Old Stuff

Because (according to a report I saw lately) 60% of our town does not have power right now, and school has been cancelled, life has been pretty boring. Nothing fun to talk about at all.

In lieu of that (did you know "lieu" means "place" in French?), I have rummaged through my old Google docs and will now pull up some completed--and some incomplete--stories to pass the time and to also make it seem as though my life is very, very fascinating.

Well, okay. It kind of is. But not today, at the moment, and I could rant on about lots of stuff, but I'd rather use this time to go over my math packets and ensure myself a spot on the team. With ulterior purposes, of course, but also because I really want to go.

And besides, I have another story I'm working on, purely for the sake of explaining ASC a bit more.

Anyway. These are labeled as well as I could.

Salmonella--don't know why the title's as such

You're just jealous of my dazzle.--What Edward Cullen should say to Jacob Black.

Heart in a cage.

Cage on a tree.

Tree above a bird.

Bird with a song.

Song of a girl.

Girl from a story.

Story about a dream.

Dreaming of a heart. A blood red, tainted heart.

[A memory shattered and put back together.]

x.

You're in denial.

What is denial?

What you're doing right now.

Is it a bad thing?

Wouldn't you know?

I don't.

Like I say, denial.

Is it ignorance?

No. It's worse than that.

Is it stupidity?

Maybe. But not quite.

What is it then?

It's what you know.

You're not making any sense.

Listen to yourself.

I am.

Are you really?

Yes.

Then what are you saying?

What am I supposed to hear?

x.o.

The letters just flow.

You may call me a word addict. I'm addicted to typing whatever comes to mind. Beautiful words. Lonely words. Tragic words.

Words so pristine they rival the glaciers of Alaska.

I would be a poet, but I don't know how to rhyme. When I try, the rhythm and charm of the words themselves get lost. So I don't bother, not anymore. I leave my words to their natural melodies and I smile, because smiling is the easiest thing to do when I want to cry.

x.o.x.

Some nights I stare at the ceiling to my room and I wonder, what have I done?

I don't deserve everything I have. There are so many people--so many desperate people out there who deserve this so much more than I do. They have ambition. They have pains. They have dreams. They have hope. They have determination. They have all those virtues I don't have, and yet they don't have all that I have, and it's not fair, because they deserve this so much more, and I don't deserve any of this, not at all.

Some nights I crawl under my covers and I ask, what have I done?

I deserve so much more. So much more than this wretched feeling I always have. This despair. This complete loss of control. This instability. This harsh, cruel reality that destroys all of my dreams. Being second-rate, no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try. I don't want to deal with all of the stress and pain and disappointment.

Some nights I sit in my bed and I sing, sing out every sorrow and every tear and every word and I fall asleep, dreamless.

x.o.x.o.

"I'm still waiting for you to accept me as I am, waiting for you to understand my heart."

My heart stops when I see golden. I'm a superfluous girl. I am attracted to superficial things.

He never stood a chance, not without something golden. But I couldn't tell him that, because that would only reveal how extravagant I really am.

I blame only myself for every mistake both of us make.

x.o.x.o.x.

Sky and high go together, just like chocolate and vanilla, just like autumn and blue, just like pain and air, just like feathers and rocks.

Sky and high just go together, no reasons, no defenses.

Wings were meant to soar through the skies, reaching each blue corner until they paled into vast stretches of grayish white. Meant to reach the highest heights.

Many a legend speak of angels, magnificent, stoic creatures, reigning in the world humans cannot reach. Many a legend speak of fallen angels, torn from their glory and thrust into reality.

What non-angel has made it up to the skies?

Are they forbidden lands--places full of promising mirages and cold shadows?

x.o.x.o.x.o.

What am I supposed to hear?

Everything you have told yourself to not hear.

The... siren's song?

Perhaps.

What else is there?

Look deeper.

Where? How?

You know the answers.

But I don't even know where to begin.

You do. It's the denial.

What is this denial?

What do you hear?

I don't understand.

What do you hear?

What do you hear?

My heart.

x.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a bird of ordinary proportions. Its feathers were dull, its eyes glossed over, and it had an air of common peasantry, not befitting such a land which was filled with striking and magnificent birds of all sorts and types.

