Tired, grey eyes eased themselves off the coarse, dry page which was full of mathematical formulae and graphs, entwined together in a puzzle which was silently mocking her incompetence.

The air lay still and silent, asleep on the desk. With each breath an invisible sleepy puff glided over her book, clouding the page so that the numbers began to resemble a stew of bubbling shapes and symbols. She certainly didn't want to tuck in.

Noisy footsteps broke her morose stare, fixed on the colourless binding of a book on the shelf directly ahead of her. Reading the maths book would be futile; it was unrecognisable under the air's sleepy breath. She allowed her lips to lazily droop apart, freeing a sigh which floated and stumbled through the air's hair (for it was still sleeping soundly near her book).

Turning her head to the left, her straight gaze met a serene painting of a woman dressed in floating white curtains, held together with a brooch, almost certainly hacked from the sea-blue eye of a kind dragon. The woman's hair was white and clean, pinned behind her head in such a manner as to show her crinkled eye-bags and her disapproving nose which flared down at her from its great height. Her eyes were not brown, yet not quite coal black; the paint strokes created a haze around them which made the girl squint upwards to try and focus on them.

She poked her head around the side of the bookshelf, checking to see whether the librarian was sitting at her desk (which she luckily was not), and quietly pushed her chair back with her cramped feet. She leant forward and pushed herself up; her body smoothly peeled away from the chair, leaving an imprint of her back and thighs which were slowly stretching and murmuring, having been still for so long. Standing, she held the stiff back of the chair with her left hand and gingerly placed her foot on the seat, then jumped a little to land her other foot on the desk, taking care not to wake the air (which was still dozing).

She could see the woman much better now. Her dark eyebrows contrasted with her pale face, and her dainty veined hands lay quietly, glued together on her lap.

“I'm awfully sorry,” the girl whispered. “I haven't introduced myself. My name is,” she paused, trying to think of a name which would impress the serene old goat looking out above her left shoulder, “Victoria-Margaret-Anne-Petunia Darcy.” She held out her steady hand and shook an imagined outstretched arm calmly, smiling into the misty eyes which refused to meet her own.

At this point, I must tell you that this girl was no ordinary girl. She had a mind which wandered and tunnelled into questions which were left alone by other girls her age; she never needed much company and didn't take pleasure in shopping for short dresses or dancing with smelly, sweaty boys in a tight embrace. She was unsure what she enjoyed doing, but always knew when she was enjoying herself, and right then, in that second when she was alone with her painting, she was enjoying herself.

Suddenly, the air awoke. It stretched its arms above its head and ran its fingers through its hair, dispelling the girl's sigh which was still winding itself around the blonde curly locks. It stretched its mouth into a yawn, sending warm air onto the bottom corner of the painting. The yawn travelled up around the side, onto the wall, dislodging a small piece of yellowed paper which fell to the bottom and remained there, trapped, one half behind the frame, the other poking out rudely. The girl's gaze slipped away quietly from the woman's dress (which now didn't look anything like curtains) and she felt a rustling about her ankles.

“I must have woken him up,” she murmured, and apologised to the air which shook its hand at her playfully, and sauntered away through the bookcase, out past the glass windows into the shining light outside. She dropped to her knees carefully, and looked to the place where she had felt the breeze. Lowering her eyes to the bottom of the frame, she suddenly saw the small slip of paper.

“Oh my,” she whispered, and began to tweak it out from behind the painting. The half of the paper which remained loose slowly became bigger and bigger, until the girl was holding the full strip in her shaking hand. Turning it over, she saw some black marks which were slanted horizontally. She tried to read them, but it was far too dark, and they spiralled so tightly together that it was impossible. Holding her breath tightly, she held it up to the light, and squinted her eyes together.

“Oh my,” she gasped. Her face slackened and her breath fluttered out in front of her. On the piece of paper was written, “The answer is 5.”

Quickly jumping down from the table, she brushed away the air's breath which clouded her maths book and laid the piece of paper by the question. Now, have you ever heard a clock re-winding itself, when all the tiny clogs inside whir and cluck happily together like an orchestra? I have, and the sound of that girl thinking sounded more beautiful than that. A tinkling bell slowly started to ring, and the numbers on the page lifted into the air and broke hands with each other. The girl lifted her hands, and started to move the numbers around; those blazing golden numbers which were now calmly moving to where she placed them, until, finally, the ‘equal' sign linked to the number 5.

“Lara? What are you doing?” the librarian asked quickly, seeing the girl standing straight, her mouth slightly open. “I brought you another maths revision guide, as you asked.”

“Oh no,” Lara said quietly, “somebody helped me to solve the problem. Thank you.”

Hope in the Sky | By Marie

The Chinese city of Beijing lay sprawling across its motherland, creeping over the horizon like a steadily increasing virus that fed off the earth. It was the time and age where you could no longer observe the metallic suburbia from the sky due to the smog that hung over it. It was thick and expansive, almost completely opaque and immovable. It was the evidence that was scarred onto the planet's surface which proved the humans to be detrimental to its home.

