postal workers deciphered the address hidden within those meandering lines?’ 

I thank the old woman, veering away, climbing the stairs, the wood creaking beneath my feet. At the top, the corridor’s floorboard shift to a mousy squeak that lingers until - Twock - shut the door behind me. Stepping into my room, I set the equipment aside and cross to the bed. Sidesaddle, as I used to, conversing on our Aladdin’s rug. Facing Francine sitting between the pillows, I reason. ‘My veins flow with champagne -- would you believe me if I told you my heart throbs with joy?’ 

I bring the envelope to the forefront, my other hand meeting it. Francine’s sillage lingers -- vivid, brimming. Afraid to open it. Inscribed in crayon on the face of the envelope, about to betray the Warthog in me. I pull at the flap, sealed with the tip of the tongue, tears the toe to open. ‘You're capricious, My little Sparrow?’ I reflect. 

Inside, the stiff carton slips halfway out, flipping to reveal its blank brown sides. ‘I don't understand?’ 

My Warthog, impatient at the prank, taps the heel of the envelope against the side table. The carton slides back inside, withdrawing in retreat from scrutiny, before tilting over -- dismissed for now. 

This isn’t a mystery for the end of a weekday. It demands a sharper mind, a willing brain set to delve deeper. My Warthog brushes off the mail, and steps out the room toward the voices downstairs. 

On the ground floor, slip by a team of surveyors gathered at the bar. “Un bol de rouge, s'il vous plaît -- a glass of red wine, please?” I asked the barman. Standing in retreat and sipping, my thoughts niggle. ‘Why does she send a carton? And nothing else?’ 

 With the little crowd, I moved to the tables. Chairs cringe on the stone floor as we settle for an evening meal.

After savoring the meal, we head upstairs. Like drunken pirates on an 18th century merchant ship, the floorboards groaning unsteady beneath our steps. 

In the quiet of my room, the envelope sheen calls. Its blank carton gnaws at the edges of my mind. 

‘Why?’ 

The question echoes. ‘Why would Francine send me a letter, with a blank carton?’ 

My hand stretches to the night table. I pull back the envelope’s flap, examine the carton. Nails pick at the scotch tape, peeling like an onion -- unstick two layers. A black photograph slips from the fold. 

‘What’s this?’

On the flip side, scrawled — SHE! Rows the waters of Central Park. 

Francine, that late morning. Asking me to pause rowing, handing over her long-lens camera. The discordance lingers -- sunlight blinding her as I pointed the lens. She, seated in the barge. The thick, leafy old woods herding at the pond’s edge, their shadows shade pooling eerie, dark, deep into the underworld. 

‘My little sparrow in New York -- need you remind me? I’ve been limited to an automatic pocket camera for construction site records?’

Francine’s laughter hums, mocking the professional photographer, I ain't.

But her second picture stings. My Warthog’s cold first impression. Leap -- my Gemini’s sentimental. Heart warmed, though banal, by the memory it carried.

‘What! Art? A wonky architect’s blueprint?’ 

My Warthog chills at the top sterile white fenestrated square facade, the two orange hues granting it weight, anchored beside a heavy rooftop tarpaulin. The orange, meddling in the backdrop, fades into a canvas’ atmosphere. The tease of association leaves my Warthog unconvinced -- this is a poem she forwarded me. 

In the sillage -- Francine's fears?  Good or Bad? Between the lines, Aries underplays itself -- the Fire sign, buried. Her paradisiacal zodiac doodles, her art, believed found? But she only ever spoke of her SHE project at Pesce Studio. ‘I can see you laughing at me!’ 

With nothing better to do in the chill of the room -- ‘You’re crazy! A prank?’ The envelope, teetering at the table’s edge, once destined for the dustbin below.

Uncovering SHE, looming as ELLE -- Petit Moineau -- delicate, free-spirited, shedding her French roots. Little Sparrow, her moniker. Francine's fascination with New York’s rooftop water towers, a cornerstone of her artistic identity. I see our Harlem walk, the lens of her eyes capturing the skyline’s interplay of mundane and magnificent. It aligns with the philosophy of her mentor, Gaetano Pesce -- who embraces the beauty of the error.

