I think I might be scared of the world and the way it makes you feel afraid and how it gets in the way
There are bodies everywhere, brushing up against me, rushing past me. I have lost mom somewhere, in the crowd, and though Diana is here somewhere I have no idea where. We came to look for her and, now, it seems as though I am the lost one. I pick my way across the meadow, in-between the huge bonfires, my oversized double-pair of wings all but locked to my sides.
If Diana were here, she would probably be dancing, and running, like the other kids. Like the adults who are leaping over the fires. I wonder if she would be feeling my uncertainty or my fear, which I’m pretty sure is plain in my golden eyes—though they are reflecting the mesmerizing, multi-colored flames. I begin to recite the chemicals and compounds I know are making the colors as I walk.
Phosphorus makes blue-green, calcium makes orange, sodium makes yellow, potassium makes purple...
It calms me. I don’t realize that I’m whispering the words repeatedly under my breath like a mantra, my heart is so loud in my ears; my apprehension is so loud in my ears. The meadow is huge; it seems to stretch on forever, bonfires as far as the eye can see. I realize that I am never going to find my sister, let alone mom again. I should have stayed home.
The desert I know. The desert I understand.
The things I do not know, these places that are unfamiliar, are dangerous. So I creep, I tiptoe. I am cautious around every body, every flame. My tail practically drags across the ground, like an uncertain dog. Diana would liken me to Casper, probably. She often says he is too afraid of everything. I am braver with her next to me.
My pulse is racing. My ears are ringing with the sounds of laughter and conversations I can’t make out. My chest is too-tight and I hitch in a hard to take breath. I don’t stop whispering, because if I stop whispering I might get lost completely. “Phosphorus makes blue-green, calcium makes orange, sodium…”
we will make you think hurricanes are gentle, that pain is a gift. you will get lost in the desperation, in the longing for something that is always reaching but never able to hold
I notice him because he looks like I feel.
Overwhelmed; as if every chaotic nuance of the event is something he is experiencing for the first time. I watch, at a distance, because I do not know what to say if I were to speak. He has four wings where I have only two, but he is younger, I think. Sometimes, the bodies of other patrons limit my view: I find my world is obscured by disjointed, fire-cast shadows; by the limbs of adults, gargantuan in the setting; even by the sound of conversation and the breaking down of fires.
I can smell only smoke and clean, spring air. I already miss winter. I already miss the snow—
But I am not here for snow. In fact, I don’t know if I should be here at all. I am sure mother is worried—and I hate to worry her, I do, but the walls of Terrastella have felt too oppressive, too—
I feel like a bird that cannot fly. And so I came to the fires; I flew long and hard and fast until the festival opened up beneath me and I felt like a small god. Tonight, I am pretending to be anyone but myself; tonight, I am pretending to be the wild girls I met or Leonidas on the cliffside. Someone other, someone who—
Someone who can start a conversation without nervousness getting the best of them. I weave my way through the crowd in pursuit of him; the closer I get, the more I recognize the uncertainty, the anxiety; the more I recognize his energy above the energy of the crowd, a chaotic and dark thing. I want to ask, do you know, I feel what you feel?
Not on an empathetic level. But one more primordial. On the level of his soul, of his energy—it is cackling and black and escaping his body. I hear, phosphorus makes blue-green, calcium makes orange, sodium…
“Sodium?” I ask, softly, from just a bit behind him. “What does sodium make?”
I have no idea what he is talking about, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to matter.
I breathe in, and out; and do what I can to not let the energy effect me. Gatherings are the worst. Gatherings, no matter how much I meditate or prepare, make me feel just—
Well, just a little unhinged. It does not feel so severe, however, when I am regarding someone else’s struggle.
I think I might be scared of the world and the way it makes you feel afraid and how it gets in the way
I don’t notice the boy watching me (at least, not on a conscious level), which is probably for the best. If I thought somebody was stalking me, I think that this whole thing would be a lot worse. If I thought that somebody was following me, even out of curiosity, or some sense of kinship, well. I would probably dissolve into the crowd and really lose myself.
I do, however, about jump out of my skin when he speaks from behind me. I turn around, attempting to settle my heart. As though it weren’t already racing before. “Sodium...” I say, trailing off as I look at him.
I realize that I do recognize him, but I’m not sure why. I had to have seen him in the crowd. “Sodium makes yellow,” my voice wavers slightly, as I glance between him and the fires. “It’s the flames. The colors depend on what they’re burning; plants, minerals, bones. It just… depends.” Even though I know he might not care, talking about it calms me down. Knowing always calms me down.
His skin is dark, and dappled, and his eyes are like steel or a cloud-filled winter sky. His hair is ivory, fair, but perhaps most interesting of all are the crimson red markings all over his legs and his wings. Paint? Tattoos? I don’t know. But focusing on him makes me feel better.
Focusing on something other than being lost in a crowd without either Diana or our mother slows my heart, and makes the breathing come a little easier. “I—I’m Ambrose,” I’ve never been much good at conversation. I’m much more comfortable at home, with my books and a little bit of quiet. But maybe I can do this, even if it’s just until I find my family.
we will make you think hurricanes are gentle, that pain is a gift. you will get lost in the desperation, in the longing for something that is always reaching but never able to hold
I do not mean to surprise him; when he starts, I flinch. Sodium…Sodium makes yellow, he tells me, hesitantly. If I am being honest, I don’t even know what sodium is. I think it is salt, maybe; and perhaps that is only because salt is in my sea-water heritage, my father’s whimsical history. I listen with a curious expression; focusing on him and his one energy versus the pandemonium of the crowds’.
