Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Final Note on Nefyn Lore

AN ENDING BEFOREHAND

"THE MAN IN THE MIRROR" 

Reality had become naked, bare of the fantasy that had once thrived within a boy built from old tales.

Perhaps because the boy was a man now, yes? Thirty-five years of age, to be exact, with the barest beginnings of graying at the base of his hair and crow's feet tickling the edges of his eyes and

His eyes, those hazel dots that had always peered up through sweat-laden lashes, fluttering, flirtatious, and involuntarily intense: they had lost their fluttering, flirtatious intensity. They were something dull now, twitching every now and then before staring down at creased hands on his lap and

His lap was something entirely separate from his eyes not because of their positions and functions but because one functioned and the other did not. 

He had given up long ago on trying to move his legs. It might be recalled that, in the first few weeks following his leave of the arena, his vivacity for hope was blinding to the falsely reassuring words of doctors and therapists and physicians. He'd gasped at every phantom tingle and clenched his fists in expectation at every mistake of the light that made him think his toe was actually twitching. Exercise and sports and straining - it had been everything to him, those first months, years. Being able to piss without a catheter and take a shit without the assistance of a caregiver had been the dream, but only that.

The simple fact of the matter was that when his lower back had struck that net of branches down that sprawling abyss, something had been solidified, something irreversible, and by the time he'd come to terms with that fact, he'd already lost each and every fantastical story he'd committed to memory.

What did he have left, then, if he was no longer the storyteller?

A watcher. Dull hazels rose from his lap and moved to the flickering illuminations of the screen before him; usually, he'd be less sedentary - well, his standard of sedentary, anyhow - but today had a stretch of unfamiliarity to it, a stretch that had convinced him to wake early in the morning for the sake of witnessing himself as he was eighteen years ago, bounding along, nudging elbows and skidding down hills.

Now, the images showed the midway point of the games, the time he and Mara - lightning blues and porcelain - had tricked that pathetic runt of a boy into letting them live purely through the use of insults. "What big ears you have!" Where had he first heard that line? Pity, he couldn't remember.

Still, why had he been so reckless as a youth? As a grown man, he could only cringe at these once-upon-a-time instances of hip popping and smug smirking.

As a grown man, he could only cringe at the sudden ruckus of a youth in his own house, in this moment, the crash muffled by a wide berth of hallways and rooms between himself presently and the two others living there. The noise took attention away from the video clips; the man curled his eyesight to the left, to the sad brown door closed tight.

For quite a while, he stared, listening intently for a mothers' chastising. The light tinkling of irritation just barely leaked through the drywall of the house, his house. Then footsteps, approaching. The man took to his wheels, spurling them around until his chair faced the door. Face expressionless, he awaited the turning of a knob and a wary pushing open of the door.

As expected, both things occurred, and in the doorway stood a tall, young woman, mousy brown flyaways brushing against her forehead from an escaped bun atop her head. She breathed heavily, as if catching her breath, but once noticing that the man within the room was prepared for her (and likely passing judgment on her current state), she straightened her back, smoothed her scarlet skirt, and passed a soft smile meant to reassure him that she was not, in fact, an anxiety-ridden mess.