But every sunset, the bird would sing--a melodious, tragic song--a song which brought tears to young girls' eyes and solemnity to young boys' manners. A song which brought sighs to mothers and frowns to fathers and shivers to those who trekked through empty fields alone. Every sunset, the bird would sing the most pitiful, beautiful song the land has ever heard.

Such a bird could never be free. Free birds do not sing such songs.

And it was so that the bird was locked up in a cage, a golden cage not befitting the bird's ordinary appearance and not befitting the bird's heavenly hymn. A cage hung on the highest branch of the pomegranate tree--the pomegranate tree which had not blossomed in years.

Yet, even if the bird was not locked up in this golden cage, it was not free. The bird mourned for a girl, a girl with a smile as bright and warm as the last rays of the summer sun, and hidden beneath that mask of sunshine a heart of cracked glass. She was a girl of clichés, one easily ignored and forgotten, for there are many, many girls out there just like her, with fake smiles and practiced voices that even the land itself had forgotten what genuine happiness meant.

But the girl had known the bird, and the bird knew girl. And when the girl disappeared, the bird mourned for the girl and sang a song every sunset time to fill the consuming void. So the land heard its song, and it kept the bird in a golden cage on the highest branch of the withering pomegranate tree, but it was just as well, for the bird had locked itself in a cage of misery well before it was held captive in the golden cage.

Of course, this would not be a fairy tale without a charming savior--a knight in shining armor. And just as the sleeping princess had her prince kiss her on the lips to wake her up from her toxic slumber, the bird had a knight of its own willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the bird's freedom.

It was a heart. A heart made of cracked glass and resounding with tragic beauty that only the bird could truly understand.

The heart had a wish--a wish to free the bird from its cage--and every wish came with a price.

On the fourth sunset the heart had spent with the bird, the bird sang until its voice cracked. The sun had already slipped below the horizon by then, and no one was left to pay attention to such a minor detail, but the heart heard. And the heart knew.

The next morning, at sunrise, the land heard the bird sing again, this time a song of guilt, of regrets, but most of all, of remembrance. Every day, at sunrise, the bird would sing, each day a different song, a song of magical lands and faraway places and beautiful, spectacular scenes, and every day, the heart would listen, and it would glow under the soft, newly risen sun. They would never forgive each other, but they accepted the other's choice.

There is no happily ever after, for both the bird and the heart had forgotten what genuine happiness meant, just like the land itself had, but there is an ever after--an ever after in which the bird would sit at the bottom of the tree every morning and sing to the heart, locked up in the golden cage on the highest branch of the withered pomegranate tree, and they would both listen until they could see themselves in a world where pomegranate trees and golden cages and reality did not exist.

[What hurts the most isn't the broken pieces--it's the cuts that keep coming back.]

Feathers of a Bird

    I opened my eyes, tasting pain in the air.

    This pain was tangible, with a distinct bittersweet flavor that could only be what it was. A pain that left no room for regrets. No room for indecision.

     I knew what it meant.

    No longer will the dreams be true.

    I had escaped reality for such a long time, I didn't even remember what it looked like. Reality. The word itself melded around my fingers, then slipped through the cracks, like wisps of mist on a blue autumn morning. Yet it always came back, haunting, because reality provided the substance, even if dreams provided the spirit.

    None of it mattered now.

    I could still taste pain in the air, and it will come back, time and time again, to re-enact my darkest nightmares.

    A little way over the stone bridges near the upper banks of the River, there sat a boy with fiery red hair and empty, empty eyes.

    I walked over to him, his name on my tongue but not on my mind. I knew him, I reminded myself, but I could not recall where I had seen him before. All I knew was that I had met this boy before, with his flaming red hair, but not with those eyes.

    Those eyes reminded me of someone else, but I couldn't remember this other person as well.

    "Hi," I called out, hoping to gain the boy's attention. "I'm sorry to bother you, but--"

    "Even if you're sorry, you'll still come and bother me, won't you?"

    I stared into those empty eyes, but he betrayed no emotion, not even in his voice.

    "If you're going to do it anyway, why are you sorry?"

    "I... I'm sorry because..."

    But I didn't know how to respond to that question. Why was I sorry?

