ariadne murdock, d4 " fin.

You have heard stories of beautiful ships wrecking themselves on treacherous rocks, but what of the tale of a girl who shipwrecked upon her own sharp edges? A girl who splintered herself, once a beautiful figurehead, now a pile of flotsam, what a dark little sea shanty, and it begins like this:

She was born hungry for excellence.

From the very beginning, her room had always gleamed spotless, her toys never torn or scratched, and all of her dresses lasted for years on end, the seams intact, the colors blazing eternally, all the little charms she stitched into the sleeve-ends holding on with perfect lacework. albeit

The picture that Ariadne drew herself to be was, at first, utterly pristine.

She was the first one to raise her hand during class, and she was the girl whose name graced the top of every competition. She was the friend everyone sat with at lunch, and she was the girl everyone sought after for fashion advice. Her first boyfriend was a promising young boy, sweet as a douse of April rain, and her record in attendance never wavered, forever bereft of holes. Beautiful Ariadne, lovely Ariadne, she was nothing but an extraordinary girl. She was an easy maze to solve and the princess slated for prom queen at the end of each year, and for a time it was all true. It was all a perfect, gilded fairytale.

Except for the brokenness she hid. Ariadne had dead weights and the heaviest of them all dwelt under the Murdock name.

It was Attis trying to win Cade back because Nicky abandoned him for the taking, and of course, it was Nicky leaving, Nicky who first abandoned them to neglect and poverty, who drifted in and out of their lives as he so wished to. It was the icy shiver down her spine whenever she strayed far from Attis. It was Attis. It was her twin, who she partly ostracized throughout middle school because she was working on herself and Attis was working on behalf of everyone else, always out of place, fully grown one moment and a child the next. It was her, selfish, and him, selfless, and what a chorus they made together. Her the tide and him the shore, she was always a thing bound for sea, whereas he was a landlocked mass, eternally tethered to family and honor.

But no matter how much she loathed him for that, she was forever bound to come back for him. Or rather, dragged back with her feet thrashing against pull, her arms wild and frenzied. It was punishing. Ariadne never went to any of Attis’ court hearings after the first. She hated him and the fraying tapestry that was their family, one tug enough to unravel them all, and she hated how Attis could stand and endure it all: Nicky’s abuse, Ginny’s wellbeing.

And finally, ultimately, she hated herself most for being powerless to stop it.

Her hatred was a black water pond over which weeds had gently yet surely grown over the years, souring and festering and blackening it with cruel languor, until all that remained within the pond were flies and algae. Her hatred stank, a thing born out of rot. And as it grew, so she did. Her hatred shaped her, carved her, rotted her in its hopeless tow.

It all began with the downfall of her studies.

It was after Nicky came home again for the tenth time, rank of cheap liquor and swearing he’ll be a good father, spewing the excuses she knows by rote now and begging a part of her to believe in him. He apologized, wringing his hands nervously over the kitchen table, head bent low as he told some tale of poor upbringing and bad decisions, and even through they were all words she had heard before, she desperately wanted to believe him. She let herself do it. She wanted him to right the chaos he had created by his absence and negligence, his lies and his stories, but most importantly, she wanted him to be there. Attis could not do it alone, she could not do it alone. They were adrift, unmoored, tossed around in stormy waters as their father ran amok.

Ariadne held his trembling hands quietly that night, solemn. By the crack of dawn next morning, he was nowhere to be found.

Her mother had wept the last of her tears. Crow-feet around her eyes and silver now threaded through her hair, her mother let the hours dwindle these days by the window, knitting shabby sweaters she sells at the market whenever Nicky’s cash runs dry. Ariadne helps at times, her fingers blessed by an unnatural talent at weaving threads together, and she thanks her whenever she does. She does not speak to her daughter that day, though. Instead she opened the door Nicky left through and stared out at the leaden sky, her eyes faraway.

Ariadne, on the other hand, was stewing like a pot left on the stove for too long. Her thoughts were flashes, interspersed between bursts of anger towards Nicky and her own self-loathing, and she could not do anything for hours except clench her fists and try to steady her breaths, a seascape attempting to calm itself in the midst of a storm. She skipped school that day, then the next, and the next. It was useless to try and be the perfect student when the rest of her life was a whirlpool, the waters choppy and infested, the pull inexorable. They were fated for ruin, she and Attis, compasses bound towards wreckage. She knew it in a way she knew whatever Attis felt from a mere look at his face, gleaning the features as if they were her own. She knew it before Nicky returned for the eleventh try, a father one night and a hurricane the next, leaving a new trail of destruction in his wake: broken plates, cracked bottles, drug-addled threats at her mother as he accused her of selling him out to Oleander.

Oleander encroached upon their lives as well, a distant storm she could just feel the danger of. His eyes were the color of slate when he came for tea one afternoon, his easy expression juxtaposed by the tension woven into every other part of him. He was calculated down to the way he held the handle of his teacup. He only looked at her for a moment with a thinly veiled emotion, and then he settled his eyes back upon her mother.

Ariadne wanted to destroy him and his brother and the forsaken legacy they represented. But the wants of a girl against the wants of powerful men was never an equal fight.

Before anything could ruin her though, whether it be Nicky or Oleander, she made sure to do it herself.

She ripped away all the pretense she wore like a ball gown and let her own dark desires sink into her. She snapped back whenever people vexed her, slammed lockers, skipped classes, jeered at teachers, acted so wonderfully unladylike, and one day, when one of the girls called her the bastard Murdock, her anger had been so prepared to burst its banks that it did with fervor. Wordlessly, she removed the sharp hairpin that tucked her hair back, held it in her hand as one would a dagger, and shrilled at the top of her lungs when she lurched at the girl. The girl screamed in return, though out of pure terror as Ariadne descended upon her with the fury of a thousand maddened seagulls.

She was laughing through it all. She wished her father could hear it, see it, be there to behold what he had created.

Witness me, dear father —

I am the storm you named.