Metaworld HopeCore

Sunday.

The new day dawned bright and happy, which somehow felt like an insult.

A whole chapter of her new life was over—LAPA, the drama block, the smell of the Playhouse in the hour before a rehearsal, Kirby’s classroom, McGregor’s fitting room, and now, Kiritani-sensei.

And now she missed the cats.

Mr Chin. Mrs Catch’em… and Lim, her tiger-sized Munkustrap. They had been her steadfast companions through it all.

Central Park remained indifferently beautiful. The sky sat blue as her eyes, and the trees scattered their pollen, teasing the city’s growing incidences of allergy. Rain, which was plentiful in late June, seemed utterly unenthused.

As expected, Kiritani’s exhibition was once more packed. It was ironic that those who had little interest in seeing him while he was alive were now fully passionate about his passing. Such, Eppie supposed, was the nature of consumers and artists.

Around the park, New York breathed.

A man in a traffic-cone-orange shirt ran the reservoir loop three times while she sat there, sweat spreading a little further each pass.

A woman set up an easel and painted the same stretch of elms, badly and happily, channelling Bob Ross.

Two boys lost a frisbee in the lake, then ran crying to their helpless parents, who promised to buy another.

A busker two benches down worked through something on a violin that made her [Perfect Pitch] wince.

A perfect Sunday, like Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. A painting the Met would love to host, were it not held in perpetuity by The Art Institute of Chicago.

“Potential.”