Goodnight, goodnight! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow. 

I'm reading under my favorite tree again. It's the only place in the entirety of Carris that I am able to just be... alone. It's here that I'm able to go from the edge of the universe to a magical kingdom in one evening. Romeo and Juliet lays open in my lap, a gentle breeze rustling the pages, disrupting my view of the beautiful combination of symbols that speak into my mind, forming color and music and thought. I close my eyes and allow myself a moment of peace, listening to the way the wind tickles the leaves above my head, the way they rustle with laughter in response. 

As the sun sets, I look down at my list of new words and phrases that I had collected today, adding "sweet sorrow" to it. The page is full of my own markings, sloppy of course, as I am not well-practiced in the art of writing that the Lefts take for granted. I write as slow as I can, trying my best to copy the letters that Shakespeare had once typed. I have read this play a hundred times by now, and yet, something new always seems to stick to me when I do. The old, crude form of the language is hard to read, especially for someone like me, but I love trying again to see how much more I can understand. 

Blowing gently to dry the ink, I stand from my place on the ground and turn towards the tree. My hand reaches out, finding the notch in the bark quite easily. I push the small compartment door to the side and put the old, tattered book on top of the others. I slide the door back into place, the notch in the trunk concealed perfectly by the normal shingling of the tree bark. I stand back and revel in my handiwork like any good Right always does. But then again... I'm not that good of a Right, now am I? 

Thinking about this, I gently fold the paper with my newest discoveries into the smallest square I can muster and tuck it deep into the back pocket of my jeans. The pen is tucked behind my ear and I brush off any dirt I can find on the back of my legs. Leaning against the tree, I look out to the horizon and watch the sky change colors from periwinkle to lavender to blush and finally settling on a deep, velvety navy as the sun sets over the Right side of Carris. Our side of town settles under the dark blanket of the newly born night sky. 

Of course, the Left side is still shining, alert, and busy. Their statistics will tell you that it is much more logical to keep working well into the night, to not stop your productivity simply because the sun has gone to sleep. If they would just look outside those windows they had installed because of "the importance of receiving Vitamin D", would just look out at nature, sit in it, breathe it in... maybe then they would understand us. 

As I begin my walk back home, I hear the trills of two birds in conversation. I smile, my arms swinging joyfully side to side. It's a new song, two melodies intertwining into one, contradicting yet embellishing each other. I whistle, trying to add my own twist to the impromptu duet. I jerk my head forward with practiced expertise, allowing the pen to fall from behind my ear into my hand. I click it and go to write on my palm, but right before the ink touches my skin, before I inscribe the words "twisting sounds" onto my body, I remember that I am a Right. And a true Right can't write. 

I tuck the pen back behind my ear, the spring in my step lost. How trivial it is to the Lefts. To be able to write their ideas down with ease and splendor. They don't even need a list of words and phrases, they have access to all of them at any point in time that they want. Being able to read, to inscribe their message, to share ideas with the world without having to say a single word aloud. I long for that. And I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't. I should be proud to be a Right, to be able to create whatever I want with my bare hands. To hear the color in the wind and see the music in the stars. And I am. But what does it matter that I can understand all those wonderful things if I'm not gifted with the ability of words to describe it all? 

As I contemplate that for the umpteenth time, kicking a rock as I walk, I hear someone in front of me clearing his throat. The man standing before me is taller than I, but only by a thumb or so. His chin is covered in light stubble, but from experience, I know it is not because he hasn't shaved recently, instead because he can't grow much more than that. He has a paintbrush, still slightly wet with whatever paint he had just used, tucked behind his ear much like the pen tucked behind my own. He is strong but not necessarily muscular, just lean and well built. His fingers are long and slender, unlike my own slightly callused ones that mark me as the inventor in the family. His jaw is set and he is pointedly looking at me, frowning slightly. 

"Mason!" I smile innocently, watching the pebble skid the small distance in between my brother and me before landing softly in front of his toes. "Pleasure seeing you here... wasn't expecting you back for at least another --"

"Save it, E," He says, raising a hand to stop me and shaking his head disappointedly. "Say what you want about me, but I at least know better than to be gone all afternoon, miss dinner, and then begin my walk back home only after leftlight starts. Mom's sure to be worried sick." His arms cross one over the other, his stance widening and his chest puffing in a classic display of primal authority. 

