assembly. [snowspire event one]

No matter whose name is called, you promised yourself a long time ago to always show joy. Just because it's someone else's turn doesn't mean yours isn't right around the corner. You remember Joyce telling you that once, when you were both younger, and you still had a habit of crying over all the things that overwhelmed you in life. Like volcanoes erupting in a classroom, the pretty flash of the firecracker followed by the smell of ash thick enough to choke on; to this day, emotions move through you like natural disasters. Your happiest and saddest words are spoken at the same volume — and who can tell the difference between them anymore?

It's ironic, and you're aware of it, but you gaze at the space over its head like it isn't standing inside every room with you. That simple, inescapable truth. Pippa Snowspire versus the world; you'd trade it away in a heartbeat for the one you've carefully crafted inside your own mind. Where nothing hurts, and change can be as peaceful as the seasons passing, like snow that melts for only a few glorious days a year, the prettiest thing you've ever been allowed to see, like learning what spring is and not being able to stand in a meadow of wildflowers coming to life all around you. There are days where you snap your fingers just to see if you might disappear and end up elsewhere.

If a cold palace in the snow is where you feel the safest, then how frightened are you by the woods surrounding you?

꧁ Breathe. ꧂

The girl who strives for the impossible is so easily shaken by the possible.

Minor slip-ups aside — a meltdown in front of the entire student body for one — you have always believed fiercely in keeping the spirit of magic alive within the academy. If everyone around you is happy, then you get to be happy, too. Maybe that's not the healthiest way to look at it, but to you, the logic is sound enough. When everyone else in the room is laughing, it's not so strange for you to be giggling over every little thing, and if you're being honest, things are just more enjoyable for you when other people are in a good mood. Silent rooms make your skin crawl, so you seek out attention like the moths that gather on the window by your bed, out of reach of the candlelight flickering so warmly within.

You don't know where they come from each winter, so for now, you've convinced yourself that the white fluffy ones are the rarest kind of snowflake, a one in a million chance fluttering just outside the glass for all to see, a fantasy with no consequences. Magic.

All people are destined to be either a performer or a creator, and you, truly and perfectly and unforgivably you, have never shied away from the spotlight. When the assembly is announced and you all gather together, dreamers sitting in organized rows, anyone can tell you have a trick up your sleeve just from the smile on your face alone. As much as you think your previous showcase is deserving of an early adoption, you've fought that battle and lost enough times to never assume. When it happens for you, it'll be perfect and life-affirming, but the magic of when is that it's entirely out of your control.

Bother.

The Headmaster addresses the class of seventeen year old students, and suddenly you are the lone beacon shining in a sea of gloomy faces. Okay, you think to yourself, a thought like clockwork, grin widening, my turn's next! Even devastated, you give only the most genuine of smiles, eyes trained keenly where someone's happiest day is going to happen in front of you all.

The best thing about you, if your say matters, is that you know how to create a moment. So when the elderly man's voice rings out, commanding and wise even after all these years, you are quick to reveal the confetti popper hidden in your palm. One of your many performance props, now repurposed into the perfect opportunity to celebrate someone else's adoption. And, of course, the chance to look up at pretty confetti raining down on you! Most wonderful things come in pairs, after all.

"Congratulations to Bronte!" There's a loud pop! and a flutter of pastel pink, purple, and yellow strips of parchment flutter all around you. In the aftermath, the awkward silence and the deafening sound of the Headmaster fumbling over his words, you realize Bronte's name had been spoken. You turn to look at her, confusion showing in your features but still that genuine excitement peeking through, when the situation corrects itself. Someone named Bailey gets to be the winner in this chapter of the story. These days, it doesn't chip away at your spirit as much as it used to.

You awkwardly hold up the already used confetti popper, shaking loose the last few strips when the girl walks past, mouthing a sincere and apologetic, I only had the one! But what's paper to a wish coming true? She passes you by, and you look away, instead focusing your gaze on your classmates making their evening plans. This is the thing you all want more than anything, and when it happens for someone who isn't any of you, it's like the quickest thing in the world.

Still, you'll never be the person to act as if a party is a bad idea. And with the way Erras looks so tense, shrill voice ringing in your ears all these minutes later, you think a few shots would do him well, Not that you've ever partaken in alcohol, not yet, but the last time you cornered Farrah with your many curious questions, you were lucky to get enough answers from her to walk away learning something new about the whole... rebelling process. You like to think you can live as bravely as anyone else.

What people don't know won't hurt them. / The scene shifts.

Bouncing to your feet, you shake your head and summon a new rainstorm of confetti, brushing off your uniform for good measure. "Oh, wait up, Farrah! Please let me taste test all the different flavors you have! And just checking, do they only make you drunk like normal, or do some of them have other cool side effects?" They sound something like magical potions; and it excites you, distracts you, so politely and energetically chasing after the more aloof girl as she tries to retreat. You'd feel bad for being clingy, but you know you're good company!

You also know that the one person you want to spend the day with hasn't looked you in the eye for the last five years.

Blindfolded, you'll take any chance in the sun you can get.

We had to get up early, first day back since they let us out at the beginning of December. Back. It's a funny way of putting it because of course we never left Snowspire, we just avoided the classrooms as if they didn't exist at all for the time we had off. We're pretty good at that as a collective, pretending. Maybe it's our second talent.

Someone sets Degraw off on a tangent in second period and I'm looking right at him but it's like all of his consonants and vowels are just a jumble of meaningless sounds. I think there's something wrong with my head since I hit it on the flagstones out in the courtyard last week. Maybe it's just the sun refracting off of the snow outside.

Blue sky in the middle of winter after days of endless snow and we're stuck in class. It doesn't seem fair, I wish I had someone to hate for it. I'm sure there's some god of fate out there I could shake my fist at.

