Equally Quiet & Uproarious // [Nixon]

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Equally Quiet & Uproarious // [Nixon] Apr 16, 2012 15:10:42 GMT -5

Post by L△LIA on Apr 16, 2012 15:10:42 GMT -5

( J E R I C H O Q U E S T I O N M Y K O N O S - M O R E N O )

You are nearer than heaven
I get the feeling I get nearer by the day
I've seen the people go forever descending
It's when we're all inside
That summer's on the way

Reyes Moreno died today. He used to be my brother and so I cried, even though I couldn't recall a single memory he had ever given me that possessed a reason for sorrow. Maybe it's my old habit of loving people that never loved me back, simply because we shared something for a while — although perhaps little more than a last name and the air we breathed as we slept, inhaling the constant and heady scent of each other's endless fear — but it's difficult to say. At the 60th Reaping, I went sick and rigid as the name Moreno ricocheted through the air again and again. I recognized Reyes and Ezen's names, even though their faces were a blur of frantic memories: hide, fight, run, disappear, eat, sleep, repeat. Honestly, I can't remember if either of them ever attacked me or not and if they did it hardly matters to me. Other people would say that it should, that I ought to hold grudges and a desire for retaliation, but that has always been so much the opposite of the thoughts I hold within myself.

What I wanted was never a festering hatred. I suppose that's why I couldn't watch a single second of his Games, eyes squeezed shut on days of required viewing when I was forced to stand in front of television screens and bear witness to the violence of the Quell. At first I was terrified my defiance might be noticed, but I had spent years teaching myself how to be unnoticeable and so I faded into the crowd effortlessly. Besides, there were far more interesting things for people to look at than my closed eyelids. I know; I heard the wailing screams. Despite having the courage to refuse to watch the carnage Reyes both caused and that was inflicted upon him, the risk of boxing my ears with my hands to shut out the sound would have been too much. Although I wanted to. Desperately.

Bullet took it easy
Dollar lit the room
Monsters making the evening news
Packing up a round trip
I get in the way

Over the past several days I had listened to him murder I don't even know how many children. Their death-rattle cries rang through my ears again and again, with scattered words that begged for life or at least temporary escape. One more day. One more hour. One more moment. Anything other than the nothingness of death. ~~I could sympathize.~~ They all just wanted a little more something and none of them got it, not in a place like that. Well, none of them except Julian Bryze. There was a part of me that thought Reyes might come home and the way that word twisted through my thoughts confused me even more than the idea that I was crossing my fingers for my not-brother brother (we shared so much blood, just never in our veins) to kill one last time and return to District One. He had resisted the soul-tug of death for so long that his life began to feel inevitable.

Today, I might have gone to listen to sounds of violence even if it weren't mandatory, but it was. Fighting — seeing it or feeling it; being near it or being a part of it — has become the very bane of my existence. If I am capable of true hatred, it has never been for any of my adopted siblings, who used to mercilessly slam their knuckles and knives into my too-soft body, but only for the act itself. If I could live my whole live without seeing another fist, I think I could die a happy man. However, this fight was ~~supposed to be~~ different. This was not going to be a fight to the death; it was going to be a fight to the life... Reyes' life.

Now I know that
You are nearer than heaven
I get the feeling I get nearer by the day
I've seen the people go forever descending
It's when we're all inside that summer's on the way

Laughter swelled in my ears, filling up the dark that stretched out infinitely behind the shield of my eyelids, as a slur of words about dumpsters and picket fences fumbled awkwardly through my lack-of-understanding. According to the whispers and cries of the crowd of people pressing in on me from all sides of the District Square, Reyes Moreno was dying. Our District would have no victory this year — that was what they said. "It's my life, thank you very much." That was what they said, but it wasn't what I heard, not when those final words crackled out the speakers and across the whole of Panem. I had never felt so close to Reyes as I did then, listening to him die. He sounded happy and in the beat of silence that followed, I felt so proud.