"And yet," I say coyly, walking up to him and poking him lightly in the shoulder, "Here you are, at least a sun slips walk from home. Surely you didn't walk all this way just to berate me." I look around the street trying to see if I can figure out what really brought him out here. 

Slowly, his frown slips into a smirk and he chuckles down at me, uncrossing his arms and holding them up in surrender. "Okay, okay, you caught me, Ev. I may have been around for... other reasons. But nothing that a kid like you needs to know." He ruffles my hair in a show of good faith, almost knocking the pen out of it, something that would usually cause me to slap his hand away as it can take me to highsun some days to get my hair looking just right. But, I let him this time, so that he doesn't question me any further about where I was and what I was doing. Because I am almost positive that what I was doing was a lot more rebellious than whatever wall he tagged tonight. 

"You know I'm not a kid anymore. A Left would remark on how 'you have only been here for a couple more Earthly revolutions around the gas giant in the sky'," I say, using the mocking tone we Rights always use when mimicking the Lefts.

"Yeah, well we don't care what a Left would say, now do we!" He says this louder than I felt he needed to. But I'm used to my brother's antics at this point, used to him pretending to be tougher than he is, so I ignore the way his eyes seem to flit nervously around the quiet street we're standing in. I look past him at the horizon where I can see the sun finally being engulfed for the night by the clouds, our long blue shadows disappearing, blending into the darkness around us. 

"Come on now, Mase," I step around him, my legs filling with energy and pumping themselves into a jog. "You're right about one thing!" I call back to him, "Mom probably is worried sick."

"Only one, Ev?" He calls back to me, sprinting to catch up then slowing and settling into step beside me. "Please. I'm always Right." 

As he laughs at his own joke, one that he's used many, many times before, the sound echoes through the air, lighting up the atmosphere around us like it's a candle in a dark room. I smile as I jog beside him, knowing that here I am safe. My hands are itching to add some phrases and words I had thought up while talking to him, wanting to capture them before they went away, but I can't stop with Mason jogging beside me. So instead, I imagine the words bleeding out of the pen tucked behind my ear, the ink running down my face, and to the ground where it trails behind me, spelling words no one on this side of Carris would be able to read. As we continue to jog, the words continue to bubble and overflow out of the pen, leaving marks on my skin. I imagine it so clearly I can feel the stickiness under my feet as I wade through the river of ink, smell the sharp metallic scent in the air, and hear the words I will now never remember fall onto the floor with a thick splat. 

I shake my head to rid me of that image for even the thought of it brings me pain. 

"Goodnight, goodnight, parting is such sweet sorrow," I whisper to the words I am leaving behind.

"What was that?" Mason asks me, turning to look at me as we continue to jog down the street. I had forgotten for a moment that he could hear me, that he was right next to me. I briefly wonder what would happen if he looked behind us right now. Would he see the thick black liquid that streamed from the pen, the one I imagined but had felt so vivid, so real? Or was it really just in my head? 

"Nothing, nothing... hey! Right before you found me, I heard the most beautiful duet between two birds. I wanted to bring it back for Mom and Dad, but I didn't have any paper on me." We slow to a stop in front of our house. 

"Oh yeah? Was it... this perhaps?" With a dramatic flair, he takes some sheet music out of his pocket. Sure enough, it was the twisted melody that I had heard from the competing birds just a sun slip ago. "Always one step ahead of you. Wait!" He gasps, feigning surprise, "You know what this means, don't you?"

As I wrinkle my nose at him, knowing he's insinuating that he gets to talk to dad first for once, a door slams open, and a voice from inside yells at the both of us, "Now, I know I raised you with ears to hear music and fingers to paint. But I could've sworn I also raised you with eyes to see when the sun was setting and with feet to run you back here before leftlight. What is the meaning of this? Or did I forget to give you a brain and you thought your curfew was leftnight instead?"

