The Wings Of A Caged Bird | First Draft

chapter 19 : tiara's family

Something unexplainable is happening to me.

The weight of the week-old baby suddenly feels like a truck carrying rocks in my arms. My vision is getting cloudy, my body feeling as if every inch of skin is being peeled off like a fruit. My head is losing all entropy, getting as disheveled as a train wreck.

I hastily hand the baby back to Tiara as though she is a piece of virus, excuse myself, and run inside. Something unexplainable is happening to me. The world is a blur all around, the walls closing in on me from every side, encapsulating me in a tiny suffocating space. After everything that's happened, I don't know why I am so severely shocked. All I know is that even if everything else is true, this . . . in no way, can this be true.

I head straight to the room I woke up in, closing the door behind me as I gasp for breath. Something unexplainable is happening to me. I crawl over to the bed and hide under the blanket, protecting myself from this hoard of demonic entities. How am I supposed to survive yet another terrible shattering reality?

I bury my face in the crook of my arms, blocking every particle of daylight out of my vision, embracing the darkness of my eyelids.

My body trembles. I didn't even feel this intensity of shock the day July came to my life for the first time. But now, the world is snapping in half, breaking into two, sky coming down to earth and earth floating up to the sky, all the rules that bind nature together falling away one after the other like consecutive pieces of dominos. Only one word can stop it all. One one word can bring everything back together, fix it, become the hero of this story, put an end to this hazardous train ride.

Coincidence.

Something unexplainable is happening to me.

I can't quite put it into words; perhaps due to my limited vocabulary, or because the words required to explain whatever is happening to me don't exist. Or perhaps I am just afraid to put it into words; afraid they're true, and at the same time, afraid they're not. But something unexplainable is happening to me, and I don't think I will be able to survive. The walls are closing in more now, crushing me, and soon I will be nothing but a mass of flesh and broken bones.

I feel the blanket over me slightly rising, and for a moment, I am paralyzed by a strange fear. But he whispers, his voice holding the softness of tender flesh of grapes, "Cedar."

"I don't know," I reply in a muffled voice.

Maybe he will say it; maybe he will say that word. The word that can fix everything. That word that can pull me out. But he says, "Neither do I, Cedar. But that's how it is. We can't know everything."

I don't want to hear that. I don't want to hear that at all.

"W-what if-"

"We will probably never know, Cedar."

I shrink more, curl up in a ball. I stay like that for a long time, not falling asleep, and yet not fully conscious of what's happening around me. I don't even remember where I am. But I can see that baby– Aurora in front of my eyes, the way she clutched my finger and stopped crying, the way she blinked at me, the way she pressed her cheek against my chest and fell asleep. And her name. Aurora. Aurora means dawn. And Dawn wanted to name the daughter he will never have Aurora. Dawn wanted to be reincarnated as a girl.

"Even if we're born in two completely different corners of this universe, I believe we will still bump into each other one day. It's inevitable. Such is our bond."

This is too much. Too many things are happening to me at once. I just can't take it anymore.

A knock in the door is heard, but I have no energy to respond. Now that I think about it, I never had that glass of water I was planning to, and my throat is melting as if I've been drinking acid.