There was a smile on my face, evidence of a sudden knowing that I wasn't the only Moreno who had realized we had a choice and found an opportunity to run away from our upbringing. Then, in wicked contradiction, the Capitol's music blared out to announce Julian Bryze as Victor and my grin vanished, eyes flashing open just in time to witness the final image of my brother's body sprawled across the blood red sand and exactly how well he matched it now. It sunk in quickly: Wrong. I was still the only Moreno who had escaped. Reyes was gone and before I knew what my own feet were doing, I was tearing through the crowd, hurling my body towards the empty streets beyond as the salt-burn of tears trickled down my cheeks. In despair, regret, or frustration, I wasn't sure, but I let them run free and shameless, hoping the souls of the day's dead might find the same kind of liberation.

We could talk forever
Nothing would get done
Stake your claim
On the morning sun
I get in the way

By the time I returned to the house, sneaking in the back way so Ender and the other Lost Boys wouldn't see the tragedy etched across my face — puffy, bloodshot eyes or lips swollen and cracked with traces of blood from being bitten during useless attempts to choke back a sob — it was late and quiet. Stealthy as I am, the subtle creaks of my bare feet against the old flooring echoed bright and sharp through the hallways and it felt like ages before I managed to slip into my own room, a numb fragment of relief finding me as the door clicked shut and I leaned back against it. Eyes drifting closed, I took a moment to breathe in the familiar scent of graphite, tangy and metallic, and the way I was certain I could feel the lush scenery drawn over the door's surface coming to life beneath my touch. With a shaking exhalation, the last dredges of grief began to escape from the corners of my eyes, punctuated by a series of stuttering hiccups.

It wasn't until I heard that telltale creak of the floorboards that I realized I wasn't alone. In less time than it took for my eyes to flick open, my spine straightened out to bring me to my full height — someone as lanky as I am is rarely seen as intimidating, but hunched shoulders and a bowed head never struck fear into anyone — and my hands began pawing roughly at my cheeks, shepherding away whatever evidence of tears they could find. With my jaw clenched, jutting up with an almost predatory defiance, and my eyebrows furrowed with enough alarm to turn my forehead into a labyrinth of creases, I was a flawless picture of Moreno instinct, every hint of vulnerability repressed with an abrupt and almost violent shift in my stance. Habit. I'm not sure who I expected to find, standing atop the tufts of grass I had carefully rendered onto the floor and beneath a canopy of false stars drawn into imaginary constellations across the chipped ceiling. Another Moreno from my past, perhaps, here to haunt me relentlessly. History told me there would be a threat awaiting me, not Ender's newly found little sister.

Now I see that
You are nearer than heaven
I get the feeling I get nearer by the day
I've seen the people go forever descending
It's when we're all inside that summer's on the way

Last Edit: Apr 16, 2012 23:57:16 GMT -5 by L△LIA

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Equally Quiet & Uproarious // [Nixon] May 8, 2012 2:16:17 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on May 8, 2012 2:16:17 GMT -5

The tides will rise, the time will call
Wish I never saw it fall
Who we are, and what we've done
It hasn't shown

My whole life has been a blur of people telling me what not to do. Living life on a leash isn't living at all, and in the end that's why I left, ignoring the quiet yearning for home somewhere in the pit of my stomach and writing off the messages that Arwen carries from my parents, begging me to come back. I'm not the most moral human being on the planet but there are a few principles that I hold myself to, and allowing the lapse in pride it would take to send me crawling back like some pubescent would-be runaway is something I can never do. I can see my mother's face sometimes, see the tears and read the words of how unfair I'm being on her lips, but it always fails to move me into the throes of regret. Maybe that makes me a terrible person. Honor thy father and mother. I did until they lied to me.