"Sorry, ma'am," My brother and I chorus together, our heads hanging low in shame. I look up at my dear mother through my eyelashes, trying to see if I can catch the look on her face and gauge how mad at us she really is. 

"Don't you 'sorry, ma'am' me!" So seething... I sighed internally. I shouldn't have lost track of time. "Get your butts in here this moment! You are to do your chores first thing tomorrow at rightrise, and if I hear one 'but mom' out of either of you, I'll have you skinned, bleached, stretched, and hung up on the easel."

Walking up the steps and through the door Mom is holding open, I chance a glance over at Mason to see if he was thinking the same thing I was. Honestly, it wasn't her scariest threat. She didn't even mention attaching our heartstrings to her violin this time. He was looking over at me, his eyebrows raised slightly, and slowly the dimple in his cheek becomes pronounced as he smirks at me. Right as we pass my mom, he switches his movement to face her and wraps her shorter form in a big hug, muttering an "I love you!" into her hair, knowing it will melt her. As expected, Mom pushes him off of her, chuckling slightly, and slaps him on the shoulder good-naturedly. 

"You two are lucky we're seeing your father tomorrow and I'm in a good mood." She looks past Mason and over at me, taking in my appearance. I find myself sucking in a breath, fighting the urge to pull my hair out from behind my ear to cover more of my face, knowing that the ink I still feel isn't actually there but dying to dive in front of a mirror to check just in case. As her gaze washes over me, taking in my grass-stained jeans, I feel the list of words in my pocket burning. My hand urges to move again, but this time to write down the phrase "white-hot" before I forget it.

"Evelyn, honey. Are you all right, you look flushed," Mom questions concernedly, stepping around Mason and placing a cool, loving hand on my forehead. I lean into this touch. Her fingers are callused like my own, but because of her skill with a guitar, not with tools. Still, the back of her hand is soft, weathered, and the silky skin there resting against my head feels comforting. I am once again reminded that I am safe. 

Moving her hand gently from my face, I look her right in the eyes and smile, trying to calm the blood rushing to my cheeks and the hammering in my chest as I wonder if the list had crept its way up on the jog over and was now poking slightly out of my pocket. "Yes, Mom. Don't worry so much. We were, like, a sun slip away and ran all the way back here. Just a little tired out from the effort."

"Ah, so you were together at least?" She shifted her gaze between the two of us. Mason and I quickly turn to each other, passing an understanding nod between us as Mom's line of sight was turned to the other person. 

"Oh absolutely," I say, moving my head up and down so fast, the pen falls out of it and I have to make a lunging move to catch it midair. 

"Yeah you know us," Mason says, quickly coming beside me and putting an arm around my shoulders, squeezing me tightly. "There's nowhere else we would rather be than with each other." I laugh nervously at this and look up at Mom, wondering if she bought it. 

She narrows her eyes at us, untrusting but too tired to fight. "All right... we'll see about this at rightrise. You two get some sleep and for heaven's sake, whatever trouble you're getting into, please at least don't let it be tracked back here." She turns and heads upstairs to her room at this, thankfully, since I can feel my cheeks heating up again. As soon as I hear the door close, I shrug off Mason's arm, which was still awkwardly around my shoulders, retuck the pen behind my ear, and turn to face him fully.

"Okay out with it," I say, crossing my arms and puffing my chest like he had done when he first found me not even a full shadow change ago. "You're never that easy to convince to lie to Mom. What were you doing that was so rebellious that it was worth pretending you like to spend time with me?"

"Wow, Ev!" He gasps, clutching his heart as if I had just stabbed him, acting as though he was would bleed out right there in the entrance to the house if he removed his hand from his chest. "A fatal blow! I think I'm dying! Of course, I love spending time with you, there was no lie there, little sister."

"Mason..." I say, warningly. It really isn't like him to cover for me like that, without any hesitation or at least a promise of compensation. No matter how much he loves me, he holds my mom at a pedestal so high, I doubt he can even see it anymore. And I get it. I do too. "I know I didn't grill you back then but I figured you were just tagging another building, or something equally as harmless. But if it was bad enough for you to not even think twice about keeping it from Mom..."

