It was a beautiful and horrible spring afternoon when Jasper Roux had her first psychic vision. The sun was white-hot, and the breeze floating through her open bedroom window carried in the scent of jasmines and wisteria in full bloom.

It seemed a perfectly pleasant day, but as Jasper stood in front of her full-length mirror, combing the tangles out of her long ink-black hair and smoothing the wrinkles out of her middle school graduation gown, she suddenly collapsed. She fell backwards onto her bed, and her body convulsed, perhaps ten times, perhaps twelve. Her eyelashes fluttered involuntarily. And that's when she saw it.

Her father, Isaac Roux. His straight-spined stance and the half-windsor knot of his tie lent him a distinguished air, in spite of the fact that his beige suit appeared to be one size too small and clearly made of polyester. He was inside the Amusez-vous Bien, the restaurant where he had made reservations for Jasper’s graduation dinner. She had never dined there before, but it was the fanciest eatery in the neighborhood, possibly even the fanciest in the entire Bronx borough.

Knowing this, Isaac had been saving up for months to be able to take his daughter there on this occasion. Glittering chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, tables dressed with lace, and happy faces lit by candles set what, at first, appeared to be a scene so attractive, it made reasonable the idea of spending a week’s salary on an appetizer alone.

In the vision, Isaac was standing near one of these lace-dressed tables, but he did not look happy, as Jasper expected he would. Instead, his eyes burned with anger and his lips trembled with fear. It was an expression Jasper had never seen on her father’s face before, and soon she saw the cause of it: a pistol entered her field of sight, inching closer to Isaac. Her vision went black after that, but her ears were assaulted by the unmistakable sound of a gunshot.

#YA #superhero #novel

The trees don't know that we're locked inside

The sun hasn't heard that we're forced to hide

Clueless are the flowers whose eyes see no smiles

As leaves gather in undisturbed, unmoving piles

The beach wonders why it has become a vacated place

The sky questions why so few now gaze upon its face

But nature remains patient, and nature remains strong

Somehow, it senses we'll soon be back where we belong

A time will come when we'll return to run, skip, and play

A time will surely come, even if it is not today

With a soft breeze against our skin and our feet on the earth

And maybe then we'll treasure, even more, nature's worth

#nature #coronavirus #covid19 #reopening #hope