A lie by omission is still a lie in and of itself. My parents never told me that my brother was dead or that he'd run away to join the circus, but that's because they never told me anything, choosing instead to shove every photo of Ender in the darkest corners of the dustiest drawers and speak as though they'd only ever had one child - me, the daughter tat could have been everything they'd wanted until a fall and irreversible head trauma left me as nothing more than a liability and something else to take care of. Our cat got more affection than I did. All I ever seemed to get was pity and whispers of disappointment that I couldn't hear but I learned to see.

Don't tell me that this is just a reason to sleep
Give me your hands to mine and see who tried this time
And wanting nothing more than to flee these streets (Live for me)
But this is a life so consider, so consider the sea

I see a lot more than people give me credit for. Living in a world of silence isn't something I'd choose if given the chance, but deafness has a way of opening your eyes to things you'd never noticed before. Which is why in the weeks since I've moved into the rundown house with Ender and his band of misfits, I've been catching more than they think I am. I saw someone check me out at least twice in the first five minutes after I walked in the door, saw Ender's resulting glare and read the murmur on his lips as he leaned over to whisper to Autumn keep an eye on her, okay? Despite his good intentions, the idea that the brother who ran out on me ten years ago is now treating me like I can't take care of myself has been enough to make me a little more on edge than usual, my eternal silence only serving to make my brooding all the more prolonged.

Normally I'd seek refuge outside, somewhere with more sensory stimulation than the house's drab walls and stuffy air, but with the constant thread of the Game on the screens all over, of having to watch the millionth replay of Riley's sister's death, I think better of setting foot over the dry-rotted doorstep and content myself to wander the halls, fingers brushing over the peeling wallpaper and trying to see if I can find some memory of life in these walls. Maybe a family lived here once, with children tumbling around and laughing. Maybe this place was something more than a dilapidated haven for a bunch of kids the world didn't want, but not anymore. This house is dead.

Until I see something completely and wonderfully alive.

And I won't say you're useless
Because I, I've seen you dream
And convincing the sun not to rise
Won't hide, won't hide you

The door at the end of the hall is covered in some of the most beautiful art I've ever seen, such a stark contrast with the disrepair of the surrounding area that I actually stop in my tracks. I blink once, twice, debating on whether I should explore further. It's one of the boys' rooms, I know that much, and a fleeting memory serves that I've seen that tall one who never talks headed down this hall once or twice. I can't remember his name off the top of my head, something to do with a punctuation, but I do recall seeing him ducking out the front door a few hours ago. A chapped bottom lip finds its way between my teeth, indecisive. It's not like I want to dig through his stuff. It's just that I can see a sliver of the decorated wall through the cracked open door, and my curiosity never fails to get the better of me. Shrugging offhandedly, I gently push the door open and step into another world, taking care to shut it behind me.

I never could draw (was never good for much of anything besides bringing other people down), but this boy who seems to have no voice in the way that I have no sound certainly can. Every flat surface is a huge mural of the most beautiful things, clouds and grass and everything from the mundane to the fantastic. It's the sensory stimulation I was looking for and more; I grin widely and sink down to sit on the floor cross-legged, hair whispering against my back when I tilt my head back to look up at the star-map on the ceiling. It's nearly impossible to believe that one person could create all of this by hand. We are not so different, this speechless boy and I. We're both capable of more than we let on.

And I won't say you're useless
Because I, I've seen you dream
(These seasick dreams)
Phony wings placid and stationary

I feel him before I see him, the sixth sense I seem to have developed in the wake of crushed auditory nerves and countless doctor's visits prickling at the back of my neck until I turn and see a very surprised looking form gaping back at me.

"Hey. I probably shouldn't be in here, but whatever. I didn't touch any of your stuff," I say, shrugging offhandedly as I pull myself to my feet (Ender and I are Winters's, we don't do apologies). I can feel the words thick and unwieldy on my tongue, slurred and slowed from years of mot being able to really hear myself. There's always the constant fear that one day I'll forget them altogether, that I'll be deprived of speech and we'll be in the same boat, this boy and I... Question. That's what they call him.