"Well, I could ask the same thing of you," He responds, pointedly.  As I begin to voice my objections, he cuts me off, "But I won't. And I hope you'll follow my lead on this one and stop asking me. I told you, Evelyn," He continues, his smirk gone. He suddenly looks older, more serious. He raises his eyebrows at me and smiles softly as he ruffles up my hair again, "It's nothing that a kid like you needs to know." Before I have the chance to react and slap the offending hand away from my head, he too turns and heads up the stairs to his own room.

I now stand alone at the entrance of the house. The candle that my mom must have lit when leftlight started was slowly burning out. Though we are here, tired and ready for bed, the Lefts were wide awake, their surely unblinking eyes staring at the screens in front of them as they typed in their numbers and facts and... words. My left-hand goes to feel for the pen tucked behind my ear that had been jostled again after Mason ruffled my hair. My right-hand goes to my jeans pocket to see if my secret list was still tucked in there. The corner of the paper pokes my finger and once again I am overcome with this image of the ink bleeding onto me, staining me, marking me as literate, as a betrayer to the Right Mantra. 

Bringing my hand up to my face, I inspect it as much as I can, trying to see if, somehow, just by looking at me, you could see that I've changed. But I see the same ridges in my hands that have always been there, the same roughness that proves these hands have built and worked.

I turn my head to the right to see the family portrait Mason had painted a couple of revolutions back. My mother is smiling, her chestnut hair shorter back then, but the same thickness. The brushstrokes my brother used for this picture captured its volume and shine perfectly. Her kind hazel eyes stare back at me, and though she was a bit thinner at that time, her wide smile hasn't changed in the slightest, still showcasing the same dimples that are on Mason's face. She holds the bow for her string instruments in her hand.

It is clear Mason took after her, his wavy hazelnut hair the same shade and style as Mom's falls into his eyes in the painting. He told us once he thought his eyes were boring. Ergo, he used a dull brown color to fill in the spaces where his eyes were that, even in a painting, his hair could not cover. But, in real life, Mason's eyes are creamy chocolate, exactly like my father's. He is tanner now than he was back then, grew into himself as he settled into adulthood. He has some paint smeared across his fingers and sprinkled across his clothes as if he had just finished painting something exciting. 

My father sits in the center, and it is because of that that we haven't taken down the painting even though we've been through many seasons now and we are due for a change. Because he is there. His strawberry blonde hair is clean-cut and out of his eyes, contrasting with the cut Mason has. Mason was able to include every smile line in Dad's face, around his eyes, his lips, his forehead. He was always laughing and always knew how to make us laugh. He has a clear night's sky of freckles across his nose and cheekbones, faint with age. In one hand, he holds my mother's hand; in the other, he seems to be fiddling with a trumpet mouthpiece. This is how I always remember him, handling his two most cherished things: His music and our mother. 

My eyes slowly look over at my own image. Like Mason took after my mom, I was a spitting image of my dad. The same freckles dusted over my face, centering around my nose and spreading from ear to ear. I hadn't grown out of my bangs yet, my strawberry blonde hair pushed roughly out of my hazel eyes. Mason used to tease me that I would always do that because I couldn't see... and he was right. I didn't want anything to be in my way, obstructing me from seeing the world because the world was beautiful and I wanted to take it all in at once. There was a triumphant look in my eyes, my smile wide and proud, my fist curled tightly around a wrench. The look of a true Right. 

I stare at this image of me, unable to shake that feeling. That was the last time I was a true Right. It wasn't long after Mason finished the painting that I found the first textbook, that I began to teach myself a skill that only the uptight, unimaginative Lefts should know. I stand in awe, thinking about how that girl was me... but she wasn't anything like the me looking at her now. The me who can't even keep the small promise her mother just had her make. The me who has been bringing the trouble back home for revolutions now and doesn't seem to know how to stop. 

I take a step forward and gently touch my father's face, feeling the way the material bends to accept the pressure of my finger, the way the paint strains against the canvas to touch me back. I breathe in and out deeply, then smile. "See you tomorrow, Dad. Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I should say goodnight till it be morrow."