Stella

No matter how things were left between us, the phantom of Stella Alfieri will always linger in a quiet, protected place in my heart. She is my Muse, and for those rare moments when she is not somehow the source of every story, every tale, every lie I write, her mark is left upon the page. The burned, scattered scraps of what we had once crafted together will remain my own, personal, private treasure – hidden away behind a locked door. These trifles I offer here to the wind are but ashen echoes of something that I’m sure no longer resembles the truth.

Whenever I think back on Stella, I see her in my mind’s eye as a thaumatrope – on one side of the spinning disc she is a proud and beautiful woman just entering her luminous twenties, absolutely limitless in her potential, the golden gleam of unfettered dreams shining in her eyes; and on the other side, she is still nine years old – just as I remember her in my most treasured memories – framed by the doorway of late evening, her pale hands entwined around her father’s great paw, dark hair gleaming with rain, golden eyes rimmed with red, and her soul filled with a terrible rage.

Even then, I should have known that that miserable girl would be fated to become my very first love, as bright and violent as lightning streaking across the night sky.

I owe that analogy to my mother. Not so long after Stella had joined our home, in the midst of one of her wild terrors, my mother made a casual comment in her cool and distant way, her darkly critical eyes flickering towards me in the rare moment that elicited direct contact: “Kaminari.” Thunder. Lightning. A goddess’ roar.

How prophetic and heavy the unspoken meaning behind that word would prove to be. Stella was indeed a goddess, in the way that all young girls were. She was vain, cruel, and quick to anger when things did not go her way – which due to her bellicose nature, was much too often.

Very early on, I had learned to give her end of our shared hall a wide berth; beyond the black door that separated her room from the rest of the house, a silent pressure would gradually but inevitably build until, as though with relief, the sound of a terrible crash signaled the beginning of another great storm.

Her father’s slow footsteps ascending the stairs would be as rainfall: heavy and distant, but inevitable. Yet what is mere rain to the storm? Whatever words he had to say would be drowned out by her screaming. From within my room or the safety of the study, her accusations against the world seemed to emanate darkly beyond the boundaries of the word, “DÉTESTE!”.

In those days, I hid from the storm. Somewhere in this world – so far from the maelstrom hammering on the other side of that black door – the crisp and comforting sound of old pages turning momentarily smothered the bitter weeping of an unhappy girl. Life went on; the storm would pass; and my mother would make another cool, dismissive comment to nobody in particular:

“Kawaisou.” Pitiable. Or… perhaps pathetic.

Stella? Me?

Maybe both.