Unlike the photographer shadowing her figure against the dark woods, the pond’s underworld mirrored in the water, this painting is deliberate. The canvas, its title explicit: SHE. 

Like all of us going to work. She came home day after day, the evenings framed by a backdrop in our conversations. “I’ve worked on SHE. . .” 

But then -- she mailed me a psychological quiz. A puzzle. A test, perhaps, to decipher her inner turmoil. The same I witnessed, from day to day, while she lodged with me. 

‘Why an image of the canvas, instead of the original? A gift? If not a letter -- easier on my brain, already frayed with work?’

My Warthog avoids enigmatic entanglements. My Gemini -- delves headfirst. Francine art, the mirror of complexity, pulls me into its layered dots and symbols.

“Esquisse pour SHE -- Sketch for SHE” -- her nickname, “Mon Petit Moineau,” resonates -- Little Sparrow, scrawled on the right side. The words tether her identity to SHE, stealing an inverted reflection of ELLE.

Intuition, not analysis, guides me. I sift through the haystack of Francine’s inner world, standing before her art as if before a two-way mirror. Reality shifts -- sunlight against darkness, shadows folding, surging, dissolving. Fragments of self flickering through, the lingering doubts shaping the edge of my thoughts.

Foreshadowing the solitary roads ahead — roads that trace my future, yet feel obscured by the now. The job waits. A lifetime of preoccupation, suscitating doubt, the landscape stretches before me. 

Soon, in the aftermath, I’ll find myself driving these meandering roads, heading in the obscure future, toward sites along the tracing futuristic high-speed track. A pace impossible to grasp from this vantage point, cutting through the landscape -- a day into the future that only feels possible when reflected through the lens of the past.

Yet, I picture myself one day sitting by the window, facing passengers across a table, in a luxury far beyond an aircraft flight -- with legroom to spare, no sharp edges digging my skiing to the bones. 

Lost in the countryside after boarding the train, near the window, the world air-brushes into streaking blurs -- woods, fields, an amalgam of structures and vehicles dissolving into fleeting expressions. Yet, the horizon lackadaisical and teasing, rotates behind a quiet stillness -- earth’s edge vanishing just out of reach.

Setting the tripod on the benchmark, I meet my rod holder, already walking toward the stake to posing it onto the hub. Through the sight’s crosshairs, I read the vertical distance, noted the measurement, then signalled him to move on -- to the next of multiple points -- establishing the sweeping curved design. The elevations for the apron’s asphalt to merge with the existing road.

Monotony creeps in -- I lose track. Memorizing numbers only to let a single sign slip -- a minus or a plus, carrying forward the results. My intuition screams, inverted. The weight of that error haunts me. My mind sinks into a fog. Formula stacked with a flight of + and - signs, impossible to trace the flawed one. 

Destiny rambled in step with luck. Aetheria’s hand emerged from the zodiacal jungle, puppeteering the consciousness of the personalities throughout my world -- Clerget’s office, Arnault, the souls expanding my universe. 

That Friday, near the Swiss border, I hand in my notebook -- having pegged out the asphalt’s elevation for a warped road apron on the incline. 

When Arnault, my mentor, speaks -- not in such word as you are promoted -- but by Monday, luck finds me, Clerget’s office sending me on a mission south.

For now, another perspective lies ahead -- leaving my foothold by Ingrid and Rico, the exurb Francine left behind, where I seem to take up the relay. 

Monday morning, across the country road, The forest’s branches lean like spectators, sunrise fluttering over their foliage in flocks, whispering, ‘Where are you off to, this time?’ 

Descending from Le Salbert winding asphalt, the road unspool into an exurb nestled along a stream. The bridge leads me across to yield, merging into a current of dwarf cars intermingling with giant long-haul trucks, flowing toward downtown Belfort’s new day of work.

I veer onto the desert lane, the little engine straining through the gears, groaning before shifting to a high-pitched whine. The two-lane national road stretches thin, traffic loosening. Signs flash and pass -- cardboard hitchhikers vanishing in the slipstream. 