    "Alas, it doesn't matter if you're sorry or not, because you're still going to bother me. So what is it, what do you want, or do I have to figure it out myself?"

    "I want to," I began, using my voice to calm my thoughts. "I want to know... who I am."

    "And you don't know that already?"

    "If I did, I wouldn't ask you, would I?"

    The boy ran his hand through his hair, just like... I didn't even want to think on. I wouldn't know who had sparked this new recognition.

    "Who are you? Why are you here? What do you want from this place? So fascinating, so fascinating, isn't it?"

    I heard his words, but I didn't listen. Vocalizing my thoughts had made me realize that I didn't know my own identity. Questions swarmed me, drowning me under their weight, and though I knew I had the answers somewhere, I also knew that I couldn't remember them. Not yet.

    "Do you know who I am?" I asked instead.

    "No, but you look like someone I used to know."

    And I finally saw something in those eyes, a spark of something that made them ever so more dull afterwards. Something I recognized, but could not name.

    Near the bakery at the corner of Bay Street and Shore Avenue, I saw two brothers, nearly identical to each other, walking along the sidewalk, each with a bag of bread in his hands.

    Their blue eyes locked into mine, and for a moment I could see another face--one with icy clear eyes that made everything else dull in comparison. But the image didn't last long, and soon I found myself staring into two pairs of eyes, intense and calculating.

    "Hello," said the one on the left. "Haven't seen you around."

    "Yes," the one on the right said. "Although she looks like... but that can't be."

    "Nothing's impossible, 'Rule!"

    "We thought that, didn't we, 'Res? And look what happened."

    I smiled at both of them. "Do you know who I am?"

    "It's definitely not her," Rule declared. "She doesn't smile.

    "Is that a trick question?" Res asked.

    "No," I said. "I just want to know who I am. I can't seem to remember anything about myself."

    "Ah, I see, I see."

    "Don't say you see if you don't have anything important to say!"

    "Hey, I was just trying to be sympathetic." Res tugged at his bag of bread, which had almost slipped out of his hands. "We don't know who you are."

    "But if you go ask the sadist, he'll tell you for sure."

    "Yeah, but he'll charge something horrible, even if it's just a name."

    A price, was it? A price for an answer. I had heard of this somewhere before, but just like everything else, I couldn't recall when or where.

    "I'd go around and ask other people if I were you," Res said. "Allie's just way too cruel sometimes."

    "He might not if he... oh never mind."

    "Where can I find this person?" I asked them.

    "Go down the street, all the way down, and when you think you're in the middle of nowhere, you'll find his shop. Ask for Allison Saint-Cross, but he'll know you're coming anyway. He always knows."

    Allison Saint-Cross. The name rolled off my tongue in a familiar way, as if I had said it before, many, many times. Had I known this Allison person before? Was he part of my past?

    Before I could thank them, Res and Rule had already side-stepped me and continued on their way. They thought I was out of their earshot when Res spoke to Rule again.

    "She didn't smile, but she had a mask just the same, no?"

    Bay Street was beginning to look like the "middle of nowhere" the twins had talked about, but I didn't see any sign that declared its owner as the person I was looking for. The sidewalk was littered with browned leaves and cheap candy wrappers, and each time as I stepped down, I heard a crunch that resounded in my ears.

    Like... bones. Stepping on bones and flesh and hearts.

    I froze, not sure whether to keep on listening to the voice or to shake it out of my head. Were those part of my past too? What did I do? What had I done?

    Who was I, and did I really want to know the answer to that question?

    Across the street, something golden caught my eye.

    Hair as golden as the dawning sun, and eyes as cold as the arctic glaciers--and I froze under their gaze, but I moved on as well. My soul stopped in its place and my body moved on. I watched myself as I stepped further and further away, until I walked past the golden-haired creature. But his eyes were not on my body. His eyes were on my soul, and I did not know what to make of it.

...

Reasons to Let Go 

    I had my back to the door, as I usually did, but it felt as though I had stepped into an entirely new world, instead of simply crossing the hallway to walk into my room.