"I saw your door and got nosy. This is... incredible." My eyes drift back to the sketched constellations before settling back on lanky limbs and eyes that hold more sadness that I'd seen at first. "Wish I could draw worth a damn. I'm not good at much. You gotta have a beautiful soul to make something like this."

I smile slightly, caught between genuine sentiment and the fact that maybe a compliment will be enough to smooth over the fact that I've been snooping in his room without permission. "You've got a beautiful soul, I think. You don't have to say anything because it's all here. I don't know if they get it, but I think I do, kinda. 'S like how I don't have to hear to understand people. You don't have to talk to really speak. People with beautiful souls can do that stuff. And then you got people like me."

A laugh that I can feel humming in my chest bubbles slowly over my lips, fingers brushing the greyscale petals of a patch of wildflowers. "Guess I'm good at sneaking in places without permission. That's about it."

Don't tell me that this is just a reason to sleep
Give me your hands to mine and see who tried this time
And wanting nothing more than to flee these streets (Live for me)
But this is a life so consider, so consider the sea

[/blockquote][/justify]

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Equally Quiet & Uproarious // [Nixon] May 9, 2012 22:52:30 GMT -5

Post by L△LIA on May 9, 2012 22:52:30 GMT -5

( J E R I C H O Q U E S T I O N M Y K O N O S - M O R E N O )

And we believed her then
And we believed her then
And we believed her then
And we believed her then
And we believed her then

It's wrong, but I don't relax when I realize the — ~~intruder~~ — person in my room is Ender's sister. If anything, my Moreno instincts are a little sharper today, wailing out warnings or commands or I don't know, I just wish my mind could cocoon itself within the same quiet I've bound my tongue to, shutting off the screeching demands to duck, punch, recoil, attack, defend, run Jericho run! Reigning in the frantic cacophony of panic my thoughts are tangled up in, I manage to keep as still as a silent victory, not even so much as flinching in response. Still, my hands are wound up in fists and my jaw is clenched so tightly I can feel the roots of my teeth being pressed into the forgotten not-quite-spaces within my mouth.

I hate this part of me, even as the tragedy of Reyes' gruesome corpse flashes persistently through my mind. The infinite reach of his blood says this reaction is necessary and I want it to be wrong — I want to be wrong — but I can't remember any other way and it's so hard to find new things when history has seared these kinds of images across the backs of my eyes in a please don't be permanent projection. Again, my vision flashes with sand the color of life-loss and I swear my tear ducts are watering up with something of the same color, so I flick my eyes away from her face and fix them upon the silver-stained grass at our feet. Its growth is something beyond my control, something rooted more deeply than necessity and I want whatever force that guides it to have sway over me too. Maybe that would feel right. I imagine it might be nice to feel that way for a change.

And now outside
You see the waves in her eyes
And I —
I won't mind
What you decide to swear by

"Hey. I probably shouldn't be in here, but whatever. I didn't touch any of your stuff." Words sound strange in a room so used to silence, where the creaking of floorboards and the soft whisper of pencils skimming across aged plaster are the only kinds of voices that echo within the curious ears of the Quiet that resides within. "I saw your door and got nosy. This is..." Trailing off, the fade-away of her not-so-easy, yet enviably effortless sound tugs my attention back to her. These days, I find myself more and more frequently transfixed by these simple kinds of vibrations lifting themselves from other people's throats without a second thought. Maybe it's little more than petty jealousy that makes me believe I can see the sound waves of her syllables plucking at the air between us — when I still can't so much as eke out a thank you to these people who've given me a home and a new chance at life — but I also can't deny the curiosity bubbling up within me. ("This is..." she said and now her eyes are playing connect the dots with the woolgathering stars of my imagination, filling in the blanks with secret thoughts that turn my impatience into a pathetic creature that might just die before she manages to finish her sentence.) "...incredible."

