gelida cor | snowspire event

I've never felt as alive as I have over the past two weeks trapped inside. Granted, I've never felt as miserable either. I think that once you lie to yourself enough times, you'll love something in public and hate it in private. Snow-covered windows blackened the rooms I walked in. For the time it took for a match to light a candle, I stared into the darkness with panicked eyes that imagined flashes of light and sprinkles of blue. But once the candlelight announced my presence, that feeling subsided in favor of some rehearsed composure.

I told myself repeatedly, I'm better off without Alain in my life. Fuck him! What Robey told me in the cafeteria last week had its merits, the fight we had at the beginning of the blackout was stupid. But that's just it, you know? I'm not going to die on a hill when I could just walk down. I'm not gonna subject myself to a bad friendship when I can just leave it. If Alain wanted to apologize, maybe I would too. I held my tongue and kept my chin up passing by him earlier today when going to class. I hope he noticed how much happier I seemed, talking to everyone but him.

I privately hoped that the assembly tonight would be to announce Alain's adoption. I knew it wouldn't be, but at least then, he might've gotten what he wanted out of our relationship: an out. Go on, Golden Boy! Move on so I can too. I wrote a monologue about our friendship last night, three pages long. With every thought and page, a monster stretched at the confines of my stomach. I didn't want to write any of the things I did. I hated it, perhaps more than I hated him. Some day, I might record it. But not today, and not soon. My heart would be flat as a day-old soda by the time I flipped to the second page.

On the way down, a couple of younger boys remarked about having smelled that burning dust scent coming from the vent in their room as if the furnaces and generators were being tested. When they asked me what I thought, I shrugged. "I doubt it. Never get your hopes up around here. When you're close to something, the pause in my sentence is pointed, or someone, as wish to warn them, "you'll just get left out in the cold." I walked ahead of them now, a bitterness in my step. "What's up with him?"

Somewhat strategically, I sat in the middle of our year's cafeteria table. Early enough, thankfully, that only a few people scattered throughout the seats. I studied the cafeteria's double doors intently, watching for a head of golden-red hair to make its way into the lamplight. As soon as he appeared, I threw my hand up in the air and my eyes glanced past him to the next walking head. "Ulrik! Over here, man!" I waved him to come over to the seat next to me. Man. My voice lowered half an octave, trying its best to be brave while every other part of me was on the verge of melting inside out. Were Ulrik and I friends? I don't know, but right now, I wanted him to be the best friend I'd ever had. "How's gymnastics treating you?" I looked up toward him, a bit less than a head taller than me. When he had his growth spurt, some people got into a habit of calling him the crane. I kept my focus on him and nothing else until the Headmaster started to speak.

Just as the younger kids predicted, part one of the assembly announced that power was going to be restored to the academy. Even I smelled the furnace's dust burning after two weeks of being unused. It made me recoil at first, but the warmth that soon followed from the vents ringing the cafeteria was welcomed. The second announcement, though, was more peculiar. The Deliveryman would make his final trip up to the academy today. It's a weird sort of funny. He's been around Snowspire for so long that it'd be hard to imagine a time without his deliveries. The worst part is that I don't even know his name! Chad? Sterling? Beau? I'm stuck between feeling sad and feeling bad for him as the assembly formally concludes.

I tapped Lovie from a few stools over. "Maybe we could give the Deliveryman a gift to remember us by down there. Like one of your plants. Do you think that's a good idea?" Another task to distract myself from the smirk and whisper Pippa sends in Alain's direction on the far table.

I'm not jealous. I had more important things to do than worry about who was talking with whom.

Nope.

Absolutely not...

My eyes wandered over there about fifteen seconds later.

w y a t t .


"You say the ocean's rising like I give a shit
You say the whole world's ending, honey, it already did"

Comedy is a conversation. The problem with pursuing a career in comedy was staying relevant. That and figuring out your target audience. At least, that’s what Wyatt had decided. It was kind a bummer. There was a lot more math, marketing and business skill that went into making people laugh, and he had a feeling he was going to need more tutoring from Coley to make it stick.

Well, that and he’d actually have to take it seriously. That was the other problem. It was a struggle to figure out what was genuine and what wasn’t. He knew that the only way to avoid being the butt of the jokes was to be the one making them, because that’s who people liked. Easy-going, smile plastered on and never taking things seriously. But then there was the desire to be his own person, and the road to getting there was full of landmines labeled betrayal, resentment and lies.

