War ⇔ Cashton ✓

Flowers and Bloody Lips

CALUM

I've never exactly been the type to socialize during school, walking around with kids and making plans for after school and meeting up at the cinema to watch a movie together. I've never found joy in sharing my voice with other people, no matter who it is. I don't really talk much in general. I honestly don't understand how some people do it, straining their vocal chords hours after hours a day with no rest, talking and breathing and sharing their personal thoughts with other people. It sounds risky. It sounds tiring. I keep myself happy by staying quiet, where I can hear myself think and I can talk to myself when nobody else wants to. I'm lucky, I realize. I can stay quiet and do my studies and wear fluffy sweaters to school and not be bullied, other than what I read in books about people like me. I hear they get picked on and yelled at by the popular jocks at school for being such an introvert, but that doesn't happen to me. I ignore them and they ignore me, and I'm thankful that's how it works, since it isn't exactly like that at home.

I try and stay away from my house as much as possible, which is why I am sitting under a particularly tall oak tree in the park, my camera smooth against the palms of my hands. It's a beautiful day outside, the bright green grass and the vivid blue sky surrounding me in a warm embrace. The birds are chirping and the flowers are blooming and kids are running around with their friends, holding dripping ice cream cones in their sticky fingers. I love watching it all, like I am just another young child with the kids, not the frail teenager I am today. I am shockingly helpless at the age I am, but I can't tell if that is because of the atmosphere I live in, or if it is because of my personality. Either way, watching the world thrive around me is something I enjoy doing.

Mali-Koa is still at work, gaining enough of a paycheck to provide dinner for me and her each night, since our parents fail to do so. It doesn't bother us too much, in all honesty. I don't think we really realized how screwed up our family is until we started reading. Until we started noticing that other parents act differently towards their kids. It never made me sad or anything, since I had adapted to it from an early age, but it did bother me whenever they took time to yell at me. I can't stand it when people scream at me. My throat closes up and my lungs fail to cooperate and my blood vessels burst in my veins, causing me to go under an extreme panic mode that can only be soothed by a soft voice. I haven't had to deal with that in a while, though. They are too busy screaming at each other to notice their children thinning into skin and bones.

I get up to my feet, holding onto the tree trunk to keep myself balanced as I do, and I walk over to a few bushes, blossoming with new budding flowers. Some have already bloomed, flourishing into rich red and pink colors that shine intensely against the green leaves. I have no idea what type they are, but I know they are beautiful, so I lift the camera up to my eye, squinting the other closed as I peer through the lens.

I press down on the button to focus it until it turns the picture into a gorgeous quality, and then I press down fully, capturing the beautiful picture into my film. I lower the camera away from my face, peering into the screen to admire the picture. It's one of my favorites from today, the way the sun catches on its rosy petals. Maybe I should send it to Ashton. Ashton has always loved seeing the photos I take while he is gone.

I suppose it is because I really only take pictures of beautiful things, and Ashton doesn't see a lot of pretty things the places he goes. In his previous letters, he has described the places he stays at: old and grey and torn apart, wrecked with poverty and dusty memories of worse times. He sees a whole lot of grey. Too much to not have an effect on his mental sanity. It worries me sometimes, that maybe the war will put too many sad images into his brain and keep them there forever. He's strong though, at least in my mind he is. In my mind, he can survive anything. Incurable diseases to grenades, he can get through it.