unraveled

dead, fireflowers, awake

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        A fireflower on the canvas of the planet, said a young voice in her head. She heard a familiar feminine yelp behind her from Ana. The Joker walking in front of her slowed his pace which as far as she could tell was his only reaction. Unconsciously, her brain was already picking up pieces of everything. Twirling it around. Adding a bit of sparkle and gore. A story forming. She didn't look at the scene in front of her, or focus on her own reaction. She looked to other's, examining their faces. Picking out words from mental jars, making new ones, blowing the dust off ancient ones, a witch at work. Arranging them together, solidifying the arch of an eyebrow or an open mouth in the curves of the alphabet, and the swirls of the punctuation. The boy stood wide-eyed, his gloved hand twitching. Searching for the plot, she finally turned around. Red splotches stood out in the snow, like angry rashes on pale skin. A lump of brown and leather lay in the center of it, peppered in snow. It was unmoving and unmistakably dead. Another lump lay a few paces away except that this one was slightly moving, breathing though without help it didn't seem for long.

          The Joker took a step and stilled. Knowing he wasn't going to do much else, the others rushed past him like water around a rock to the dead corpse and the almost dead corpse. Christoph ran as well. Nia marveled at how humanity pushed limits that should have been unpushable - they were running as if deciding to look at their frozen veins and arteries as mere inconveniences. The boy slowly walked up next to her. And they both walked together to the scene. As Nia walked by the Joker, she felt a thin whiff of decay that seemed to exist in only the horizontal strip he stood on, like a thin, invisible wall.

          Walking up, she wondered how heartwarmingly useless the rush of performers had been because walking quicker to a dying body didn't make it live instead. It also just so happened that they quickly rushed to the still person covered in gore and the sight of childhood terrors instead of the slightly alive, less bloodbathed individual to the side. Stepping through them, she saw the lump of layers that were caked in blood. Through them she saw peeks of ivory skin. He was already dead, or she. Ana squealed, and Nia's existent but faint respect for the dead was the sole thing that kept her from rolling her eyes. She silently walked to the other lump that had been moving and knelt. Her knees croaked in response. The snow crunched beneath her. With a gloved hand she reached out and nudged the person's shoulder. There was no response. She nudged again and then looked up.

          Everyone was intensely staring at the corpse, their boots squelching in the red snow. The turn of each eye to that one body and not the other she was kneeling next to seemed almost ... intentional. As if her and this stranger were invisible. Just two flecks of snow. Not even the boy looked. And she felt a strange feeling then. A feeling that in a practical tone suggested all its impracticality - perhaps they were invisible, secluded. Her and this newly found lump of snow were unseeable. She felt an unexplanable grandness to the moment, as if the universe was somehow giving her and the lump privacy, a momented sanctuary to feel something. Except that she wasn't sure what it was. She just felt a curtained presence of something. The stories and thoughts inside her fluttered in a frenzy and softly landed back down in clarity. The second was stretching, wider and wider to give her the time to encompass that feeling. The wave crested and fell as her gaze landed on the Joker who was still standing where he had been but was now looking her way with a severe gaze. If her blood wasn't arctic, it would have rushed to her cheeks like a raging river but a mere, lazy bubble on the surface was all she got. The moment ended. The second stumbled onto the next one. She turned back to the lump who was slightly moving. She pushed him onto his back with a soft thud and grimaced. It was a man. A young man. She heard murmurs behind her as the performers started walking towards her. Ana came and knelt on the other side of the man and squeaked, "Oooh, he's pretty."

          She looked upto the boy who was now standing behind her as if to say, really? Her you choose? He creased his brows and looked upto the sky instead. With a disinterested gaze, Nia took in her fill of the man's face and silently agreed with Ana. The man was infact pretty. And he also seemed to be not dying, but asleep. His breath wasn't strangled or suffocated, it was the lazy calm of a sleeping person. His posture wasn't shriveled from the cold but open and candid from slumber. Despite not knowing him, Nia felt a rush of anger wave over her. This was not a place to sleep. Not in the voracious snow, or next to a corpse or with one's hair half pressed in said corpse's blood. Everyone murmured around her as if hearing her thoughts. It felt surreal. It felt hysterical. He looked like an angel. And a fox. And infernal. And a sparrow. His hair was bright blond. The color of shiny pennies and gold. It covered his forehead and fell to his eyes and curled around his collarbones. Skin peeked through the butterscotch strands. It reminded her of sunlight filtering through the branches of Cervaux. Through them she saw thin, sleek streaks of brown eyebrows. His eyes were closed, but his eyelids flickered. The imbecile was dreaming. Her anger rose up again. Long lashes curved in delicate arcs, trailing his defined cheekbones. His nose was quite literally a perfect nose - a straight bridge ending in a slightly pointed button. His lips were parted in a small smile, the color of pink and something about them reminded her of cotton. His cheeks were flushed and sparkled with glitter. His jawline and cheekbones felt sharp enough to cut a finger on, chiseled in the way only statues of gods were. She wondered if he was a god. A fallen god. 

          The anger crested again as she took in her full experience of a day and a half in this suffering place. With nothing to eat. With fear stuffed in her veins. So much cold. So much damn cold. Every second of trauma and pain she'd experienced in her life rose up. A young boy at their door, her mother lying unconscious, a blue carriage. Blood on her back, the Joker's tent, forever clenched teeth. Thoughts of her mother dead, old men staring too long, the boy crying alone on mint green tiles. She didn't know what it was. She didn't think she wanted to know. The simple sight of this stranger had triggered something. She surfaced back from her thoughts. Back to easier, breathable anger that was red and not black. Back to anger about this man. Who had the mere audacity to sleep. To sleep in the day, under the sunlight when she had stayed awake under the moonlight. And to not only sleep but dream! To have flushed cheeks, when she had mere drops of blood circulating through her system. To look so at peace in this pit of damnation and frost. To sleep when a dead person was next to him. Unknowingly tears filled her eyes from anger. His eyes opened and then widened. Clear hazel orbs gazed at her. Too late, her hand was already in motion. She slapped the man. Right across his cheek. 

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Author's Note: Hope you enjoy! Come back for the next part! And please vote and comment!!<3