ASUNDER (I) : tmr newt

04: I'm Looking

4 Ella

The world is fuzzy and murky, and when I see the clouds that touch the dirt and the hum the silence makes, I realise I am not awake.

At least I am aware of my own slumber. It seems everyone around me is happy to exist in a state of suspension, neither here nor there, and where the air is so thick I can barely breathe. Though this is life, I am not entirely convinced I am living.

Which doesn't matter though, because it feels as though the answer is far away. Trapped in a box made of my own ignorance, past a bridge made of my own memories that I know are there but I can't see or touch.

It's clear enough that I can see, but it is a hazy sort of sight. A viewing that is neither past nor present, a holus-bolus of the two. Which is odd, because I know that isn't how time works. Nothing seems to be how anything works at all here.

"You know, that girl Dawn seems to be having fun."

I'm back in the Glade. Except it is the Glade, and it isn't. There is a fire, and the flames are radiant, and the faces of the people around me are in shadow.

Dawn is not in the dark. Like her name, she is effulgent, and the liquid in the glass in her hand seems to sparkle, as she laughs with the boys she stands with. They seem brighter in her rays, and they are almost in the light beneath the warmth that showers off of her. They are laughing with her too, and though there is no sound it is pleasant.

"Man, she sure is the hottest shank."

The boys beside me mistake her light for heat, because often the two come together. Like the sun, and like a lightbulb. Although these two things seem to come separate for her, unlike Michelle.

I can feel her heat from here, and it cuts through the cold night air, and is stronger than the roaring flames before me.

"No way, look at that tiny ginger."

She may have red hair, but she is not small. There is no way something that small could produce that much energy. It doesn't just come in the form of heat, but also in anger and passion. I can tell she is sitting down, but I can feel the buzz in her fingers and the tingle in her lips from over here.

"What did they day her name was?"

"They didn't."

She doesn't need a name. None of them do. These things have been assigned to us, like this place here. None of it is really ours to keep. Instead, it holds a place above our heads and keeps us in firmly. Solidifying that we know nothing by giving us the hope of one single fact. A name.

But there is no point to a name when it has no history. Words only serve the purpose to explain, and I do not get any sense of definition by the names of the others around me. This world feels too fabricated. It's stitched together so terribly that there are more holes in this reality than there are answers, and I don't think I will ever be able to fill all the gaps lacking in my knowledge.

Besides, I know the name is fake.

"What about the other one?"

They aren't talking about me, they are talking about the other girl. The one who doesn't have a marker, and who easily slips in and out of the crowd. I heard her name when she told the boy. Leo, a word for a lion in a language I know I speak but don't remember the name of. How odd, since she manages to remain so hidden. Her roar is a mighty squeak, and I seem to have lost her in this mess of a fog quite easily.

"What about the other one?"

It seems as though I am not the only one who has lost her, though I doubt they do not see her in this haze. No one else seems affected by the air, not like I am. It's being pumped through my lungs without my consent, and I know if I get my head up long enough to breathe I will finally be able to see. It feels like I am in a river of secrets, and I know I don't know how to swim.

"Did she go back to the Homestead?"

"Who cares?"

They don't even mention me, and I wonder if I am the least remarkable of them all. Maybe that is why I feel like I am separated from everyone else, because I truly am invisible. Naturally that can't be real, as I have already talked to different boys around here and there, as well as the girls.

There are two possibilities. The first being that they do nothing about our situation because they can't see the suffocation in the clouds. Otherwise, they see the grey space but do not know what they can do to stop it. Both possibilities should be equally terrifying, but I am not scared. There is always something to be done in any situation, if I can just think my way out.

Bumbling through the crowd, I touch the boys in the barrier that separates us. The closer I move to the fire, the dimmer it gets and I can't help but think it's not a coincidence. As if I am sucking the life away from the flames, and taking it myself. Where I am putting this surplus of energy I do not know, seeing as I am not being provided with any clarity.

"You're awfully quiet."

Her voice brings me back to the Glade, and I am standing with the ginger by the Homestead. She leans against it with indifference, but stares at me with conviction on a throne of fire. She took the bonfires power and has sat upon it, making herself bigger and larger than the rest of us, and she is prepared to swallow me whole.

"I don't have much to say."

When I look around, I realise it is actually a party. Boys are chatting and laughing, drinking away their worries. Perhaps the liquid they have been passing around, some sort of inebriant I imagine, dulls the world around them until there is no holes in the fabric the Glade weaves, and there is no fabric at all.

"You're too smart to be quiet."

I don't know how she imagines someone as ignorant as me could ever be smart, but I let her have the thought. There is no use challenging her idea before I can actually figure out if I am intelligent beneath all these stolen memories.

"I could say the same about you." I tell her.

It's the truth. From the way her eyes pass over me, I can tell she is calculating, if maybe she herself doesn't even realise it. There is something about the way her eyes fix on something to observe it that can be nothing except a dissection. Taking apart everything piece by piece, not out of curiosity but out of doubt. Maybe that's what she can boiled down to being untrusting.

She scoffs, wiping away the glisten of liquid that still sticks to her lips. That's where the hum in her comes from; it's the same liquid that is in Dawn's hand. However, it comes to this girl from a different place, one of anger rather than one of amusement.

"What are you staring at?"

The clarity in the moment shift down off of me, and I feel myself being swallowed whole. For a second it is blindingly white, and then it I blindingly dark. Dull pounding comes through my head, spreading into my hands, and there is no Glade, and no girls, and no mystery to be lost in.

It begins to become clear, but still remains murky, and I can see a man approaching me, with a rodent nose that twitches as he glares me down. He is surrounded by smoke, the same colour as his white coat and I know he isn't really here, but he is really somewhere.

Somewhere I once was.

"What are you staring at, Ella?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ella is so sweet. Which of the girls is your favourite so far?

Be happy until Thursday.