kaatje 4 fin

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kaatje 4 fin Oct 29, 2022 15:39:18 GMT -5

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Post by fox on Oct 29, 2022 15:39:18 GMT -5

I am thirteen and I stand in an art gallery, marble floors shining and my breath echoing around the room. Medusa has her mouth open in a bloody, hysterical scream, her head decapitated; it is silenced by the glass separating the painting from me. I reflects my face over her own– a mirror. I am sixteen now, and I want to scream. Rage. Cry. We are told not to.

- unknown

kaatje vanas, seventeen

Last Edit: Oct 29, 2022 15:53:41 GMT -5 by fox

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kaatje 4 fin Oct 29, 2022 15:47:59 GMT -5

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Post by fox on Oct 29, 2022 15:47:59 GMT -5

Inta belongs to her mother, like Willem belongs to his father. You are somewhere in between. Or maybe you are nowhere at all.

Sometimes it feels like you're just made of pieces of them. It feels like you're always prying them out, the little shards of your family, until your fingers are bloody, until your stomach aches, until you can remember who you are without them.

You love your parents. You would die for them. You would kill for them. But you can't fucking stand them.

Being your mother's daughter is an exercise of your patience. It's a lot of holding your breath and evening your voice and screaming in your closet, buried in the smell of winter clothes and sleep. You want to go someplace where no one knows your name. You dream of being someone different.

You were never dutiful like Inta. You were not soft like Willem. You were born brimming with something that felt uncontrollable, barely contained. You always wondered if everyone felt like this, like if one slip of the tenuous anchorage built from your will would send you splintering.

You figure this out soon enough.

You're seventeen. Inta doesn’t come back from her trial, your solemn older sister, a girl forged from blades and stars.

The change is palpable to you. You see the way your mother holds herself in grim, stark lines, how your father pours himself into his work, always gone in his study. And Willem, the ever-watchful, shifts too. Your brother sheds his soft, downy coat of childhood. His face thins out a bit, sharpens slightly. He looks older, more serious. You speak to him, and it's like he's not entirely there, buried somewhere beneath himself.

You know there is something wrong.

But you didn't expect Will to go.

Not once in his life has Will ever defeated you in your fencing duels during training. A long time ago, you began to suspect that he didn't want to. He was always like that, in his garden with the roses and the magnolias, the tinctures and salves, reluctant to hold a blade, to draw blood.

Grief changes. You become more bitter. And Will becomes who he thinks he should be –

Dead.

The afternoon is quiet. The sun is cool and muted behind the clouds. You leave the house and walk along the white-sanded beach, bleached by the beginnings of autumn, your hands shaking.

Your temper, it feels destructive. You're so angry you think you could turn to ash from it, one more pulse and the rage might rip right out of you, tearing through your skin and bones in its desire to manifest into something real, horrible, ugly. You want to kill someone, but even that doesn't feel enough.

You blame Inta. You blame your mother and father. You blame yourself.

You hate him a little bit too – stupid fucking idiot, who couldn't even best you, thought he could go into the arena and live. Stupid kid who let himself die for a stranger from Nine. Stupid brother who left you alone in your grief.

And stupid fucking family that you hate, that you can't live without, that hurts and bleeds and kills you.

In a week, Willem comes back to Four in a casket. His ship burns against the bruised sky of late autumn, the sails blowing in the wind and smoke. The fire bathes your face in heat. You close your eyes.

You think of the last time you spoke to him, in the shadows of the Justice Building, how you screamed at him, how you clutched at him, how he only sat there in the midst of your outburst, patting you on the back as if you were the younger one. He'd been so calm. He'd been so steady, like he was a thousand years old, facing death. You watched the mask slip once, for a second, when he asked you to water the dahlias.

Maybe he'd always known.

You look at the fluyt in flames.

It becomes orange on the horizon, like a setting sun. You think of Inta, you think of Will, bodies dipping into the sea, lost. Ash.

In the evening, you lie in his garden, his touch in the landscape of plants, the petals of chrysanthemum you know your mother liked, the dianthus you once asked for. The stars are out tonight, and your sister had taught you the constellations as children. The wind blows and rustles the foliage. You stare at the magnolia trees, yellow and bronze, the first leaves falling.

A weight settles in you. Somehow, you know it will never leave.

You think, just once, I will let myself be.

That night, you go to your room. Lock yourself in. Destroy it all.

Last Edit: Oct 29, 2022 15:50:06 GMT -5 by fox

fox Graphics 1,363 POSTS Pronouns: she/her last seen Apr 25, 2024 12:23:42 GMT -5 but a butt ?	kaatje 4 fin Oct 29, 2022 15:54:00 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by fox on Oct 29, 2022 15:54:00 GMT -5 ripred_bot

🌱 kaitlin.
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kaatje 4 fin Oct 31, 2022 16:15:53 GMT -5

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Post by 🌱 kaitlin. on Oct 31, 2022 16:15:53 GMT -5

You hate him a little bit too – stupid fucking idiot, who couldn't even best you, thought he could go into the arena and live. Stupid kid who let himself die for a stranger from Nine. Stupid brother who left you alone in your grief.

And stupid fucking family that you hate, that you can't live without, that hurts and bleeds and kills you.

this was a very beautiful rumination on grief and the way it takes our world apart, ty fox, me loved it