Felicia and Georgia, Family Business

More about Felicia and Georgia, Family Business

They were sisters.

Felicia was black as midnight after it had forgotten where it left the moon.

Georgia was white enough to make clouds wonder if they had dressed too heavily.

They were not the fastest,
nor the most lethal.

There were cheetahs that outran yesterday.
Lions that could silence an afternoon with one yawn.

Felicia and Georgia didn’t compete.

They simply arrived.

The savannah would stop chewing its grass for a moment.

Even the wind slowed down, pretending it had somewhere else to be.

Beauty was their family business.

Not the expensive kind sold in magazines.

The ordinary kind that happened when one sister brushed a burr from the other’s shoulder without saying anything.

The kind that made old elephants remember being young.

The kind that convinced lonely vultures there might be another profession.

People traveled impossible distances just to watch them walk together.

They expected miracles.

Instead they found two sisters sharing the same patch of shade, trading stories no one else could hear.

It turned out that was miracle enough.

The newspapers of the savannah were gossiping birds.

Every morning they announced:

“Felicia and Georgia seen near the river.”

As if the river had become more important by reflecting them.

Perhaps it had.

Years later no one could remember how many antelope they had frightened, or how many sunsets they had crossed.

But everyone remembered that when one sister looked at the moon, the other looked at her.

That was the family business.

The moon paid nothing.

The memories paid forever.