    A sparkling chandelier made of what I could only assume was pure diamond and sterling silver hung from the ceiling, a magnificent and dazzling centerpiece to the room. The walls--large, spacious, with classical columns molded into them that merged into Gothic arches, were a soft, warm yellow and peach orange color. The room itself, a banquet hall or a ballroom from my limited knowledge of basic room types, was filled with lavishly decorated tables topped with creamy satin tablecloths and silver cutlery. The chairs surrounding each table had its own purple felt plush and ivory frame.

    There were a few people sprinkled throughout the room already, dressed in flowing evening gowns and prim tuxedos. Everyone stood properly straight and at ease, as if it was their job to stand around and look elegant in this breath-taking room.

    I looked down at my own clothing, a plain t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Panicking, I glanced around to see if anyone saw me. I didn't want to get kicked out of this event, even though I was never invited in the first place. Luckily, everyone else was so engrossed in whatever they were talking about that they failed to notice my odd outfit.

    Relieved, I leaned back against the door. My hands came in contact with the smooth wallpaper instead. I spun around, cringing slightly as I felt my neck crack, and then froze.

    There was no door.

    I was facing a huge span of speckled orange wall that loomed over me endlessly. There was not even a window to ease my newfound claustrophobia. I quickly scanned the room, and breathed out when I saw an arching set of hand-carved wooden doors on the wall to my right.

    "Hello, are you new here?"

    I looked to my left and saw a girl my age wearing a simple blue cotton dress and a white smock. She was smiling at me, the way a mother smiled to other children.

    "I haven't been here before, if that's what you mean," I said.

    "Of course you haven't," she giggled. "You're not used to this yet, are you?"

    "Used to what?"

    "This--" she waved around loftily "--being here. You sure are dressed strangely, but lately there's been lots of people dressed like you."

    "Where... where am I?"

    "You're in my memories, silly."

    I stared at her blankly. "Your... memories?"

    "Yes. I still remember this--it was the New Year's ball. Lord Sharon hosted it and invited enough guests to make the King envious! Of course, we couldn't say that, or we risked committing treason. He just wanted to make the Lady happy, anyway, the Lord. She always complained about everything."

    "Lord? And Lady?" The name Sharon didn't ring a bell in my recollections, although the few number of lords I knew was rather pitiful.

    "Silly me, I haven't introduced myself yet. I always forget this. My name is Clara, what's yours?"

    "Rena."

    "That's a pretty name. Well, Rena, I should probably show you around. This room is Lord Sharon's dining hall. It's usually just used for events such as these. And--oh, please excuse me for a moment."

    I watched as Clara made her way swiftly over to a lady in a billowing peacock dress. I followed her, unsure of what else to do. The lady was saying something, but I couldn't hear clearly at first. The room had a faint humming noise that, along with taking away the awkward tension, hid the soft whispers as well.

    "Of course, milady," Clara said in response to some request I hadn't heard.

    "And some Fontainebleau to go along with the wine. Do tell the Lady that the decor is fabulous. She has done a wonderful job."

    "Yes, definitely, milady."

    The lady in the peacock dress shifted her gaze to look at me--or, rather, look straight through me. I looked behind me, but there was nothing there besides the towering golden walls and pristine columns.

    "Come," Clara suddenly said, pulling on my arm. "Come with me."

    I followed her as she winded through the rows of satin tables and plush chairs. She deftly avoided a few more people, all of them nobles, and finally stopped at the wooden doors I had been admiring at earlier before she had interrupted me from my daydreams.

    "I forgot to tell you," Clara said as she pushed open the doors. "I'm a servant here at Lord Sharon's house."

    "Oh," I said, unsure of what else to say. We had walked into a hallway just as airy, but much colder. The floor, a snowy white marble that had extended from the dining hall, had displaced its soft sparkle in favor of a glistening blue tint. The walls were lined with portraits--immaculate, perfectly postured men and women in luxurious fur-lined robes, unmoving and unemotional. There was no lamp of any sort overhead, and the only source of light, moonlight, came from the large, Palladian windows at either end of the hallway.

    "Be careful. Sometimes people trip over the coats over there. I try to move them out of the way, but I think one of the lords drops his after I leave for the dining hall. It's always there when I come out again."

    "Do a lot of people misplace their coats?"