Each class is shorter than the last, just teachers handing out syllabus' and workbooks, droning on about their plan for the year. They should know by now how little it matters to anyone but Dolly, who looks far too happy to be back. I watch her for too long in Bingham's class, waiting for the mask to slip.

Not even once.

My attention falls back on the world outside the window, still and silent as Bingham outlines the units we'll be studying.

Her voice becomes just more noise filtering through my head as my thoughts drifts, wrapping around the chapter I've been trying to write for the last two weeks. Every time I write even a single sentence it feels wrong though, cheap. I'm in one of those phases I think, where I wonder if I'm actually terrible and everything that flows from my pen is hot garbage.

Wouldn't that be funny?

The final bell rings and the back of my head echoes it. I grimace as I slide my books up off my desk into my arms, fingers curling protectively around the edge of one of my notebooks sandwiched between my chest and my science textbook. I keep my head down as I move through the halls, beelining for my room before anyone else can reach the dorms.

Then the loudspeaker crackles to life and Walter's voice crawls slowly out of it, ordering everyone to the cafeteria for assembly. I pause, pressing my back up against the wall out of habit. An assembly at end of day can only mean one thing, someone was adopted.

Adoptions are strange at Snowspire. Pretty much everyone aches for it as long as they can remember, but they sew that need into you since childhood and then that ache becomes everything that you are in the form of a 'talent'. They tell us that if we work hard enough, someone will watch our tape and they will want us.

I'm not special. I'm just like everybody else, I want parents that love me but I'm not half the fool I wish I was. I know that it's not going to be my name that Walters calls out because I'm far from what most people want in a kid. I'm damaged goods.

But assemblies are mandatory and it's too late to feign sick or pretend I was outside and didn't hear the command so I find myself filing into the cafeteria along with everyone else.

There's a hundred reasons why I hate these things but one of them is I never know where I'm supposed to sit. I'm not particularly wanted anywhere at the table but that also means I fit beside pretty much anyone. I just have to remember the spots reserved always for someone else and avoid those.

I've gotten good at that.

I find a spot at the end of the table closest to the exit and furthest from the podium then lay my head down, fingers crossed over the back of my head, pulling down. The pressure helps to alleviate the pounding at least a little bit and it's also kind of nice and dark. I didn't really sleep last night, procrastinating on shutting myself down as if I could extend winter break that way.

Didn't work obviously.

Sound is muffled like this but I still hear the way the cafeteria goes silent as Walters starts speaking. The table shifts beneath me and I wonder briefly who looks the most hopeful. Usually it's one of the ones with the loud or flashy talents, as if twirling a baton in the air can make someone love you.

There's a pause before Walters says a name and it's like the stillness is a blanket lain over the whole room. For one precious moment, nobody says a single word. I raise my head a little, fingers unfurling against the back of my neck like the petals of a flower. There's a tightness in my chest, this nervous energy and I hear it once, my own heart beat, in the silence.

It's as if time has stopped. I look up and down the table, at the faces of the kids I was raised with and the fearful hope written plainly despite their guarded expressions.

And I wonder briefly, along with everybody else in the room, what it would be like if Walters called out my name, what it would be like if I got to leave here. What I would be like.

The moment passes.

"Bronte."

Sound fills the room again and it has notes to it, like Hanna's sheet music. Confusion first, staccato and sharp, then correction and excitement. Anger, a change in key, then redirection.

Kids bounce back so fast.

Erras goes from yelling his indignation, holding up his own bloody heart as evidence, to making plans for a party in the bathroom. I stay completely still, silent in the background of their conversation. Ideas are offered and then quickly taken off the table. Bailey, the girl who actually is getting adopted, is crying at the front of the room and shaking hands while Farrah is gleefully already leading people out, presumably to get drunk in a bathroom stall.

It's kind of beautiful, the juxtaposition of two different kinds of celebrations happening at once for entirely different reasons. Part of me wants to stand up and yell too, angry, hurt things at the top of my lungs and part of me aches separately. I want to be gracious and happy for Bailey but I hate her.

So I just smile madly down at the notebook on the table in front of me for a moment, trying to swallow down the disappointment in the back of my throat. I knew it couldn't be me.

I've done nothing to deserve love.

I stand up after pretty much everyone else has and then join the stream of our classmates. They follow Farrah down the hall like rats after the pied piper. I fall back slowly until it's just me trailing behind and for a gentle moment I am part of them. Then they all go left so I take a right.

I know I'm not really wanted.

"See you 'round."

I pause, fingers digging tighter into my books as a cold finger runs down the back of my neck. When I turn and look over my shoulder, Ignis is already walking away with everyone else. I turn to look forwards again, willing myself to keep walking but I can't seem to lift my feet.

Bile rises in the back of my throat, what did he mean by that?

Is he going to be somewhere waiting for me? Today or tomorrow? When? I want to keep moving so badly but it's like the hallway is getting longer or my breathing is shorter and everything is harder and it doesn't seem fair that it's him who gets to be one of them and it's me here alone, I haven't done anything wrong. Not anything I can remember at least.

I press my palm against my forehead, pushing hard as if that will help me remember my supposed transgression but all it does is create a central spot for my brain to keep pounding against my skull. I shut my eyes against the pain and will it away, shoulders dropping, breath coming slower again as the last echo of my classmates' footsteps fades out and I am finally left alone.

My hand drops slowly and I open my eyes, focusing my vision on the window beside me. The last bit of sun still shines from the crest of the mountain, creating fractals on the snow. My eyes get lost in them, vision blurring as I stare too long.

"Come on Kaine," I whisper finally, "Just keep going."

And I do.