Hope: Verse 1

Being twelve. Being a girl. Being a genius. Being beautiful. Being Black.

None of those words meant what they said.

Hope James was all of them.

Down a small path, up a tall hill there's a tree... The Ancient, her mother called it. Under the early light of dawn, the stately oak looked more like a skyscraper.

"Ancient Skyscraper hardly makes any sense, Langston."

Walking beside Hope to the tree, just far enough so her backpack straps wouldn't bounce off his nose, was her 89 1/3 (not even 90) pound blood hound, Langston Love James.

Hope walked to one of the two worn out patches of grass under The Ancient, took off her backpack, removed the blue rolled up yoga mat from it, unhinged the Velcro strap, and placed it to fit perfectly over the worn out patch.

Langston spun around three times on the other patch, laid down, and watched Hope.

Hair was the first thing you noticed about Hope. Big. Bushy. Bold. Perfectly parted down the middle. Done up like two overgrown Christmas baskets with a million mahogany and gold ribbons flying out.

"Today's the day, Langston."

Exactly 24 and a half days ago disaster struck.

Like all geniuses Hope had one great goal. Hers was to prove a Grand Unified Theory to the Universe. "One Law to rule them all. Hope's G.U.T.," her brother Finn called it.

What disaster happened to get in her way?

Hope solved it.

A verifiable scientific theorem unifying all the Laws of Science.

But even with this proof, something was missing. The something making everything move.

Where did Life come from?

What made Science work?

Textbooks and AI models were of no help.

She'd exhausted and disproved most anyhow.

Plainly put: Hope ran out of Science.

Literally.

As the question dealt specifically with Creation itself, Hope did something 24 and a half days ago she never thought she would.

She turned to religion.

As Buddhism was the most practical of Faiths, and Enlightenment sounded useful, we find Hope now sitting zazen (a perfect one of course) under the oak tree (no suitable bodhi trees in Massachusetts).

It took Siddhartha 49 straight days of meditation to reach Enlightenment. With thousands of years of scientific advancements, not to mention a working Grand Unified Theory of The Universe, Hope would reach it in half the time sat zazen during the optimal hours of sunrise.

She checked the dawn, looked at Langston, gave two nods of her baskets, and smiled, "Here goes Nothing, Langston."

And with that, Hope shut her eyes.

Hope walked through the swinging door of consciousness into The Other Place.

The scene was the same. There was an old stone fountain in the center of a completely black space. From the fountain shot up a beautiful array of lights shaped like a dandelion.

Like a shower of rainbow rain from below each color of light joined in to build the flower.

Red was first drawing the contours. It gave way for Yellow, showing Orange where they met.

Blue rippled and shone a shimmer as it met Yellow at the base to merge and make the Green stem.

Hope sat in front of the fountain, knowing today, at last, the color show would finish the dandelion.

Every time before when blue met red... well it didn't.

Some grey static showed, fizzled out the attempt, and the rest of the lights dimmed, never finishing the flower.

Today though, The Genius knew, was the right day to show whatever Enlightenment brings.

"The Blue must overcome that Grey," was Hope's Hypothesis and what she waited and watched to see.

She sat on the floor that wasn't a floor. Red began its climb and the whole Other Place glowed to match its ember.

Yellow zipped next making Orange waves in its wake.

Here was Blue weaving through the contours of the stem, like a neon light color show in the depths of Space.

Blue reached the bulb and touched Red!

Purple, at last!

Now with every color of the spectrum a clear portrait of the dandelion hovered and lit up The Other Place.

Suddenly, the bulb burst like all the seasons happened in seconds and the flower turned to parachute seeds of neon glow that whirled and wisped around the fountain.

The mostly Blue bristles floated towards Hope, circled around her and her whole being shone a turquoise shine.

She clapped and Blue sparks leapt from her hands.

Then, The Other Place while filled with thousands of every color dandelion shoots, coughed.

The floor that wasn't a floor quaked. The stone fountain cracked and out of the air that wasn't air static formed.

Grey! everywhere like heavy rain clouds that drop from the sky and land on you and smother engulfed Hope.

She shifted and shouted. No!

Then Hope remembered her hands.

She clapped. Blue light cut through the Grey cloud.

She took a breath, stood, climbed to the top edge of the fountain and clapped and clapped and clapped.

Blue light from Hope's hands cut through the Grey static.

When the Grey turned Blue something new was made, something wonderful.

The dandelion now free of the static was surrounded in a Blue protective shield.

Hope sat back down and watched.

"But what does it mean?" Hope asked her favorite question.

That Grey was a corrosive force, color cured it, color made the picture of the dandelion clear.

As Hope drew her Genius conclusions, The Other Place coughed and spasmed again.

This time a dark Grey cloud nearly the size of The Other Place itself descended.

She stood and clapped.

Her Blue light fizzled and died in the static.

Again Hope clapped.

Again fizzled.

Again clapped.

Again died.

The cloud was above her now. She clapped and clapped and stomped. Every attempt at light to end that dark static didn't.

She took a breath, headed for the swinging door to get free and wake back up. The cloud blurred her image and knocked her down.

A roar from the swinging door sent a fire of pure crystal light like a sunrise to light the whole Other Place clean.

Just before Hope woke up she saw the face of what sent the fire that saved her.

Awake and safe now, she hugged Langston, huffed a deep breath and told him, "Dragon, Langston, a dragon."

Hope's cellphone chimed. Her mother, Faith, sent the message: "Breakfast."

She looked at Langston, turned to face back the small path towards home, put on her backpack, lunged down like a relay racer at a starting line, leaned down lower, met Langston's eyes and said: "Downward Dog, Go!"

And The Hound Dog and The Genius raced home for breakfast.