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"Did you buy out the whole junk shop?" Cindy asked last night as she looked atthe asortment of books, bits of clothing, and asorted odds and ends that covered the floor of my room.
I shook my head. "I only got five of the books today," I said, "somehow I've gotten the rest of this while I've been here...how did I get three pairs of shorts that are exactly the same?"
"I havn't a clue," Cindy said with a smirk, "but that's not what I came to tell you. The rings are really bright tonight, if you want to look."
I opened the curtains and gasped at the sight I saw out the window. The cloudless sky seemed to be covered with three distinct belts of silver, arching across from one side of the sky to the other. They brightened even more as Cindy turned off the light behind me.
"Lovely, aren't they?" she asked. "Just like the rings that'll be flying around in a few days..."
I laughed. "What...oh, Valentine's Day. Who's your Valentine?"
"Not telling!" she chuckled.
"I bet you don't have one!" I said, trying to stifle a laugh. "You never seem to have the time...well, I'm glad you didn't have the time for that twit..."
I had been meaning to say "Gambino", but the word never came out of my mouth. The sky flashed bluish white for a moment, then a diamond spark shot down it. Another followed, and another, and another...
"A meteor shower!" I said, slightly awed.
"Make a wish!" Cindy insisted.
We both wished at the same time, as the rain of falling sparks reached its peak, and the sky seemed to be studded with firy gems...
"I wish that I and Dawna should never be parted!' Cindy said, and at the same time I said, "I wish that Cindy should find love this Valentine's Day!" The rain of stars continued, as we both started laughing at each other's wishs.
"You're nuts!" I said between laughs. "Why not wish for something possible?"
"No more nuts than you!" Cindy countered. "Why wish for something that might already be true?"
"Come off it!" I said.
"You come off it," she replied in a more sober tone. "We've both lost so many people we cared about, wouldn't it be awful if something happened to one of us? Worth a wish so that it won't happen...
At that point, like a shower being slowly turned off, the downpour of stars slowed to a steady rain, then a light one, then a drizzle, then a trickle, then one final bright drop of light, and then it was over. At first I thought my eyes had been too dazzled by the light to see the rings, for they seemed invisible. But they stayed gone and I felt Cindy's hand slip into mine.
"It must have clouded over," she said in her reading-the-news voice, but it cracked on the last word.
"No, I can still see the stars," I said, "it's just..."
"The rings," Cindy wispered. Her hand left mine and she opened the window, letting in a blast of cold air. Ignoring the cold, she leaned out and looked at the sky. After a long time, she backed away from the window, shivering. "See for yourself, Dawna," she said. "They're gone. That was...the ringfall."
"The what?" I asked, looking out the window. It was true, the three rings of Gaia, the rings Yama had shown me, were gone. Gone! But where? How? Why? I felt betrayed, as if something priceless had been stolen from me. Not from the whole planet, which was pretty much true, but from me.
"What..." I bit my lip as I went over to my messy bed and sat down, trying not to cry. It didn't quite work. "WHAT HAPPENED?" I sobbed.
Cindy sat down next to me and put her arm around my shoulders. "Do you know what the ringfall means?" she asked gently.
"I don't even know what just happened!" I snapped.
"Well...you grew up in Aekea..." she said slowly. "I guess they wern't very into superstition there, were they? Or religion? Other than the one-god cults that sprang up during the crash..."
"My mother...I mean who I thought was my mother..." I stumbled over what to say, glad we couldn't see each other in the dark. "Anyway...she belived in Eirmehz. You know, god of death..."
"Not god of death, Dawna." Cindy's voice was firm. "Messenger-god, carrier of souls, guide to the Underworld...but not god of death, no more than any of the others. It just makes people think badly of him...anyway, that was your only contact with any of the old stuff?"
"Yeah, and I didn't belive it it," I said. "I'm still not sure if I do...anyway, what's that got to do with the rings?"
"Well..." Cindy sighed. "It's just that the ringfall is said to be one of the first signs of the end..."
"Of the world?" I asked, feeling fear creeping into my heart like ice water.
"Of the world as we know it, at least," Cindy answered. "I guess it makes sense..."
"Of course, with the Zurg and all!" I said.
"Well, yeah...omigosh! I've got it! Forget the end..." She leaped up and made for the door, but tripped over a book I'd left on the floor. I, shouting "Watch out!" and trying to stop her, tripped over her.
"This always happens, dosn't it?" she asked with a sigh, before jumping up again, hitting the light switch, and running off to her own room. I closed the window and curtains and started shoving the odds and ends in the closet.
I'd nearly gotten the mess cleared up when she came back in, holding her cell phone. "I called Mike," she said, "and he said he'd try to get through to the Aekea Observatory...but I can guess what caused the ringfall."
"What?" I asked.
"Well, the rings are probably pretty delicate, right?" she said. "They certainly look it...I mean looked it. So faint and gauzy...not that it mattered, since we never had space travel. But what do you think all those Zurg ships zooming around did to them? They probably disrupted the orbits so much...the rings must have looked so bright tonight because they were brushing the edge of the atmosphere and burning. Then they started falling in..."
"Those stupid bloody Zurg!" I shouted. "Destroying our rings..."
"That's not all they'll have done by the time they're finished, I'll bet," Cindy said grimly. "Not that they meant to, I'm sure... It was just thoughtlessness. Oh well, the rings went out in a blaze of glory...and it was lovely, wasn't it?"
"But the end of the world?" I asked, looking at the closed curtains.
"Only as we know it," Cindy said. "Try to sleep, things will look brighter in the morning. Trust me, they always do."
Needless to say, I didn't sleep well at all, but things do look slightly brighter...slightly. Those old comic books have given me an idea...