Vachon Imagined

Her name was Isabella.

She was from Zicor, the planet of infinity.

On Zicor, nothing died.

There was no such thing as hate.

Zicor sheltered her. It gave her room to breathe, a sky to wonder upon, and enough quiet to hear her own thoughts. She would sit beneath that sky and write.

People passing by would wave to her in joy.

No one asked what she was dreaming about.

No one looked over her shoulder to see if what she had written was pleasant.

Or even true.

She scribbled all day until it was time to go home.

Home was her parents.

There, she knew the warmth of love and the open tranquility of touch. Her mother’s hands. Her father’s voice. The quiet certainty of being held by people who had never needed to explain why they loved her.

There was no language for danger on Zicor.

There didn’t need to be.

Everything had been built on love.

It was ordinary there.

There was no room yet for opposites.

Everything dwelled in the plushness and wonder of one another. Life did not have to defend itself. Nothing needed to be guarded. Nothing needed to be earned.

Zicor was her home.

Her fantasy laid down upon a bed of roses, not yet splintered by thorns because she had no idea what a thorn was.

And then everything changed.

The leader of Zicor came to her.

Isabella had so much wonder in her. So much thirst for discovery. Zicor had been her planet, her home, a place where she could discover anything she wanted.

She was safe here.

She was loved here.

And that was why the leader chose her.

There had been a committee.

They had appealed to the leader.

We must go, they said.

We must adventure.

We must know more about these Earthling creatures.

And so they sent Isabella.

She was filled with excitement.

But as she began to wonder about the journey, something strange entered her awareness.

Something tightened inside her.

At first, she thought perhaps she was imagining it.

Then her hands began to change.

The fingers that had always moved so easily across the page became stiff. Uncertain.

She looked at them.

She turned them over.

She opened and closed them.

She tried to write.

Nothing came.

She tried again.

Still nothing.

She stared at her hands with the same wonder she had always given the sky.

Only this time, the wonder frightened her.

She didn’t know what was happening.

She didn’t have a word for it.

But something inside her knew this was different.

And she didn’t like it.

Still, the journey came.

She said goodbye to Zicor.

To her parents.

To her home.

To the life that had always felt specially hers.

And she left.

The feeling remained inside her.

As the journey continued, it began to split in two.

One part of her was still filled with wonder.

The other part watched.

She did not know what that meant either.

Then she arrived on Earth.

She had no language for what she saw.

The sky was filled with smoke.

She watched a woman hold a child who would not move.

She waited for the child to wake.

The child did not.

She watched two men fight in the street.

She could not understand why one man would want to hurt another.

She watched someone take something from another person and run.

She watched people lock doors behind themselves.

She watched a man look over his shoulder before entering his own home.

Isabella stood still.

Why?

She had never needed that word before.

Why would one person hurt another?

Why would someone take what belonged to someone else?

Why would someone be afraid of the person standing beside them?

She began to feel something deep inside herself.

Something she had never felt on Zicor.

It was heavy.

It seemed to settle somewhere beneath her ribs.

She wanted to write, but she could not.

She wanted to explain it, but she didn’t know how.

So she watched.

And the longer she watched, the more something inside her changed.

She had come to Earth looking for something new.

Instead, she discovered something Zicor had never needed.

Fear.

And beneath fear, something darker.

Separation.

When Isabella finally returned to Zicor, they gathered around her.

They wanted to hear everything.

She told them about Earth.

She told them about the smoke.

The fighting.

The children who did not wake.

The people who were afraid of one another.

She tried to explain what she had felt.

At first, they could not understand.

They listened with the same wonder she had once carried beneath the Zicorian sky.

But as she spoke, something strange began to happen.

They began to feel it too.

One person looked over his shoulder.

Another wondered whether something might be taken from her.

Someone asked whether the doors should be locked at night.

They had never locked their doors before.

Someone else began to wonder whether their neighbor could be trusted.

They had never needed to wonder that either.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, Zicor began to change.

They began to protect what had once been shared.

They began to fear what they could not control.

They began to build walls.

Not because anything had changed.

Because they had changed.

And then they began to fight.

The people of Zicor went to war with one another.

With the very planet that had sheltered them.

The planet that had given them everything.

The planet where nothing died.

Where no one hated.

Where love had been so ordinary that no one had ever thought to name it.

Isabella watched them tear apart the world that had raised her.

And finally she understood.

She had gone to Earth searching for discovery.

She had found imperfection.

But she had brought it home.

Zicor had always been perfect.

They simply had never known that perfection was perfection.

Because they had never known its opposite.

And now they did.

They called it fear.

They called it loneliness.

They called it anger.

They called it hate.

Isabella had another word for it.

Separation.