The distant countryside stirs. A spire fingers the sky. Emerging amidst scattered rubble, rising from the ground, half-hidden in the undulating landscape. Steep rooftops catch the sunlight’s tease, flickering across seeming broken pottery shards, casting deep shadows. Villages herd closer to the roadside, their fenestrated facades like curious bystanders, in rhythm with the land—rising, dissolving, retreating into the folds of the terrain.

The road sings to the rhythm of spreading exurbs, spilling into the blur of Besançon’s agglomeration. My foot aches, restless on the throttle. The city’s heart retreats, relenting its outskirts to the countryside. 

As villages surface, the relentless ride eases, cushioned -- yet my foot remains flooring the throttle, yielding to the endless road. 

The little engine whines, quiet in its resolve, straining through the hills. Signs flicker past -- a parade of enticing gestures at the road’s edges, their faces swirling away in my wake. 

I have no desire for branching roads, no urge to linger in passing places. I only lunge forward, eager to be released from the revving pistons, tremors reverberating through this tinny van. 

Overhead, Lyon flashes on gantries as I'm driving amid a cavalry of cars, locked in the charge of traffic. Multiple lanes stream through the city. The highway perpetuates its rhythm of off- and on-ramps, filtering cars away, I push ahead, winning the run -- traffic thinning to near desertion. 

The countryside awakens in sunlight, scattered villages sprawling just beyond reach as the horizon teases -- an endless, slow roll toward me, a deliberate crawl. Novelty -- my Gemini’s recreation -- stirs in my mind, feeding that impatience, destined to arrive at Clerget’s predetermined arranged rendezvous. 

When the sun bathes the wavy hills, its light flickers across scattered shards of bright terracotta. Then, Avignon flags the roadway, echoing in refrain. 

A childhood memory tug, unbidden.

The Hotel du Grand Lac in Goma, a theater hall filled with the rustle of mothers bending over us children, fathers standing in quiet retreat. I’m led in the herd by nursery school teachers crouched to whisper encouragement, shuffling us in line toward side stairs. 

Onstage, children twirl and spin in bright circles, their steps tracing a folklore’s rhythm. Boys bow, girls curtsy—tiny gestures of ritual, chiming counterpoints to the melody; 

“Sur le Pont d'Avignon, 

L'on y danse, l'on y danse. . . 

On the bridge of Avignon. 

We're dancing, We're dancing. . .” 

A phantom of bows and curtsies lingers, tethered to the asphalt ahead. 

The road’s monotony carves into my thoughts -- like a royal courier who galloped through forests and fields, arriving beneath Avignon’s midday sun

Ahead, a rendezvous awaits at an off-road yard. Montpellier looms on the Mediterranean, yet flashing gantry boards mark of a regional progress, foreshadowing my surveying -- forking of roadways ahead. 

At a construction on site office, I meet a road official who takes me on a ride along a stretch of highway. We turn at an overpass, looping back as he explains security precautions. Leading in the left lane, slows to a snail’s pace, a train of cars trailing behind us -- forcing hypnotic drivers to break formation and overtake on the right. 

The rear lane deserted, slip through the gap in the construction barriers, weaving into the restricted zones under repair.

Then, off-road, in a clearing, he drives over deep treads -- double tracks left by heavy-loaded dump trucks, stretching and curving in the dark earth. 

As the official talking as he gazes onto measured rows of gray heaps -- crushed stones lining the yard in sorted by size. His words, blurred into technical French jargon, lost me. As I’m baffles, he waits for a response that doesn’t come. Then, turning away, he weaves a course through the silence of a corpse. 

I feel doomed. ‘I’ll catch up with the ground men,’ I tell myself, leaving the yard behind. 

The official steps away from his car, walking off toward the site office, leaving me to head back to the bright orange panel van holding my surveyor’s equipment.

Over the next few days, I’ll drive along branching roads winding into the hills, tracing the road’s outfall -- never mapping the outcome in my imagine. The greater design shapes in Clerget’s offices, rendered in data points beyond my reach. To Clerget’s supervisor, I'm handing over a 3½-inch floppy disk with the topographic measurements.

The weekend greets me, and I climb into the panel van, leaving the inn -- setting out to profit from the road ahead, to troll through my future as though tomorrow may never come. I steer away from the highway crossing that first brought me here, threading through scattered exurbs, distancing from modern infrastructure. Inland, I delve deeper into an apparent past. 

