2 Miserable Comedy - 2

[Observer]

The idea of a "clear blue sky" had always been strange to Seth Lee.

Here in Hawrtfull, Colorado, his underwhelming frame was beginning to feel heavier from sweat, his oversize T-shirt slipping off his shoulders and threatening to sunburn more of his skin. However, there were still a few clouds in the sky, some of them quite large, and they provided him momentary salvation whenever they interceded and shielded him from the wrath of the sun.

This didn't mean that he was always saved, though. Most of the past half hour had been spent baking, the kind where he was the dough and the oven was the outside world. August was not treating him well, and he could tell from the sparsely populated main street stretched out in front of him that it was a bad Sunday to be out and about.

"Stupid," he thought to himself. "So fucking stupid," he repeated mentally, wiping sweat from his brow. His decision to pass the three hours in between train rides to his new school by looking around the town was definitely a bad one, and he had given up after twenty minutes of trudging towards the main street, melting and slumping more with every step.

Some of the shops, admittedly, had been somewhat interesting. The old-fashioned candy shop may have been stuck on black liquorice, but it also stocked some eye-catching confections and ice cream that he would have paid for had he not resolved to tough things out in case the food at Ilus was unbearable. The general store was stuck somewhere in the early 21st, as was the post office, but the nostalgia stopped Seth from outright criticizing it. The clothing stores were similarly archaic, but this made them more charming than it did bad, as they carried simple designs that were chic decades back. "A bit of a retirement town," he thought to himself in his haze, resolving that if he did make it to retirement, he would never come to this damned skin-charring hellscape under any circumstance less dire than gunpoint.

Walking back was agony. He needed a respite, and he needed one badly. His vision was fading, and the heat of the 97 degree day was warping the air in front of him. The thought had just passed his mind that he should get to some shade before he became human sludge when the heat seemed to vanish all at once, and his vision became clear.

"Thank fucking god," he gasped out, a quiet hiss on a quiet day, squinting and looking back up towards the sun. Yet, strangely, it was just as bright as it had been for what had felt like the past several hours, and the clouds had not passed the sun.

Puzzled, Seth stood up shakily and leaned back and forth, letting all five feet and eleven inches tilt on his toes. The heat had vanished, and he felt vastly better than he had in ages. He'd been idle for some time, so that much sweating had given him some much needed clear-headedness.

However, that couldn't quite explain why he now felt so at peace with things. It was a soothing sensation of being content that shouldn't have blown in with some ordinary breeze.

For that matter, was that breeze ordinary? Seth's clothes looked utterly undisturbed, but he was inexplicably feeling lukewarm at best standing in the exact position as he had been when his entire body had become a sweat factory.

"Bizarre," he thought to himself. "That's the only word for it, besides fucking insane."

- - -

[Observer]

Hawrtfull's streets were, as Seth had noticed earlier, a stream of elderly couples and groups and some retirees on their lonesome. There were a healthy few families, but this was an old town that relied on history more than what was on the horizon.

Strangely, however, he hadn't noticed a conspicuous figure dressed fully in white, even as he passed by her, bumped into her, and had given her the token "Sorry, you okay?"

Even more strangely, he hadn't noticed her conspicuously pristine facial features, posture, and demeanor, even when she hadn't stumbled after bumping into him. These were surrounded by and accented by a nearly entirely white ensemble of clothing, which should have made her draw eyes like a fisherman catching by the net.

A long white sleeveless dress, fluffy yet ethereal looking cloudy white coat, and long white gloves were spruced up by a golden ribbon on her wide-brimmed (and snow white) sunhat, golden eyeliner extending far outside of her eyes, and spotlessly applied golden lipstick, yet this display of decadence had vanished from Seth's mind as quickly as it had appeared.

Perhaps the most curious part of this happening was the fact that, even as this fair lady's sultry voice told him, "I'm fine, thank you, darling," he had already turned away from her and gone back to the shops, almost as if she had vanished from his conscious just as quickly as she had appeared.

The Lady In White had remembered him, though. Every step he took, oblivious to the stare she focused on him even as he traded glances at locals equally surprised to see him as he them, she followed behind.

Then, her sunhat flapped lightly in a nonexistent breeze, despite remaining fixed in place for hours prior, during which stronger winds had undoubtedly been present than the utter lack of one which prompted the reaction. Tapping her golden ribbon with a melancholic sigh, her last sight of Hawrtfull, Colorado was of Seth Lee's back, trudging towards the train station, thankfully much cooler now than it had been before.

Then she vanished from Main Street seamlessly, almost as if she had never been there, just like how nobody had seen her there.