    "No," Clara said, pulling on my arm again to lead me through another door. "There's usually someone to greet the guests as they come in, and to hang their coats for them. But Marlene--the girl who usually gets the coats--she had to leave for a while that night, so the coat's always there."

    I stared at the back of Clara's head, but she didn't say anything further. We walked on in silence, through what appeared to be a kitchen, with strands of garlic and plucked chickens hanging from the ceiling. I tripped over a bag of flour, but Clara helped to steady me, and we went on.

    We reached the other side of the kitchen, where Clara opened another, much smaller door. The space beyond was so black it stole away my breath, but Clara just fiddled with something on the wall, and a feeble light came to life.

    "This is the pantry room," Clara said. "That was the kitchen back there, but this is where we store all of the staples, especially for parties. Where's that... oh, here's the champagne the lady asked for."

    She handed me the bottle--an 1836 vintage, and delved deeper into the room to find something else. I stayed by the door and glanced at the room itself. Wooden shelves, painted olive green, lined the walls on all sides. Each shelf held something different: bags of powdered and brown sugar to my left; large vats of a dark substance underneath; even dried herbs and spices, each in its own labeled container, placed neatly on the shelf to my right.

    "I've got the cheese," Clara said, bringing me back the the present situation. "You still have the bottle, right? Good. Let's go then."

    "Aren't we going to get a glass or something? To hold the wine?"

    "Oh, that's not important. Even if we needed it, I'm sure there are glasses in the dining hall. Annie and Marlene set the tables earlier."

    I kept quiet my curiosity and continued to follow her. Clara took the route we had come from, through the kitchen and into the hallway. She didn't drag me this time, but I knew where to go anyway. It was hard to miss those exquisite carved doors in the moonlight. They glimmered under the intensity, creating an ethereal sensation when coupled with the marble floor.

    Clara suddenly stopped, placing her icy cold hand on mine. She took the bottle from my other hand and whispered to me, "Can't you hear them?"

    I looked at her with wide, confused eyes.

    "Hear what?"

    "Why can't you hear them? No one can hear them, why?"

    "What are you talking about? What am I supposed to hear?"

    "That boy with that awful hair couldn't hear them either," Clara murmured. "He couldn't hear them, no matter how hard I tried. The lady before him couldn't either, and neither could the girls before her. None of them could, not until it was too late."

    I tried to speak, but no sound came out. My mouth wouldn't open. I was paralyzed, out of fear, perhaps, but I didn't know why I was afraid. There was something dreadful, lurking in the shadows where the moonlight didn't reach. I could feel it. But it wasn't coming out. Not yet.

    "Why? Why can't you hear them?"

    I couldn't respond. I didn't know what to say.

    Clara used her arms to grab at me and shook me violently. I staggered backwards, first from the force, then from shock.

    Her skin was... browning. At first I thought it was only the shadow playing on my fears, but her face grew steadily darker and darker, until it looked as if someone had held a torch to her face and ignited it, then smoldered out the flames and left behind the charred flesh. Her eyes reddened, the sockets shriveling as the eyeballs took on a sickly yellow hue. When she smiled, her ghostly white teeth--the only thing now left of her that resembled what she used to be--protruded through the now rum brown gums. And as her grin grew wider, bits of skin and flecks of brown from the edge of her mouth began to fall off.

    Something sour lingered at the back of my throat as I realized that she was rotting.

    Clara--or what was left of her--threw the champagne bottle onto the ground, and it broke with a deafening smash. The sound awoke me from my daze, and it awoke something else too, for the room began to swirl and a chaos of noise came from every direction, turning and twisting on its ends.

    Amidst all of this, I could hear what was unmistakably Clara's shrill laughter.

    "Can you hear it now? Can you hear it now? They're running out, rushing out to see what was the matter. They always do that, every time. They come out because they hear the bottle breaking, because they're afraid some insane man broke in and will threaten their lives. They see me, but it's too late now, and what do they do? What do they do but bury little Clara silently in the back gardens, without even an acknowledgement, under the moonlight? They hear rumors--the untimely death, but it's bad luck to see someone die, even worse luck if it's someone who works for you, so no one ever talked about little Clara. Not one person."