A boy leaned over a short wired fence, singing to himself in Putonghua as he watched his thick, yellow environment shimmer in the heat waves:

Little Swallow,

Wearing a flower coat,

Flies here every spring.

I ask the Swallow,

‘Why do you come?'

The Swallow replies,

‘The Spring here

is the most...'

His finger played on a red wind spinner, “ ‘Beautiful.' ” A bitter smirk folded itself onto his mouth. “Little Swallow, I tell you, this year it is even more beautiful.” He gazed into the distance at the funnels of smoke that rose into the air. “We've built yet another factory. Another that will welcome you home.” He played with the strings of his kite that was in red, white and black, colours that were reminiscent of the bird.

He laughed, but froze as he heard the rooftop door creak open, its rusty joints whining in complaint.

“How nostalgic,” he heard a voice behind him. “I haven't heard that song in a while.” As he whipped around, the other boy of about his age took another step towards him.

“What do you want?” The first boy studied this outsider, one who was clothed in Western fashion, much unlike his own traditional stiff-collared silk-cotton blend of a Chinese shirt and mid-length trousers. “The show isn't starting until dark.”

“I'm Kai,” the newcomer motioned towards himself, an uneasy smile forming as he was unsure of how to approach the situation. “You know, I've had a hard time finding you.”

“Sen,” the first boy replied simply, looking up to the sky. “How did you find me?”

“Well, nobody knew what I was talking about when I said, ‘the ones that light the sky',” the boy replied, scratching a spot behind his left ear, “but then I found out the name they gave you, ‘The Kites'?”

Sen smiled, looking down at his makeshift swallow.

“They said,” Kai looked up at the other boy once again, “ ‘Look for the boy with the swallow kite.' ”

“Here I am,” Sen shrugged. “What do you want from me? And quickly. I need to prepare.”

“There is no wind.” Kai squinted in confusion, his brow furrowed.

“There will be,” the strange child replied simply, and the wind spinner slowly began turning as it caught the breeze. “Carry on.”

“Um,” Kai frowned, “I heard that you were in need of funding, what with needing to build and repair. I just brought something.” He quickly withdrew a scarlet envelope, slipping it into the kite owner's hands.

Sen frowned as he slit the envelope open and teased out a stack of red bills, “Who is this from?”

“A little princess,” Kai smiled, casting his gaze downwards, “my sister. She wanted–”

“How do you have a sister?” Sen interrupted sharply. “What about the One Child Policy?”

“My father's a politician,” Kai shrugged. “He gets away with it.”

Sen packed the notes back into the packet and pressed it against this newcomer's chest. “I don't want stolen money.”

“Hey,” a sharp tone burst forward from this boy's mouth. “Do not confuse me with my father.” His voice softened once more, “Mei-Mei wanted me to find the people who put the light back in the sky, and say,” he swallowed slowly, “thank you.” He held the envelope forward once more, which the recluse took, a smile starting to spread across his face as he pocketed it.

“Well, then, son-of-a-politician,” he looked up to study the sky, a dark mass which held no glimmer of the glistening distant masses, “the show is about to begin.”

Sen bent down, shielding his actions from the world before he quickly cast his kite in the air, its string spiralling upwards with golden beads of light fastened. Strings of more lights branched off it, swirling and dancing in the wind.

“One down,” he muttered, “nine to go.” He then repeated the action with nine more kites that were duplicates of his original one, fastening them to the top of the rusty iron poles that supported the fence.

Kai leaned on the wire, watching similar beads of light pirouette from the tops of other decrepit buildings. “They really are like stars. Why do you do this?”

“Because,” Sen sighed, “this is what they need. This is hope and optimism. This is what the Olympics were meant to be about, those few years ago. There need to be stars in the sky, even if we have to put them there.”

“When do you sleep?” Kai frowned once again.

“All day,” Sen chuckled, withdrawing a pastry swaddled in a napkin.

“But,” Kai began, scratching the aforementioned spot behind his ear once more, “what about school? Your parents?”

Sen gave his bitter bark of a laugh once more, “Nobody cares, Kai.” He bit into the gluey bun that emanated the scent of black sesame. “Nobody cares about school, or what we do.”

“Aren't your parents proud of you?”

“My father says that I am stupid to hold such beliefs.” The boy spoke of his father, and how he had been brainwashed by the communist era and his own parents. “He says that I should work in the factory, like him, when I am eighteen.”

“What about your mother?”

Sen froze once more before swallowing his mouthful and stuffing the remainder of his food back into his silk pocket. “She left us a long time ago,” he held the wind spinner still, pinching its thin plastic leaf between two fingers, “for a land where the sky is full of stars.”

Others | By Alice