Weary

"Debes cenare, Musa..."

I shook my head dully. "Noli, Paradoxus. I don't want to eat."

"When was the last time you ate?"

"Yesterday, I think." When was I last hungry? I don't know.

"Stulta."

I shrugged him off my shoulder, where he had been standing to peer at the computer screen. "Go away. I'll eat."

"Liar." Paradoxus murmured, now hovering beside my ear. Posy looked at me with big frightened eyes, and Simile frowned. Chiasmus stopped rearranging my bobby pins. He glided across the room--how I wish I could fly, like my Longaevi!--and stood with Deton and Polly, who were between the other three and Litotes. The whole row of them stared at me, a spectrum of colored wings and bright soft eyes, all mournful, all reproaching.

"Noli me videre!" I said, angrily. "Stop looking at me!"

They looked all the more. I couldn't bear their concentrated gazes. "All right! I'll eat!"

"Do you promise?" Paradoxus demanded. He knows that I cannot go back on a promise.

"I promise."

Litotes narrowed his eyes shrewdly. "When will you eat?"

I opened my mouth, closed it, and sat quiet. He had trapped me neatly, and any further postponement would only cost me more silent pressure from all seven of them. I had to make Posy smile. I wanted Chiasmus to return to his silly arrangements, which made him so happy. I wanted Polly's lips to stop trembling.

"Tonight," I told them, wearily. "I promise I'll eat tonight."

Posy came cooing to me, and Paradoxus, satisfied, tweaked my hair. Chiasmus went back to his bobby pins, and Litotes, after giving me a look that said "you are a silly girl" returned to his nest. He is working on a treatise on the nature of caterpillars as related to the conscious and unconscious of muskrats, or some such. I don't often inquire, because he is all too eager to explain. Polly and Deton went back to their game--they are playing at chalk-drawings on the side of my desk--and Simile, folding her great blue wings, gave me a sad smile. Simile always understands.

"Tyrannus!" I said softly to Paradoxus, accusing.

"Ita." He replied, and, spreading his green-gold wings, floated gently away. I heard him playing his pipes a few seconds later, from the nest which he has made for himself behind my books.

I stared out the window at nothing, and then at my wall-schedule. I have to get Ecce out. I have two papers, three exams, and classes next week. I have a reading log to write. I have assignments, responsibilities, relationships... and there is no time. I laugh and joke every day, and no one knows what it costs me to do so. They don't know--how could they?--how hard it is to smile.

Domine... Deus meus....

Paradoxus is playing the 23rd Psalm on his pipe. God looks down from Heaven and longs over me, and will draw me to himself. My sins, my self-centeredness, my fear, my pride--all will be abolished at last, and I shall be at rest in the heart of my Lord.

I am not alone.

Spero.