Soliloquy Autumn || Six (FIN)

Long, auburn hair flutters across her dark shoulders, while pale eyes flash and focus across the distance, on the horizon. Chemical-powdered freckles dust her cheeks, nose, lips, eyelids, forehead, chest, everywhere. Gently protruding, pouty lips dip low in a dark frown as her stubbly fingers with their chipped manicure, and torn up nail beds from hours, days, years of gnawing trail across the surface of the page as though it may come to life.

Hunched shoulders, get long, elegant legs fold in, her tiny corner of the world, alone for herself and for her sole companion. She reads, flipping and turning the thing over and over in her hands, A letter, a beautiful letter, written exclusively for her. A last ditch effort, lacing phrases and words like stars in her night sky- "We are energy, nothing more." 

Her heart leaps, then sinks deep, delving below the inky abyss for but a moment. "I knew it from the start."

Falcons flutter in her stomach, devouring butterflies and leaving behind their decimated carcasses like loose limbs and shattered baby teeth for her soul to collect later. "We are stardust, and our light just fucks with the way of things-" Damn bitch knows how to write.

Carefully she rises, the sway of her hips carrying her across the surface of the room, falling to a pretty face with perfect teeth and eyes like suns. Lips soft as clouds meet together, and the two women embrace one another, falling down into the soft fabric of a bed in an otherwise empty house with otherwise empty parents.

Two years on and off before the slums claim her- dragging ivory white skin through ditches laced with needles and drugs, two years before the ground opens its wide maw and swallows her whole, two years before Soliloquy recognizes the once-silent roommate taking over her limbs, her eyes, her knobby knees. Something always there projected forth from an untimely transition from child to woman,

"We are energy, nothing more."

Her fingers linger upon the surface of the paper, tips trembling with an affirmation of life as her words reflect back, poor choices marked, laced thick in her flesh with
impromptu knives and sharp blades.

"I knew it from the start-"

Biting lips until blood, she holds herself still as her hands pound, pulse into the lined paper gracing her desk surface, balled up fist threatening to steal away every ounce
of life left. A life and death battle, not with the capitol or some idea of freedom, but with herself.

She loves stuffed animals, and soft things, busted, broken, mangled things she can make right. Her hands dip and tremble with a needle and thread, prepared to buffer away tears for children who take no notice on the butterfly bruises wrapped around her flailing wrists, deep bags below her eyes, never home during shouting matches or even noticing when she slips away through opened windows to the cry of a city at night.

She sips the wine but does not swallow, companions tease her for cigarettes and cigars though she does not inhale. They leave her, and do not push- who else will watch for Keepers and her paranoia and unease is rarely without cause.

"We are stardust, and our light just fucks with the way of things-"

God dammit, nothing comes out right.

Quivering palms rest upon the surface of her desk as a voice calls to her, echoes her back, slamming a wave of frustration and anger around her. Strong arms wrap around the young girl, dragging her close to a caged heart, hands lost in auburn hair. "Soli..." the voice whispers into her neck, dragging the woman away from her desk, away from piles of false ends, from painful memories and never healing wounds.

"I love you" it whispers, tendrils looping gently around her chin, delving down through her gaping mouth to her soul below.

She sobs in the arms of her mother, embracing a body warm, open to a child lost in a sea of oblivion. In a room far away, two younger children play, a boy and a girl, 'Regular' in their ways, approved by a father too harsh, too closed off from a world she whispers.

These words are not hers, not her own soul sliced open and bared for the world to notice, not her essence placed on paper for a potential love to read.