The windshield frames, in the approaching distance, the brick arches leaping pier to piers, stretching farther into the glaze of still turquoise waters. Halfway across, the hands of fate seem to have severed the bridge’s reach, leaving an abrupt, jagged end.

The landscape shifts -- weathered, rough-hewn stone walls rise, hiding houses, roofs, and vegetation. Massive and imposing, the wall flutters my senses. 

Following the peripheral stone wall, I glance over my shoulder at the pier. The mystery dissolves into stillness. The surrounding water lies undisturbed -- no ripple, no trace, no clue betraying what happened there, or when. 

I'm turning around.

I track back, passing through the gate. Warped, fenestrated white stone facades emerge from a jumble of terracotta rooftops -- houses that seem to have settled into the tracks of time. 

At the heart of the “papal city,” echoes of history distort the birthplace of the popes, contrasting with the eternal myth of Vatican City. Yet, a synagogue nestled within the walls speaks a truer story -- of hand-in-hand communities that once thrived together in this enduring place.

When I return to the exurb’s inn, my mind withers as the window of my room frames the modern hillside -- streetlight waking in faint, artificial glimmers, reminiscent of a sky that lost has lost the glamor of sunlight. 

The suburbs slumber into the depth of the night, leaving me alone with my heart. In the quiet space, I imagine Francine's mustang running free and wild, galloping across the plains. That cowgirl spirit in her -- to be admired, like a solitary poppy in the field, beginning to fade in the fingers that plucked it. . . 

“My little sparrow.” 

A cosmic music rises, echoing faintly:

“…My Heart Cries for You, Dies for You;

My Arms long for you:

Please come back to me;

come back to me.”

Suscitating Aetheria’s attempts -- unyielding hands and boundless vision, molding the surrounding air, her breath weaving a tapestry of existence. 

Yet, my Warthog is tucked away, hidden in a corner of my mind, lost to my Gemini’s memory -- an open ticket to New York waiting, ready to board with just 72 hours’ notice.

I'm alone with Francine’s art -- layered, fragmented, intuitive -- plunging into the depth she’s perpetuates. It pulls me back to her maiden voyage -- the next day after landing in Manhattan. 

On our walk, she exclaimed in surprise, “The water towers are everywhere!” 

To me, they were just part of the city’s normal rhythm, perched atop brick apartment blocks -- rectangular yet appearing cubic through Francine’s artistic gaze -- silent sentinels providing residents with water to drink, wash, and cook.

Her sketch stacked three squares -- the fenestrated brick facades so banal they whip from memory. I had yet to delve into their meaning: each square holds a letter — H, the E introverted, whispering, 'You're good for me, in the coming'

But where the S should have been, there was only a void. A deliberate absence, shying away from SHE. The crossing-out gridlines stretched across her piece suggest booth precision and vulnerability -- a satellite gaze upon a water tower, map a tarpaulin stretched taut across the gridded streets below. 

In the layers of her drawing, I couldn't see her processing -- the hurt, the confusion, the impact I had on her life. 

“Esquisse pour 'SHE'” was her reach across to me. 

I am blind without her vocal assertion of herself. To doubt my intuition -- even with an ocean between us -- the Fire in her stifles the oxygen from my breath. A living two-way glass, the sparrow reflects her essence, an invitation for me to consider my place within SHE and the Little Sparrow.

Yet, Aetheria’s hope persisted, breathing life into the possibility of her consciousness taking form -- puppeteering from the depths of the zodiacal jungle, her presence lingering in the spaces between Francine and me.

My Gemini -- a Wind sing -- folds around aggression. Though my Warthog could coexist with Francine’s Horse, her Aries had already etched branded scars -- a reminder, an embodiment of courage and boldness. In a moment of closeness, my Warthog experienced her ramming head -- crushing and relentless -- I ought never to have experienced. 

Francine’s art isn’t meant to resolve -- a gift lingering in doubt, juggling the weight of a job offer pulling me farther away than France. Which quiet my Warthog’s wrath, shielding my heart.

---

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