"Christopher, are you coming?" The voice is coming from Carl. I can hardly hear him, and there it is again. The peacock, perched so serenely in the lowest branch of the southern magnolia.. The plumage glitters and glows, the royal blue of the neck like the finest velvet but enhanced and otherworldly, and the cascading feathers of its tail, shining the deepest green and blue, then gold and copper and the eyes all staring in blue and golden ovals. I have never seen anything so lovely, and the leaves, everything around the peacock are suddenly luminescent and glowing...
"Christopher!" Slowly, reluctantly, I turn to follow my new friends. I cannot tell them what I have seen. I am sure now that only I can see the peacock.
I walk respectfully behind as we return to the mansion, flanked now by irises gold and purple, now tulips of every hue and form. My eyes are fixed to the ground. Further off, two men and a woman I have not seen before, are working around the rose bushes, on their knees pulling weeds. And now the small trees with clusters of red flowers, luminescent in the morning sunlight. Here the house begins to loom, a menacing and stately behemoth, holding and containing such secrets that one would dare not discern. And I will be here for a month, maybe longer, out here in the wilderness, surrounded by such strange and outlandish people. But Carl and Aaron both are my friends, and with them both I will be safe.
Carl stops and turns slowly around, an anxious smile etching concern on his handsome face.
"What's up?" he says, almost challenging me.
"What do you mean, what's up?"
"What is going on with you, just right now, I mean?" Aaron keeps walking ahead.
Then it just slips out of my mouth. "I saw a peacock."
"Just now?"
"Sitting in the magnolia tree."
"You too?"
"So, it's really there?"
"Later", Carl says, his arm comforting me as it rests across my upper back...
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