OEUVRE - o. wood

one - the house creaked and shifted within the earth

Surrey, England. 20th July 1993

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Dylan Adam James did not have much but, in his completely believable opinion, he only had entirely to much to call it all home. It wasn't as if he wasn't grateful, if anything the life he was given was a miracle so it would be unfair for him not to be. It wasn't as if he thought himself too large to own so much because it had occurred to him very early in his life that he was not as large as he always thought himself to be. It was simply the thought that he may not deserve it all that stopped him being deserved of a home.

Maybe it was the fact that his foundations were based on lies and accidents that made him believe it, so naturally built so the house creaked and shifted within the earth with every mistake he made. Maybe it was that within every smile and complement he could always see a flicker of doubt within their eyes; a what if? (What if he wasn't good enough as they expected? What if the tide changed and he was suddenly terrible at everything he did? What if he longer had them; his friends, his Lyra, the only people that made him feel sane and he became certifiable deranged by life and all it's tribulations?) Whatever it was, it was all consuming and not something he could forget lightly.

So he forgot with great difficulty and waited until it arose to doubt himself again.

This time it was the casual emptiness of summer which made it return. His summers were usually calm, quiet but filled with wild ferociousness either way but this one seemed to be catastrophic (he had declared it, even if it was two days into the six week holiday). His usual sunshine conspirator was halfway across the country, over the Irish sea in some Giant's Causeway taking pictures with the love of his life without so much of a letter of warning. Dylan had thought after almost fifteen years of summer's together that they owed one another at least that much, but he had decided otherwise.

So it naturally crept back.

Somewhere it Surrey, Dylan stared at a bowl of cereal-less milk (it had finished at about his third bowl and Dylan had yet to go to the supermarket yet) while his mind drifted to numbness - he needed something to pass the time with now so he couldn't go crazy.

He could write a book? Pages and pages of dreary waffle that meant nothing and everything at the same time. He had read enough Dickens, Alcott and Wilde that he bet he could emulate their style quite easily. The only issue was that he lacked the talent and the confidence.

He could draw? It was a fair suggestion from Anna, his cousin who decided to spend the summer after her A-Levels in Surrey with her cousins rather than in London with the rest of her mates but unfair considering the last thing he drew when they sat down together was her as a stickman which unintentionally looked like she had a dick. She simply smiled at it and pocketed it so to not offend him (he suspected she had hung it on her wall just for the sentiment).

He drank the milk before he could come up with more suggestions on how to spend his fruitless summer, passing by Anna on his way out. "Where're you going?" she asked quickly as Lyra James rushed past the both to put on her shoes and coat on, clearly uninvited but always welcome.

"Waitrose, browse produce or something! Anything! I'm so bored and I don't really have much to do anyway."

"I'll meet you in the car!" Lyra called, bouncing out from the front door and calling shotgun.

They both turned to one another with similar smiles before chuckling, "Come with?" he suggested.

"Yeah, I don't see why not. Have to change out of my PJs though."