There were two Wyatt’s, the one that everyone knew and the one he wanted to be. And it was getting harder to keep those two separate. He’d have laughed if he wasn’t so tired.

Though that might have had more to do with the ridiculousness of being woken up for an assembly after he’d dozed off early, and less to do with grappling the nightmare that was the trials of the human condition. Wyatt dragged himself down to the hall and started half-listening to the speech while he let his eyes wander the room.

Blizzard. Check.

Rambling. Check.

Not a big deal, pathways clear, status quid pro quo, etc.

He’d already started tuning the rest of it out when something actually caught his attention, that being that the deliveryman was making his last delivery. Fired, sacked, let go, those were all words that were being implied.

Wyatt let out a loud exaggerated yawn, and sprawled himself out, putting his feet up on the empty seat in front of him. “No more deliveryman?” he said to no one in particular. “What, was he delivering more than packages?” There was a milkman joke in there somewhere, but this was district ten, and that was bordering on 50’s style of humor; he didn’t expect that to get any chuckles from anyone younger than the headmaster.

Old people loved that type of shtick about wives being unfaithful nags, along with grilling, things being simpler and better when the reaping was clearly gendered, wearing socks with sandals, and jokes that were thinly veiled racism.

He was kind of glad he was a 90’s kid, all things considered. Better humor and better celebrities too. Victors like Andal Searley and Theo Horner were leagues ahead of old fogies like Mace and Saffron Emberstatt.

He saluted in Dolly’s direction when she glanced at him, seeing her anxiously scan the area for probably Grant, and idly wondered whether Viola would wear her nightgown to the assembly before remembering that he wasn’t supposed to think like that; Sy being his best friend and all.

For now, anyway.

Though I've always loved the night, I don't do well in the dark.

There's got to be balance, summer sun making its final exit well past nine to bleed into violet blue skies that stay warm out of spite for the star's early exit. It's the garden in the summer at night that I long for more than anything. The solstice dance, crowned king and queen in custom wear from Erras and a table laden with fruit from the various vines and bushes that grow courtesy of Mr. Charlie

But it's all outside, fresh air, skies wide and laden with stars and the touch of a breeze.

I raise my hands up above me in the dark, reaching up to the ceiling, extending my fingertips. The movement causes the stitches in my palms to burn, "shit," I hiss. My hands curl into fists, plummeting back down to land on the bed beside me.

I think I've gone a little mad.

I haven't been able to write for two days, even after Kim gave me something for the headaches, it doesn't matter with my hands like this.

"I suppose you think that you can slack-off now,” she'd said, almost cheerfully as she'd pushed the needle in and out of my hands, frozen for the procedure.

No, I'd wanted to say. I haven't been able to utter a single word in front of Nurse Kim since I was a kid. I open my mouth sometimes but nothing comes out. She doesn't bother asking about where the injuries I let her treat come from, I don't think she cares. Maybe she just assumes I'm incredibly clumsy.

"Either way, your notebooks are due in a few weeks."

Her tone is chiding, almost a reprimand, as if I went down to the dining hall and cut my hands up on purpose just so I could get an extension on my talent submission.

The adults have all made up their own stories for me, which is ironic, I'm supposed to be the storyteller, aren't I?

Maybe I'm nothing.

The loudspeaker out in the hall stutters to life, which is strange in a school that's apparently been powerless for days. That and the fact that it's well past light's out. I guess if lights were never on in the first place, it doesn't matter much. We're being called to an assembly, which seems pretty mandatory but my bed is warm.

If no one even notices when I'm there then I doubt that they're ever going to realise when I'm not.

I count flagstones in the ceiling and listen to the sounds of the other boys shuffling past my room to go downstairs. If I'm going to go, I should go now, I know that. There's at least some safety in numbers. I don't move though, my gaze is fixed on the ceiling and I've counted the same eight flagstones dozens of times but tonight they're sort of blurry and I keep losing my place.

They're probably just announcing someone's adoption anyway. It won't be me.

I look in the mirror these days and all I can see are the bad parts of me, the unlovable things that Ignis probably sees.

It’s getting more and more difficult to fault him. I think that thought should scare me but it doesn’t, not a lot of things do anymore.

The hall goes quiet, everyone’s gone. I still don’t move.

Maybe I never will.