Semi-Random Reflections

Read time: 2 min.

An excerpt from my work-in-progress novel The Song and the Tempest

Isabelle sits on the balcony, waiting. She zips her jacket as the January winds start to come through. A light breeze blocker sufficiently keeps out the first slight chill she’s felt since last February. It used to get cold before January, never mind in the middle of the month. Her and Jason’s Granddad once claimed that winters in the South used to get so cold whole rivers would freeze solid enough to walk on. She looks down from the balcony on oak trees green as matcha. Imagining those trees frosted requires more effort than imagining a flight to the moon.

She feels something in her jacket pocket. Upon inspection she finds a plastic-wrapped fortune cookie. With nothing else particular to do, she tears the packet, cracks the cookie open and unfurls the fortune with one hand while she lifts the cookie to her mouth with the other hand.

The answer to your question is a thousand more questions. Lucky numbers: 13, 420, 87, 999, and 104.

But what question specifically?

She brainstorms a list:

1. Should I try to tack down my birth family?
2. Is ‘trusting my instinct’ really just me letting my shadow self run wild because I’m secretly afraid of facing reality?
3. Will a degree in psychology still earn me a living wage by the time I finish my doctorate, or will the oligarchs have fully eradicated thought by then?
4. How much longer till Death realizes I can’t stop for her and she kindly stops for me?
5. What’s the fourth dimensional equivalent of a circle?
6. Can butter fly?

At that point realization dawns.

Question: What’s the question?

Answer: A thousand more questions.

Either she’s just gotten mystically trolled, or this experience has implications for question two.