Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Final Note on Naomi Noelle

AN ENDING BEFOREHAND
"LEARN FROM THOSE YOU TEACH, HEWIN"

Cups: the equivalent of regeneration, of refurbishing the body for slight shudders of time, of retribution for hours lost to that pesky little thing named Sleep. It seemed set on pulling her inside-out with how many times it tingled at the inside of her brain and then tickled its way on out just as she felt she was getting somewhere. It was a cup, a steaming, warm cup that acted as a repellent to Sleep, and though that wasn't what she truly wanted in the long-run, it helped her procrastinate facing Sleep head on. When she did get ahold of it, she swore, she'd take it by the shoulders and-

-And give it a stern talking to. Yeah, that oughta do it. 

She scoffed into the coffee before taking a heavy sip. It made her shudder with bitterness, but a special sort of relaxation came with the taste. 

She was glad to have it, too, for the day was cold. Leaves clung to their branches in indecision - should I stay or should I go, that was the question of the day for those little orange and red buggers. Naomi, too, kept that question at the back of her mind, all in association with that paranoia that came with living in the place where she'd been an almost-victim. 

An almost-victim to slaughter. 

A witness to massacre. 

Many times, she'd thought over her options, and many times, she'd asked for papers to sign off, she'd filled them all out, she'd planned once and for all to leave Kentucky and go somewhere nice, like Oregon, or California. But, no matter how hard she pressed the ink into the pages, she never thought her efforts good enough to let her leave. No, that was a lie - her efforts were plenty good, let her tell you - she simply didn't want to leave. 

And, like the branches clinging to the trees, there was a leaf stuck to the little twig that was her arm. 

She gave it a squeeze, and it squeezed back. 

"Momma," the leaf, decked out in a pastel pink raincoat, said, "why do we gotta go to the quiet place? I don't like the quiet place. It's too quiet." 

Naomi, though she found the boy's question endearing, felt her eyes fall into a roll, and she blew into the coffee below her chin. "Obviously." She paused to smile down at him, and despite his confusion, he just smiled right back up, nearly tripping his way over a hitch in the sidewalk as he did so. He didn't fall, but even if he had, he was a toughie. Like a really tiny square of paper towel that looks fragile but doesn't rip anywhere but at the seam. Toughie. 

She faced forward, then, and sighed. "I know you don't like the quiet place, Hewin, but I want to teach you a couple things." 

"Like how gra'ma is there?" 

The corner's of her eyes crinkled as she shrugged her way through an explanation. "Sorta like that, yeah. But gra'ma's not the only one there. I have some other friends, really good ones, that didn't deserve to go to the quiet place. A lot of 'em were just kids, just a little bit older than you." 

Hewin, with his little six year old lips pursed as he hopped from one square of cement to the next, went, "But I thought only the bad people went to the quiet place. And old people. Why did the kids go there?"