Carus
an excerpt

It was a dark and stormy afternoon, but the woman at the baggage carousel did not care. She also did not care that she was collecting stares from the people around her—after all, it was to be expected. If you were going to wait around at the baggage claim area of an airport dressed in a glittering black evening gown, complete with strappy black heels and matching jewelry, you were bound to get a few stares from the normals.

She smiled at that thought. She had had a friend, long ago, whose son called everyone bland, boring, or everyday a ‘normal.’ She could remember many a time when he would do something completely offbeat, just to ‘make the normals stare.’

The baggage carousel started its slow, stately turning with a tired grinding of gears. The people near the other carousels looked over, nervously checking the blinking signs above their own areas to make sure they were in the right place. Why was the empty one—the one with no flights listed, no people standing and waiting—turning, when their own stubbornly refused to move?

The hanging flap at the disgorging end of the carousel was displaced as a brown paper wrapped box, roughly the size and shape of a shoebox, came from the bowels of the luggage area. She stood, watching it approach, until it reached her. The machine shuddered to a halt, causing a few more people at the other carousels to look over, frowning.

She stood and looked at the box for a moment before bending gracefully to pick it up. There was no writing anywhere on it, just that smooth brown paper, slightly wrinkled at one corner, but it was obviously meant for her. Tucking it under her arm, she turned and strode down the long hallway toward the underground parking, ignoring the intrusive stares of the normals as she went by.