This is Not the world I live in

 The universe has weird ways of making your wishes come true, even if- well you technically never wished for this exact thing to happen. 

On one rare and perfect autumn evening a girl walked down a street by her house, the sun shown bright, weaving liquid strands of gold with the delightfully cold air. Just chilly enough for her favourite jacket, a slightly puffy dark blue one that hit mid-thigh, with delicately embroidered gold and silver flowers along the cuff and collars. She was no ordinary girl. She had the rare ability to know stories. She often found herself thinking of how this power manifested itself in her. Because for years she had come up with stories, many times not realizing they had been taken from someone else. Touching someone's upper arm while they were lost in thought usually gave her access to their story. Their mood decided the way she perceived their story. Oftentimes she found things she did not want to know by accident. This is why she loved winter, when it was nearly impossible to accidentally plunge into someone's story. She was so lost on her joyous train of thought that she did not notice the girl walking towards her. Her cheek collided painfully with the taller girl's arm and suddenly she was falling into a story.....

Once upon a time there was a girl who drowned herself in stories to hide from herself. Once upon a time those closest to her, let her. It all started when she was six. You see this girl wouldn't remember anything before that, they had made it that way. All her memories of before were half torn scraps of disconnected stories. She remembered shifting between houses, she remembered being happy, she remembered having a friend but she could not name him. Most vividly, she remembered pushing someone. A ride on a scooter, cheese popcorn and blurry movie screens but nothing more. When she was six, all of that changed. She moved to a new country with her parents. It all seemed amazing at first- especially when her papa told her it would snow there. She had seen snow before but she did not remember it, so she approached it with new found curiosity and bubbling joy. At her new school she was quite happy to have something to do to distract herself from boredom. For you see it didn't sit quite well with a child as curious as her. Years later when she looked back at that school, that city, all she thought of was the times she spent with her parents. She won't remember not having any friends at school...she will forget so much to be happy. She will remember her parents at the mall, eating ice cream sandwiches with her mom, going to the Lego store for the first time. Occasionally she'll let herself think of her friends, her mom's friends' kids really. They were nice to her, she hoped she had been nice to them. But that is not where everything changed. She can't remember where it happened, perhaps it was a classroom or maybe even while sitting on her couch at home. But the first time she drowned herself in a story was when she was six. It was a simple story back then, her memories convince her that it was a book about Helen Keller or the majestic Titanic. She couldn't stop after that. She devoured books, preferring fiction to truly drown her sorrows. She much preferred it to reading about the real world and its workings. But that did not mean she did not like the real world, the books made her want to learn about it even more. But how could she when she was so lost in the minds of heroes and protagonists? When she knew the variation of love and human emotion better than she knew her family? As she grew older her love for books only deepened. She gave her heart away to so many stories, too many. So many let it break. She gave it away to characters on the TV, she gave her heart away to her family. They all broke it. Even her friends. Her heart was easy to break. She thought so little of herself. She felt like she knew so little. Because it was true, she had not given herself enough time to learn about the real world. She wanted to become a scientist, to study the unknown, to be able to fend for herself and create things to help others. But it was all so hard. As a teenager her heart was broken over and over and over until she thought it was impossible to ever heal it again. But she endured it all for her stories, for her dreams and the one person she felt fiercely protective of- her brother. She sometimes wondered where she would be if she did not have him. She wondered where she would be if she had started working for her dreams sooner. She wondered whether she would ever stop feeling stuck in an endless loop of not being enough for herself. She wondered if it was truly enough to just keep her grades afloat and abandon the rest because she was so, so tired of doing nothing at all. She was so tired of turning away from opportunities because she couldn't concentrate. She was so afraid of starting the task..so she lost herself in stories. She lost herself in a world where it was easy to burn with passion. She lost herself amongst people who found everything they wanted through a happening of chance. She stood gaping at the people with the varied interests that she never had the opportunity to cultivate. She stood there, talent and skill dripping from her fingers but left unattended. Wasting away, seeping into the soil taking her life with it. She was so afraid of herself, of what would come next. So, she built glass walls around herself. They held as the box filled up all the way to the brim. And she remained trapped inside. Burning with no fire or ambition when she had given away all of her own to the characters who had it all laid out for them. She was so lost but she didn't ask for help. Why? Because she was always meant to drown in her sorrows. She was convinced it would help her when no one else could. But she was wrong and she suffered for it. 

One thought suddenly cut through her haze- this is not the world I live in. Why that thought? It was what grounded her when she was lost. It was the spinning top in her inception. The girl in the blue jacket slowly refocused and came back to reality. What seemed like hours to her had been moments to the girl she collided with. 

The tall girl apologized absent mindedly before walking away in the opposite direction. The girl in the blue jacket stood there reeling  from the shock of what she had seen. What the hell was that? That girl, her pain felt like a stab to the front, a rock lodged in her chest. The jacket girl had experienced it for only a moment. She couldn't imagine how painful it must have been for the stranger she crashed into.

Before she chickened out, our girl in the blue jacket turned around and approached the stranger- "Excuse me..Hi-I'm Aradhya. I couldn't help but notice that you have...." noticing the tall girl glaring at her Aradhya realized she couldn't approach her about the story. So she continued after a rather awkward pause "such amazing hands....I mean artist's hands, you have artist's hands and I was umm..looking for someone to join this club that I've started for wildlife caring services. Would you care to join?" She took a breath and continued "we need someone to design some posters. I've got all the tools at the club room and I could show you how to work with digital art..so what do you think?" 

The tall girl took a  moment to ponder over the proposition she had placed. She looked a bit perplexed but her gaze softened and she said "Of course I'd love to. I'm Alina by the way" after a moment of silence she asked "So...do you want to  exchange numbers?"

"Yeah definitely" Aradhya answered "that way I can text you the details and introduce you the group.."

After a quick exchange of numbers. Aradhya noticed Alina had a colorfully decorated phone cover- something she could have only done on her own. She was curious to see what it looked like but she didn't push.

Both girls stared at one another for a moment before Alina looked away, "Bye Aradhya, it was nice to meet you"

"Bye Alina" Aradhya managed back. Alina was so beautiful she thought as she struggled to recollect what she'd been doing before Alina got here. Her phone's embarrassing ringtone cut through her thoughts. She quickly pulled it out of her pocket and answered the call. 

*****This the end of the first chapter of this story. Wonder who's calling her?