“I didn’t know that,” I state, perhaps a little lamely. I don’t know what else to say, besides that—how interesting. I had never been one for science, however. I had always been one of poetry, song, art—and the difference between us intrigues me. And, besides, I can tell the conversation has a soothing effect on him. “How did you learn all that?”
I can tell his energy is returning to something less chaotic, something more stable; I can tell because the slight, ambient light around me undulates from reddish to gold. “Hi, Ambrose.” I smile broadly. “I’m Aeneas. I’m from Terrastella, but I’m here with my twin.”
I think I might be scared of the world and the way it makes you feel afraid and how it gets in the way
I don’t say anything when the other boy tells me he didn’t know the things that I was telling him. I read a lot more than I should, for someone my age. Sometimes I think my mother worries about it, about how I spend more time with books than real living things.
Books are just easier. They don’t judge, or stare. They are always there.
“I read it in a book, once,” I tell him, when he asks, “I remember pretty much everything I read.” I’m being humble, and I know it. I remember everything, somehow. Everything I’ve read, or seen, or heard. It is stored in my brain, waiting for me to simply pluck it from memory. Perhaps that is why I like books so much, because I am always learning something good from them.
I don’t know his name, even though I can’t possibly know that he’s worried that I might. Maybe if we lived in the court, and not in our little cavern outside it I would know more about the rest of the world. But I don’t. That is the weakness to books, I suppose.
“It’s nice to meet you, Aeneas.” I smile, a little weakly, as I watch the faint light around him shift from red to gold. Curious. Some sort of magic, if I had to guess. I’m far more interested in the mathematical chances of both of us having twins, and meeting each other. “I’m from Solterra. I have a twin too, but I came with our mother. We’re supposed to be looking for her actually.”
I shrug my shoulders a little bit, and am suddenly feeling lost again. “I got lost in the crowd,” I hold back a sigh, lifting my chin a little bit as I attempt to appear braver than I feel. Not knowing that he knows everything that I feel. Every black tar emotion drudging through me.
we will make you think hurricanes are gentle, that pain is a gift. you will get lost in the desperation, in the longing for something that is always reaching but never able to hold
I read it in a book, once. I remember pretty much everything I read. Aeneas cannot help the way his eyebrows skyrocket at the comment; and then, he cannot help but think how much easier his studies would be if he were able to retain information so easily.
(He thinks, a little resentfully, that the places in his mind for memory are taken up by the dreams he has).
Aeneas, however, smiles. “That is pretty amazing,” he says. “I wish I remembered things that well. You like to read, then? We have a lot of books in the citadel, if you ever want to come look at them!” Aeneas extends the invitation thoughtlessly; mostly because he has met no other boys his age.
Of course, it seems he is getting ahead of himself. This embarrasses him momentarily. “I’m glad we ran into each other, Ambrose. Do you want me to help you find them?” Aeneas tries not to focus on the size of the crowd around them; on the way they are only two boys in a sea of celebrators.
I think I might be scared of the world and the way it makes you feel afraid and how it gets in the way
“That is pretty amazing,” Aeneas tells me, and I shuffle a little bit beneath the praise. I know that mother worries, a little, that I am too quiet, too shy. Sometimes I wonder if she wishes I were more bold, more like Diana. Sometimes I wish I were more like Diana. She does not seem afraid of anything, and I-I am too cautious.
“I have never been to Terrastella,” I say, with a little bit of wonder and a little bit of anxiety. It is a very long ways away, and to go alone seems like a feat unimaginable. But, when I think of all of the things that I could learn there that I cannot learn at home, it almost seems worth it, “I will find you, if I visit.”
It is not a promise, but it is the best that I can do. I don’t know how to tell him that I am not as loved by the desert as my sister, and thus I do not know what to expect of other lands. So far, Delumine has not been as pleasant as I was hoping.
I look up at the other boy and realize I have been waiting, all this time, for him to treat me as the weird kid who knows too much and says too little. “I am too, Aeneas,” but what I come to find is that this is true, and he does not seem to see me that way. “I would appreciate your help,” a small smile tugs at the corner of my lips, timid but genuine.
« r » | @Aeneas I think we can close this out next round?
we start with stars in our eyes
we start believing that we belong
we will make you think hurricanes are gentle, that pain is a gift. you will get lost in the desperation, in the longing for something that is always reaching but never able to hold
If Aeneas knew what he were thinking, he might say just how much they have in common. The boy prince does not compare himself to his sister—but he certainly compares himself to everyone else, and to the ideas in how own head of what he might become. But he cannot know what Ambrose thinks; and so he only smiles, that softish smile, and says: “You should! Visit, I mean. I know all the fun places in the city!”
Perhaps he is boasting, as boys do, because when he attempts to think of what places, he remembers only the courtyard where he prays or the cliffs where he flies.
Aeneas glances at him a bit shyly and adds, “Let’s look for them on the edge of the crowd. There’s a hill over there, where I am sure we will be able to see better.” And with that, Aeneas surges forward through the crowd, leading the way with as much confidence as he can manage.
That confidence, however, does not fit quite comfortably on his shoulders. But he does not allow that to worry him; instead, he thinks of the possibility of having made a new friend.
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