ﾟ･stars were made for falling ﾟ･ (original)

6- vessel

 October 1996

When Casper woke up that morning and was faced with the sudden chill from his open window, he sighed angrily and slid out of bed to shut it. Like the two years before now, the weather always decided to change right around this time to a freezing mess, and like the two years prior, Casper was having none of it. Standing there in an oversized nightshirt and cotton pajama pants, he shivered, scowling outside at the bright blue sky above him; blue as a robin's egg, but still as cold as could be. What a joke.

Still, he stretched, letting his eyes wander over to his battery-powered alarm clock next to his bed- 10:30, oh great. He's slept in again and was sure to hear it from Percy. It's not my fault he insists on waking up so early every day. He frowned as he eyed his dresser, wondering if he should even bother getting dressed yet. After all, he'd just woken up, not that he even wanted to; the cold had someway made its way to him underneath his nest of blankets. After a moment of debating, he sighed, walking across the creaky hardwood over to the drawers.

As he dressed, his eyes caught on the calendar that rested on the wall above the window, each of its days marked out except for the current one, the 25th of October. Friday, meaning it was his turn to cook dinner that night, and also he had to be the one to sweep the floors. No big deal, he actually enjoyed the nights he got to cook, he just hoped that they had the ingredients to make something interesting. They didn't go into town very often, and sometimes the garden plants could be shrimpy.

Casper decided that today would be a good day, despite the chill, because now he had an excuse to wear his favorite piece of clothing- a slightly oversized grey sweatshirt, with little yellow stripes on the ends of the sleeves. He'd sewn a small, red heart patch into the color a year ago when Miles was trying to teach them how to sew. It still clung on, despite many washes and days worn, so he assumed he'd must have done a pretty good job.

He tried to avoid looking in the hallway mirror as he passed it but found himself staring anyway, thinly veiled disgust on his face. He pulled at his hair idly- it was already past his ears when they'd originally left, as short as his mother would allow him to cut it- but now it was halfway down his neck. No one in the house knew how to cut it, and looking at it made him feel a little sick. Several times now he'd considered doing what Percy had done, and just snipping at it with a pair of scissors, but he also didn't want to look at spikey and uneven as his brother. Liz just shaved her's off whenever it got too long, leaving her nearly bald a few times, while Miles let his grow into what was almost a mullet, but Casper didn't like either of those options. It seemed he was stuck, at least for the moment, so he forced himself away from the mirror, pushing it out of his mind like he did every day.

Maybe he was just moody and thirteen like Liz had suggested many times over dinner, but it wasn't like she knew the extent of it. No, no one in the house except for Percy knew and he was going to keep it that way until they were all dead and buried. Life would be simpler that way, he figured, without them knowing every little detail about him, no matter how close they were. Maybe he was just burned after what his old parents had done to him- he'd done as much research on that as possible, eagerly flipping through psychology textbooks in his spare time, only to find that maybe there was some lasting damage done there. But no, that couldn't be, he'd concluded one day because that would mean that they abused him or something. His parents were not abusers, they saved his life.

As Casper walked into the living room, he was greeted with the familiar sight of a fire burning in the hearth, warming the whole downstairs to a comfortable degree. He sighed, drifting closer to the fire without thought; he was really going to miss the warm weather. At first, they were worried he'd burn in the sun, but they quickly discovered that some sunblock from the small town close by kept him safe enough to enjoy the heat. Percy loved winter though, and had gotten into several arguments with Casper about the subject; there never was a winner, they would just get tired and stop after a while.