    "I... I..." I finally managed to choke out my words. "What does this have to do with me? What do you want from me?"

    "I'm lonely," Clara said, her voice tantalizingly sweet despite her grotesque face. "Won't you come and play with me?"

    "What about the others? Why not play with them?"

    I didn't recognize the sounds I was making. Was this high-pitched, ragged voice mine?

    "I played with them too, but they're no fun to be with."

    "But I... I don't want to play with you. I won't be any fun either."

    "Are you going to leave me?" It was an accusation, and I felt something tug at my heart as I listened to her pained voice. Could I leave her? Could I honestly leave her and not feel awful every time I saw the moon or stood under a chandelier?

    "Don't leave me, please. Just come with me. It won't hurt, I promise."

    I remembered that look she had, when I first met her. The eyes of a mother who was looking at other people's children. Kindness, mind-numbing soothing, but also a firm distancing.

    And I pulled away. I screamed as loud as I could, until my throat was dry and it hurt to even breathe. I screamed until I was sure even I had gone deaf, because I couldn't hear anything anymore, and everything turned dark. But the swirling and flashing and moaning of the spinning noise and dizzying background had faded.

    Everything was calm again.

    "Don't worry. I promise it won't hurt at all."

"Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Libre mais pas gratuit.

[one.]

She left her hand on the textbook, fingers splayed across the inky text, but her mind was far, far away, in a distant world where her hand touched the fragile words on a dusty page in an ancient tome.

Around her, the wind whirled, bringing with it the scent of horses and iron and blood and lilies, but most unmistakably, the scent of rain. When everything else faded, the rain soothed her senses until it became overwhelming, and by then not even the rain could bring her out of her reverie.

By then, the twisted golden wires would sprout out of the ground, scrambling higher and higher until they loomed over her like sinister trees of a haunted forest. She grabbed onto the the metal, eyes desperate for the light to lead her way, but once her hand left the paper, everything faded.

She would be surrounded by the towering bookshelves instead, under the humming of the fluorescent light and tucked away in the quietest corner of the local library.

[two.]

"I had a dream last night," Summer said. "I had a dream that one day, when we all grow up, we're going to bring change to this world, but our change will be in cycles, so it wouldn't really be change."

Spring laughed, her laughter resembling something tinkling like silver bells. "Really? What kind of change do I bring?"

Not silver, Autumn decided. Silver was the color of Winter.

"Well," Summer said, scratching the back of his head. "You're the one who grows flowers and make the leaves turn green and melt the ice and everything. And then I come along and make it warmer and dazzling, and then Autumn cools everything down and change the leaves golden and Winter makes everything chilly and white and silvery and beautiful."

"Wow."

"And then everything starts all over again."

"You're mental," Winter said. He ran his hand through his silver locks. "Must be all the comic books you read."

"Hey! You're a jerk, you know that? A real insensitive jerk."

Summer and Winter glared at each other. Spring tried to smile and reconcile the two, but her efforts seemed pitiful compared to the pent-up anger the boys directed toward each other.

Autumn tried to convince herself that she felt just as awful as Spring when the boys fought, but she could not bring herself to lie. There was something fascinating about the arguments, something tragic, and Autumn was addicted to tragedy.

She only hoped it was normal; that everyone else was secretly just like her. But she never dared to ask.

[three.]

The cage was made of gold--pure gold bars--and if she had been in any other situation, she would have bartered the gold for something more suited to her tastes.

Silver, perhaps.

But she was not in a position to be picky. The gold bars sealed her within its dark grasps, and for once, she had to admit, not everything shiny was precious.

Maybe she should stop assuming, and start doing something to get out of here.

The wind blew through her hair, twisting the long strands until they tangled into one intangible mess. She put her fingers through the knots, fixed her eyes on the soft snow drifting from the sky, and wondered.

[four.]

Help me, the wind whispered. Save me. Free me.

They always said that wind brought change--brought freedom--brought new beginnings. She had often pondered over who these "they" were. Why were their words remembered and passed on, and not those of others? How had the people chosen what was wise and what were mere foolish mutterings?

She pulled her hat on tighter against her head, the woolly fringe covering her eyes, and she frowned.

Many things did not make sense in this world.