Suddenly and without pageantry, one moment breathes life into the next and in that instant, she is reborn before me as a future-memory and perpetual reminder. Endings in this forever-new home of mine aren't anything like they were in the house I ran away from; no sentence about my art would have ever been finished in such a way within the Moreno household. This is when I remember her name: Phoenix. Not Ender's Sister, but the vivid reincarnation of a not-so-make-believe-anymore myth. I catch my tongue pressing itself against the backs of my front teeth in the would-be, but definitely won't-be beginnings of pronouncing Nix. Instead there's a switchshiftflash that tumbles through my mind and renames her in the only language I speak anymore: silence. Here is a backwards wonder-world, where a pencil mark doesn't lead me away from dangerous rivalries, but rather, becomes a map of gravity that brings other people closer.

And now outside
You see the waves in her eyes
And I —
And I won't mind
What you decide to swear by

"Wish I could draw worth a damn." The angles of her words are so soft that they seem to melt into one another, despite the way their tone insists they mean anything but. "I'm not good at much." Another instinct tugs at my hands and I almost crack a smile as it pries my fingers apart, uncurling them from my palms until they're just a little more open. I want to prove her wrong. Maybe that's as close to thank you as I get now, seeing as how my spine is still rigid, despite the ever-traveling train of my thoughts, while my laboring pulse continues bouncing through aching teeth. It goes: Thud. Thud. Thud. (Steady. Defiant. Tense.) Until: "You gotta have a beautiful soul to make something like this." Then it's: ThudTHUDthud. (OneTWOthree. ~~Skip One and heart-stumble back into~~ TWOTHREEONETHREEONETWOTHR—)

I blink at her with the kind of stoic non-expression I wear when I'm trying to fade into the walls until I'm unnoticeable, shoving my hands in my pockets to hide the way they've transformed from stiff to fidgety (tendons tugged by something that still feels an awful lot like panic, yet strangely different). There are four pencils in my pocket. "You've got a beautiful soul, I think." One of them snaps right in half between my nervous fingers with a hushed crack. Jaw loosening, the muscles in my face go slack, all intensity ironed out until each and every crease has disappeared and my mouth hangs just slightly open. You've got a beautiful soul, I think. I swallow, although my mouth is so dry that I'm not quite sure why. You've got a beautiful soul, I think. I could shift away from the door just an inch or two and she would take it as my signaling that she has room to leave, but ~~I won't~~ I don't. You've got a beautiful soul, I think.

And now outside
I see your eyes meet the sky
And I —
I don't mind
What you decide to swear by

A beat of silence somersaults through the room, but it takes more than that to make a mute boy uncomfortable, so I just stand there, watching her prying eyes drift across the graphite veneer of my ~~beautiful~~ soul. And make no mistake about it: I've drawn these walls into a piece of me. There's a measure of fearful commitment in their creation and the closer she studies these drawings, the more striped down I'm beginning to feel. I'm just not that complicated when people bother to look closely. "You don't have to say anything because it's all here. I don't know if they get it, but I think I do, kinda." Something inside me starts to ache in response to her words (only this time it has nothing to do with my teeth), because I believe her. "'S like how I don't have to hear to understand people. You don't have to talk to really speak. People with beautiful souls can do that stuff." Just like that, a twitch rolls through my bare toes and sends them in a quick drum beat across the wooden floor. That old flutter of humanity creeps in through my ~~soul~~ soles sometimes and then —

"And then you got people like me." My feet fall still with a pang, until she laughs and — maybe the surprise of it scares me or maybe it's something else but — I hiccup again, the tiny spasm shivering through my chest. The confusion of it rocks my unsuspecting body forward just far enough that I have to take a step to hold my balance and a surge of inexplicable courage blooms within me, proof that the wildflowers rendered before her truly are some kind of reflection of me. "Guess I'm good at sneaking in places without permission. That's about it." By the time she has finished speaking, I'm already half a dozen steps closer and don't stop my trajectory until I'm a couple inches too far into her personal space. She's practically swimming in the depths of me by being in here, however, so I am brazen in this moment, convinced I'm reclaiming more than trespassing.

