metaphors | garrance // laurroth

one

TRIGGER WARNING

garroth

January always calls for something new. It's a new year, and that always lugs along an unnecessary need for fulfilment. To start over, make something better of yourself. I pay no deviance to this custom.

Senior year is already a few months in at Phoenix Drop High and I'm not entirely sure I'm ready for the end of it. Graduation means moving away, living on my own, and becoming the adult I've already been forced to behold mentally. Despite my ache for something different, moving back to my hometown and into the public eye isn't what I'm ready for yet.

Living under a microscope is something I've had to deal with since I was a child. My father bears the heavy responsibility of leading the Ru'aun region in political affairs, and once I come of age, I'll take his position as successor of my hometown and the capital city - O'Khasis.

For now, my family and I reside in suburban Phoenix Drop, away from the press and watchful eyes. The commute my father makes is overbearing, which is why he tends to stay in our childhood home and visits only every couple of weeks. It's just the price we have to pay to keep our heads above water.

It's lunch period at High School. Delicate frost blankets the grassy patches of the wide school campus, so my friendship group and I are forced to sit on the benches dotted around the school. The cafeteria is a hellhole of screaming freshman and bad food; we'd rather eat in the cold than bear the battlegrounds of my own peers. I don't mind the cold anyway. O'Khasis is a staple for almost year round winter wonderlands - a little drop in temperature is nothing I'm not used to.

I dig through my backpack, throwing out my contribution to the lunch hoard. My friends and I like to have a make-shift picnic 

One of my best friends, Dante (who's sat next to me while I mindlessly sunbathe in no sun at all, because it's the middle of winter), chats endlessly to one of my other friends while his electric blue hair follows the wind as he speaks. He's been my good friend of mine for a while, since freshman year, and I always seem to turn into the most boyish person in the entire world when I'm with him. We never seem to get anything done together, and we're constantly ending up in trouble from giggling too much over something that obviously wasn't funny. Dante smiles with his eyes before his lips, and I think it's that that makes him so great. I knew we were going to be close since I met him in freshman year.

Oddly enough, I don't actually live where I'm supposed to be working for the rest of my life once I finish school. I'm an insecure asshole who doesn't like the attention - which is painfully ironic -  so my family decided to move until I'm old enough to deal with myself. It just means that I don't see my dad often, but boohoo, I guess. It's my fault.

Travis, who Dante is speaking with, tends to be pretty friendly. There's an odd aura about him that just makes you want to talk to him, and I don't know if it's his unusually natural white hair or soft features, but everyone likes him. I don't think I've ever seen him angry, and, if I'm completely sincere, I'm not sure he's capable of it.

The other two sat with me are the couple of the group, Aphmau and Aaron. They've been together since the end of junior year and managed to stick all summer, so I suppose I'm going to have to get used to the constant PDA. Leaning against a tree, they look over each other's phones together comfortably.

There isn't anyone else dating in the group and we're all fine with that. Travis is still recovering from his last girl, I'm not really sure what Dante's doing, and I haven't had a girlfriend since freshman year and I doubt it'll happen soon. I'm too friendly with all of the girls in my year to be attracted to them, and there isn't anyone else I'm interested in at the moment. We're all okay with being single.