Kannon Taylor }} Four (Done)

Kannon Taylor }} Four (Done) May 6, 2015 21:22:45 GMT -5

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Post by Muffinface on May 6, 2015 21:22:45 GMT -5

THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING TO LOOK AT

The night is so full of twisting nebula, a frothing sea of emotions, very much like ourselves. Each prick of light is so isolated, so distanced from its brothers, yet it looks similar to every other star out there sometimes it can be hard to tell which is which. It's near impossible to discern one from another unless you watch patterns- where stars travel through the sky, habitually falling into line, categorized by our own humanity and our incessant need to put things into neat little boxes. You just can't organize something so intense and vast without spending the entirety of your life doing it.

... I guess you can't do that with people either, no matter how hard you try. Around every corner, there they are, defying every means of classification and confinement possible. "Everything is made up of the same stuff," they tell us in school. We are stardust, related to the night sky in the most primitive of ways, down to our very core. It has always fascinated me, ever since that night when I was four and I finally, finally was allowed to set foot on my father's fishing boat. It went nowhere, except bobbing, rising a few feet with the swell and pulse of the ocean.

I think I threw up.

I don't think I was ever destined for that kind of life, living on a tiny box in the middle of a sea of uncertainty. My father didn't seem too disappointed when we figured it out. On the contrary, he seemed perfectly accepting of it, and bought me my first star charts. They remain pinned above my headboard even though I'm coming closer and closer to eighteen with every passing lunar cycle.

"Your brother may be twice your size, but you're twice as smart" he likes to tease. It's true- my scrawny frame is no way prepared for the dangers of an arena or any truly laborious work, though it's not like my family has time for it anyway. We are descended from a long line of captains my father brags, while my mother rolls her eyes and scolds him for teaching us bad manners. We are proud, but quiet. We like to stay out of the way and under the radar.

Visually, there isn't anything too special about our family. One mother, one father, two brothers. All have dark hair, dark eyes, though we vary in height. I am on the smaller side at around 5'3 while my father looms over us at 6'5. I wish I was taller, stronger, better suited for chasing off the darkness of the district.

I could never be a hero, even if I wanted to. My height stands in the way, but so do my weak hands and my minuscule stature. I'm bony, but no matter how much I eat, I can't seem to gain any more weight. Bones poke from my skin at my shoulders and hips, my ribs lines of solidified shame across my chest.

It started with the last test of the semester, a fire breathing dragon compared to the tame sheep they had given us for practice. I naturally panic and twitch around test time. My hands get clammy, I suffer from spasms of anxiety, and racing thoughts- if I couldn't pass this test, I would fail the class. If I failed the class, I would be retained. If I were retained, I couldn't get a decent well-paying job on land, if I couldn't get a job on land...

And so the cycle goes. Fits of anxiety guide me to private rooms away from the ever watchful eyes of classmates where I could curl up in corners and wait for the episodes to pass. They always did, leaving whispers of failure behind for me to contemplate, leading me to staying up later and later and sleeping less.

Her name was Carrie.

Nosy Carrie wondered where I slipped away to during breaks and lunch, and followed me to my secluded corner under an ever dripping sink in the back of a science classroom. 'Are you afriad?' she questioned, her dark voice soothing at first, her hands offering small, skinny, white pills. They would help me stay up at night she explained. They could help me focus, become more efficient all with no side effects, unlike the coked out barely-human animals roaming the district four streets at night. I could keep my head; they only help me focus.

Take one with dinner.
Take one in the morning with breakfast.

That's all I had to do to become hyper-intelligent with a super-human determination. The test came and went, and I slew the dragon with one hundred and ten percent. That was it then, no more. I could stop taking the skinny white pills I'd come to depend on for the past two and a half weeks.

But... There was another test, with multiple angry hydra heads and sharp teeth next week in science, and the feelings of dread and anxiety crept back underneathe my skin.

Two became four- take one at first break, and another when I got home as I started falling asleep in arithmetic.
Two became six- take one at lunch and another just before you go to bed when my mother noticed my lethargy at home.

I haven't slept in days. I'm suspecting the pills, but I can't shake them on my own. Every time I do, I collapse, chasing circular thoughts around and around until I shut them out by taking one of the tiny tablets. If I tell my parents, I fear they won't love me as much as they do now- their perfect son with Captain's blood coursing through his veins felled by something tinier than his pinky fingernail.

The stars are infinite, and within infinity, we can find scraps of memories laid out in limitless decimals of latitude and longitude. Our entire lives, our fates play out before us if we can only crack the code. We are stars, and we are fucking beautiful.

IF YOU OPEN YOUR EYES

Odair
Kento Hayashi is Kannon Taylor