And now outside
I see your eyes meet the sky
And I —
I won't lie
I kept you here tonight

Gathering up the pencils from my pocket, I shuffle them back and forth between my fingers for a few seconds, comparing and contemplating. The broken pieces of the one ~~her words~~ I snapped earlier fall to the floor with a clatter of rejection as I inspect the three remaining candidates. One has an excessively dull tip in need of sharpening, so I toss it away to the vacant space beyond us and proceed to weigh the final two against each other, one in each palm. I still remember the importance of their weight, but that's not what I'm looking for now. The eraser of the one cradled within my right hand is worn down to a useless stub, while the other is almost new. Without hesitation I hold the pencil palmed in my left hand out to her — with an eraser like that, a person can make all the mistakes they want. There is reassurance in that; the opportunity to remake the bad over and over until it becomes good.

There are no words within me for anyone right now, but where there's a soul, there's still a way to give another person at least this much... right? As I blink in the space between offering and pending acceptance, the abrupt memory of Reyes' death sears itself across my mind once more, but this time in sound instead of blood. ("It's my life, thank you very much," he said. And I suddenly hear that impossible word of his on repeat: life life life. Like me, he was saying more than he had words for in those final moments.) Holding my hand out just a little more persistently as my eyes flick back open to the subtly swinging light of the glass bulb-turned-sun hanging from the ceiling-turned-sky, Reyes fades away, but that sense of more remains. After all, I am presenting her with more than one kind of ~~Question~~ question. Just because I don't speak, doesn't mean I don't have anything to say. The corner of my mouth quirks up into a messy sort of half-smile, the kind where a person doesn't know if they're doing anything right, but isn't about to let that stop them from putting one foot in front of the other. Here, I say in a language louder than words, tilting my head towards a white island of relatively uncharted territory on the wall beside us, let's have a conversation of a different sort.

And I believed her then
And I believed her then
And I believed her then
And I believed her then
And I believed her then

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Last Edit: May 9, 2012 23:20:47 GMT -5 by L△LIA

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Equally Quiet & Uproarious // [Nixon] May 24, 2012 2:30:10 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on May 24, 2012 2:30:10 GMT -5

Since that clock's first tick, a dark hue and fear driven
It's only real till it ends
As the stars fall on our hands
Call the wind the thief for stealing their prayers

Question, the boy with the beautiful soul. True-ringing monikers for the people in my life always seem to find a way to settle into the forefront of my mind - Arwen, the girl who sees everything, Riley, the boy who’s stronger than he thinks, Ender, the boy who’s been broken too many times - and this is simply a new one, borne through my veins on an inhale-exhale that tastes vaguely of the grainy, metallic tang of graphite. My fingers brush carefully, reverently along the unfurling petals of a sketched flower, delicate pads coming away smeared in ambiguous grey that settles into the crevices of my fingerprints like the room and its occupant have left their signature on me and turned me into a flawed work of art all their own.

Even in continuous shades of monochrome everything in this self-contained universe seems to be more than everything else outside the walls, shining so bright and pure and vivid that I can almost hear the devotion in each pencil-stroke even through my impenetrable veil of silence. The boy with the beautiful soul walks over to where I stand transfixed in the intricate lines of a wall-meadow in full bloom, and I’m struck by how at ease he seems here in a fantastical world of his own creation when I’ve seen him around the rest of the house, stilted and awkward and always so removed. He can’t talk, I can’t hear, we both feel cut off from all worlds but our own, although his self-crafted reality is beauty and light whereas mine is blood and bruises and the desperate one-two thud of my heart, not heard but felt all the way to the core. Maybe we have more in common than I might have thought at first.