To her right, Winter walked, his steps brisk and unforgiving. She could feel his presence, and then, she could feel his hand on her arm, steadying her as she walked with her hat over her eyes.

"You're going to fall if you keep walking like that."

She smiled. "It's nice when you care so much."

"Hmph. I just don't want to be responsible when you die."

Autumn leaned against Winter's arm and walked blindly toward wherever it was he was leading her. She had faith, it was true, but she had more fear, and it was fear more than faith that kept her from letting go.

[five.]

Here, the elements sang their own song.

Here, she could close her eyes and taste pain in the air. A bitter, nostalgic taste, laced with memories and regrets and a hint of lily. Pain was so familiar--perhaps that was why it hurt so much.

The cuts never healed, because they remembered being broken, and they longed for that state, not understanding the wounds it brought.

She could hear their pleas, but the night masked them.

A little further, she could make out something metallic against her skin. Cold, unforgiving. Breath-taking and dashingly hopeless. Even without opening her eyes--for what was the use anyway?--she knew. She knew they were golden.

Far away, horses galloped and whined. Clouds gathered and precipitated. The cries of chaos were clear against the clashing of metal against metal and sinking soft.

[six.]

She took the baton in her hands, fingers grasped tightly around the smooth material, and stared into golden eyes.

"Who are you going to choose?"

She knew, didn't she? She knew what she wanted.

"Gold, or silver?"

Gold, or silver?

She had already made up her mind, hadn't she?

She stared into those golden eyes, and she saw silver ones instead. She saw them, cold and passive, but they were not the ones she remembered.

There was pain in those eyes. Nostalgia.

She knew. She did. She was just afraid to say the answer, and it was fear that kept her on the ground, not faith.

[seven.]

Rain--thundering, torrential rain--heart-breaking rain. She closed her eyes and let the the water seep through her hair and run down her face, drenching her in its essence. It was sweet, the rain, sweet and bitter at the same time, with an air of tangy adventure and exotic mysteriousness. The water seeped into her pores and her skin and her very being, until she was the rain and the rain was her soul.

She flew with the rain.

The rain sank with her.

She could smell lilies in the distance, soft and elegant, but tragically so. That soft, lingering scent that made her want to sink back into her shell and be content. Watch the binding strands of red silk twist their way around her wrists, leading her away to a world filled with watery, hollow flute music.

She opened her eyes, letting the water sting. She could not see, but she knew. How much did she really know?

She knew enough.

[eight.]

At the airport, Spring waved goodbye to her friends. Summer cried. Autumn smiled. Winter turned to Summer and said, "Aren't you going to leave now, too?"

Summer rubbed at his eyes, the golden flecks almost sickeningly bright.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Leave. You. Don't tell me you don't understand basic words now."

"I do," Summer said, a drawl back in his voice. "But you're wrong. You're the one who should leave. She chose me."

Autumn closed her eyes, not wishing to see Winter's shocked and desperate stare. It was the right choice. It had to be. There was no other choice.

She heard footsteps, further and further away, and she knew. Just as she had known what she should choose, she knew he was leaving. He did not understand, but he did not have to understand.

She could feel someone tugging on her arm, and although she knew she should fear, for once, she had more faith in her fate.

[nine.]

When she opened her eyes again, the rain was gone. She could breathe again. The blood and rust and horses and lilies and tears and pain and memories and regrets and choices and decisions and what was right and what was wrong was gone. All of it. Gone.

She opened her eyes to warm, silvery eyes, and she smiled.

She had thought she had forgotten what happiness meant. But she hadn't. It was in her heart, somewhere deep and buried, but still there.

She had forgotten the reason she smiled, but at the moment, it wasn't important. All she comprehended was to keep on smiling. As long as she smiled, it was okay. Everything was going to be all right.

And she smiled.

No more nightmares. No more dreams. No more hope.

She didn't need them anymore.

[naught.]

Summer's dream came true.

She lingered between the end of one and the beginning of the other. She hung onto gold. Golden cages that enclosed her heart, protected her from the chaos and war of the outside world.

But her heart belonged to silver.

Winter knew that. Perhaps that was why he tried so hard.

They were held captive by their hearts, longing for a freedom they could not spare themselves.