FINAL CHAPTER

X
Sixth day. High above rooftops, the pollution held fast to the air and veiled urban decay. But sunrises and sunsets grew more beautiful, but the night skies were dull and starless. Sienna longed for home but held her heart open to accepting everything. The buildings replaced the grass and the noise the city brings replaced the wind and its song. It was time to make a new palette of the colors of the world.
         “Wanna know a secret?”
Sheldon looked at her. “Yeah sure.” Above the rooftops and people’s heads, above trouble and all suspicion, they had their own little world of conversations. Sienna told him of Grandpa. How they talked on the phone. She told him their thoughts about the colors of the sky. She told him how he wanted to see the sky even in death. She told him of Papa and his plans, of Mama and her worries. She told him everything.
         “It’s okay if you don’t believe me.” Sienna said, “It’s okay. But it’s still a secret. And it’s yours to keep.”
Sheldon looked out at the view of the city, the smoky wind in his hair, his nose red with cold. “It explains a lot.”
         “Of?”
         “Just a lot.” Sheldon’s eyes were blank, “I mean…it doesn’t change anything…though it still changes a lot.”
         “What do you mean?”
         “It changes the course of history, in as much as I see it.” Sheldon laughed. “But nothing changes. You’ll see what I mean.”
         Sienna crossed her arms in the cold and looked up at the vast grayness of the city sky. Looking down below she saw two men come out of a blue beetle car and proceed to the apartment building. It was time, she thought. For change. For the future. For a long time she looked down. Farewell to what might have been. Then she looked up, and for a moment she thought stars were falling out of the sky; small, sparkling and white.
         “Look. Snow.” Sienna said quietly.
         “No shit.” Sheldon said, looking up and laughing, “Hell, they came early.”
The blue beetle car down below was drowned by the umpteenth wave of angry mobsters wanting to strip the royal family of its rights.
         “Tomorrow or the day after the next,” Sheldon stood beside her, looking down as she did, “they’ll stand before the gates. Cheering.”
Sienna grinned. “Sounds good.”
         “And I’ll be clapping and cheering along with them.” Sheldon’s hand closed over Sienna’s, and he held on to it tightly, comfortingly.
         “I’ll keep an eye out for you.” Sienna said.
Hand in hand they watched the mob pelt burning cans at the palace gates; the guards swatting them with water hoses and rubber bullets, taking away the felled into police cars, driving them away.
         “Well, princess.” Sheldon shrugged. “Shouldn’t you be going down?”
Sienna looked down, then at the sky, exactly at that moment a gleam of golden sunlight pierced right through the clouds, and it was bright and gold and spectacular. And Sienna remembered the sunrise back home, how it almost seemed like heaven was letting a window open to let a bit of its splendor reach down. She thought of Grandpa and she smiled; and in her mind she said to him: Yes. Things could look so much better.