Look at us shake the sky, pulling the whites from my eyes
And as the hands are spinning they're waving you goodbye
A test for more is what you're striving for
As we sleep, we walk

The pencil appears in front of me before I have the time to expect it, a pristine yellow-painted cylinder balanced precariously on his outstretched palm, and I notice a few beats too late that he's hovering a bit closer than most people might although it doesn't feel uncomfortable. Being surrounded by a beautiful soul feels refreshing rather than intimidating, and I've never been known to have boundaries myself. Up close the height difference between us is almost laughable, but even from my shorter vantage point I don’t miss the quirked curvature of his lips and the bottomless shade of deep-dark eyes that seem to hold whole alternate worlds behind them just like the ones scrawled out over the chipping paint. Question, the boy with the beautiful eyes-smile-soul.

I stare at the pencil for a few more seconds, fingers twitching at my sides in a silent question (Question?) of whether or not I should take it. But then his head quirks over in reference to an empty patch of wall, and I pick up on what it is that’s running through his ~~beautiful, everything about this boy is beautiful~~ mind. I can’t hear, he can’t talk, and there are simpler ways for people like us to converse. Feeling a grin bloom across my own lips, all low and unsure but still present, I carefully pluck the utensil from his palm and twirl it speculatively between my fingers. ”I don’t wanna wreck your wall. It’s so pretty, you don’t want me to go and scribble all over it… aw, the hell with it.”

Can't awake the ones who live this life, not on our own
'Cause people are the same, only habits change
But your starry eyes, no they don't tell me a thing
Staring over heavy heads

I trot over to the blank stretch of drywall and drop to the floor with a silent (at least to me) whoosh of an exhalation, staring down the pristine expanse and trying to see some greater potential in it. It’s hard, though, especially knowing that any scribbles I might attempt would pale in comparison to the rest of the art that surrounds me in a cocoon of could-be inspiration. Even my handwriting is messy, although scrawling out my signature might be aesthetically better for the room than trying to draw a pathetic attempt at - that’s it.

A victorious grin stretches across my face as I settle the tip of the pencil against the wall, still not quite sure to begin but at least certain of what I want. As a child I would write my name on everything so the world would know it was mine as well as for the more practical reason that Ender thought it was an absolute riot to steal my stuff. Question has given me a gift in this blank space on the surface of his precious paradigm, and it needs something to mark it as my own, a declaration of Phoenix Winters was here in not so many words. My hand can’t seem to hold the pencil right; my lines are shaky and don’t form the angles I want them to but after about a minute’s work I have something that could pass for a wing. Glancing over at my companion in a silent question (Question?) of approval, I smile at my lopsided half-creation before returning to work full-force, roughly sketching out feathers and flames and everything that should make a visual calling card for him to look at and remember Nix, the girl with more to her than people think. Brows furrowed and the tip of my tongue poking out between my lips in concentration, I finish my masterpiece with a grand flourish - and promptly burst into hysterical laughter.

Look at us shake the sky, pulling the whites from my eyes
And as the hands are spinning they're waving you goodbye
A test for more is what you're striving for
As we sleep, we walk

”Oh Ripred, it looks like a burning chicken!” I howl, clutching at my stomach and cracking up all over again each time I look at the failed impression of the artwork that could-have been. Even if I can’t hear my own cackling it feels good to have that sort of long-lost mirth bubbling up in my chest like a creek overflowing its banks, my body so unused to laughter that I start to physically ache as the peals of self-deprecating humor peter out into silence (the kind that the rest of the world can hear, not just me).

”It was s’posed to be a phoenix,” I lament, brushing my palm over the poor creature’s lopsided wing and blurring the crooked lines into monochrome smears. ”I told you I can’t draw worth a damn. Now how do I fix this eyesore?”

A few more misplaced lines and I start laughing again, throwing my hands in the air in defeat before rocking back on my heels and sliding my gaze over to the boy with the beautiful ~~soul~~ everything, offering him the pencil in my outstretched palm in an echo of hi earlier action. ”I can’t even… Okay, I give up. Help. Question, help me.”

Help me see the world the way you see it. As something beautiful.

I swear, I felt you crawling under my skin
I swear, oh I swear towers won't fit our view
Forget the man in the mountains follows you
He follows you

[/blockquote][/justify]