FICTION: What if Sailor Mercury moved in with you?
{image description: Sailor Mercury moodboard. A square-shaped grid of nine aqua-blue-tinged photographs. In the middle, an illustration of Sailor Mercury seen from the elbows up. She has shaggy blue hair, wide blue eyes, pale skin, and she’s wearing her Sailor Scout uniform: white short-sleeved top with blue collar, and a pale blue large bow on her chest with a round crystal in the middle. She’s holding up her white-gloved hand and forming a peace sign. Background is white.
From top-left to bottom-right, the other images show: 1. Messy stacks of softcover notebooks with Japanese labels on the covers, which are made of navy blue and blue floral paper. 2. Clusters of tiny aquamarines like the ones inside a fishbowl. 3. Close-up a chunky-knit sweater in greyish-blue. The person wearing it, whose face and body are unseen, holds a white cappuccino mug near their heart. 4. Neon light in a dark window that forms the shape of a blue rose. 5. Silhouette of a mermaid swimming undersea, one arm extended long in front, one stretched back. 6. The top of a cocktail glass, with an aquamarine drink, ice cubes, and a white plastic straw. 7. Two pale hands reaching toward one another underwater. 8. Two rows of a bookshelf, lined with hardcover books with golden titles written on the spines. Each book is a shade of deep sea blue, from pale seafoam to dark depths.}
Sailor Mercury was a TV character in my childhood, and then she became a friend of mine. Her catch-phrase, “I can’t. I have to go to cram school,” made me giggle when I re-watched Sailor Moon as an adult. I wasn’t outgoing like her friends on the show, and I wanted to go to cram school with her. Study together in silence.
During the pandemic, I hardly went outside. I ordered groceries delivered to my apartment, and I organized them neat and tidy. Dried foods went into Tupperware containers so they wouldn’t become infested with moths and cockroaches. There were slow and steady routines. I was accustomed to a quiet, solitary life, but worrying about inhaling a deadly illness from a stranger on the street was new to me.
The first time we met was inside a dream. I ran my fingers through her deep turquoise hair. It was soft like a doll’s with a shiver of static, leftover from TV, as if transmitted to the dreamscape. She had a three-dimensional body like mine, rather than the flat illustrated shape I was used to watching her in, but her limbs were longer, head bigger. Her lips were full and semi-glossy. She wore a nightgown with a blue bow, a dark aqua heart-shaped talisman in the middle. She was closer to my age. Her eyes were wide, expressive, glittering. She smelled like sea salt and candy-flavoured lip balm. As she blinked, I noticed how long and thick her lashes were.
We were lying side-by-side.
“Listen to this,” she said.
She passed me a conch shell, which seemed to have been hidden behind her pillow. The shell was cool to the touch, pale peach, gently poking my fingertips. Where it opened, the inside was like pearl porcelain with the most subtle mauve waves imprinted. I noticed Sailor Mercury’s nails were painted to match her irises. Her nails were long, round, natural. I remembered how when I was a kid, I had a set of Sailor Moon stationery, and I was afraid to write on the Sailor Mercury sheets. I didn’t want to ruin them.
I held the conch shell to my ear. A rush of waves, water, the salt water of her skin and hair, the secret lives of everything under the sea, the mist at the shore, the bubbling foam, damp sand between my toes. As I held the shell, Sailor Mercury reached out to hold my hands in hers. Like her limbs, her fingers were longer than mine, and smoother. Palms softer.
When I woke up, she was still there. I didn’t question it. I’d dreamed her into being, and now she was in my bed. Wearing her robin’s egg eyelet lace nightgown with the deep sea bow and heart-shaped charm, her cheek pressed to the pillow. She peered at me through narrowed, sleepy eyes and blushed. I noticed a gentle smattering of pale freckles on her cheeks, right where they’d grow round and glow when she smiled.
I didn’t run my fingers through her hair like I had in my dream. Instead, I reached for the glasses on my bedside table, slipped them on, and focused my eyes to make sure she was still there.
As I stood up, I noticed luggage at what would become her side of the bed. A pastel seafoam green suitcase on small wheels, shaped like a seashell, snapped shut with a pink bejewelled lock.
In the kitchen, I filled the kettle and turned up the burner, a small flame aflicker. Poured fresh coffee grounds into the French press. Sailor Mercury was still in my bed. I wondered if she would drink coffee.
I wondered if she would drink anything. Would she eat? Sailor Mercury was a cartoon. Did she have a stomach, did she have lungs? Or was her body more like that of a doll?
I decided to make coffee for her just in case.
Soon, it became more apparent that she wasn’t a dream, wasn’t an apparition. She was my new roommate. She drank coffee with me every morning, but only half as much as me. She liked hamburgers and ice cream cones. She unpacked her luggage. Outfits from her pastel crystal world, a stack of books that seemed too big to fit inside the suitcase, pen and pencils and notebooks of her own, packets of candy, a wand, a map of the city. She wore round glasses with a small chain so she wouldn’t lose them. Pastel blouses tucked into pleated skirts, pens clipped to the pocket, stockings that didn’t rip, knee socks with little animal ears made of tiny fuzzy triangles.
When she went outside, she wore a mask with a pink kitten nose and gentle smile, thin whiskers, and bright blue rainboots. She brought her map and a Polaroid camera. When she came back — came home? — she’d have new photos to show me. It was the city I knew, but the alleyways, the horizons, the details, all were transformed to the shades and tones of Sailor Mercury’s soft, hazy, illustrated world. I cleared a desk drawer for her, and a corner of my closet. Her clothes never got dirty, but she came with me to the laundromat to keep me company. I wore a mask at the laundromat, leopard print, and rotated a small series of similar outfits the way she did: black t-shirts, black skirts, violet knee socks, denim shorts over lace stockings, floral Doc’s. We read side-by-side on the wooden bench as my clothes tumbled dry. Sometimes our knees touched.
❤
Read more!
