[.}Myriail Clark{.][>District Ten<]

[.}Myriail Clark{.][>District Ten<] Jan 14, 2012 3:08:12 GMT -5

Post by WT on Jan 14, 2012 3:08:12 GMT -5

Myriail Clark is the first
thing I ever heard—maybe
a whisper from the future,
maybe my parents' voices
bestowing meaning upon
their little girl.

Either way, it is the only
possession I have ever, in
thirteen years, managed to
guard against the hazards
of life in District Ten.

"What are you drawing?"

Your pencil swings to a sharp stop, ruining the gracefully arced line you had been creating. "Why are you interested?" you ask softly, hoping that your vague answer will annoy the girl into going away.

It doesn't. "Just curious," she says. Out of the corner of your eye you can see her shifting, pulling her elbows close and leaning forward across the table. Stifling a sigh, you lift your eyes from the paper to meet her gaze. What she says is true; curiosity shines on her face in her open half-smile and the excited tilt to her eyebrows. This is why you never draw at school. Anyone who doesn't think it's weird wants to see. "What is it?" the stranger repeats, as though you've somehow forgotten her query in the past few seconds of silence.

Before you roll your eyes, you close them. Still, you think she notices, because you open them to find her learning back again, apparently subdued. That wasn't what you were going for, but it works. Assured that you have your personal bubble to yourself again, you return gaze to the tiny piece of the world sitting on your lap. White paper, dark pencil, graphite-stained hands, a slowly forming picture of a flock of birds trapped in a crystal ball. Gently you use the tip of one pale pinky to turn the errant line into the beginnings of a cloud.

You can't quite get comfortable. Frowning, you focus harder, but that only sends you in the opposite direction, shattering your fragile connection to the art. With a second roll of your eyes, you look up to find your classmate still watching you curiously, her head tilted to the side like a lonely puppy's.

Since you obviously aren't about to get any work done, you go ahead and pull the clips from your hair and set them on the table, releasing the curly strands they held back. Dull gold instantly forms a border around your vision, shutting out most of the surrounding tables. Sporadic flashes of your environment show through the places where the waves form gaps, but for the most part, all your peripheral vision can see is dark blonde hair. Unfortunately, while you can hide everyone else like that, there's not much you can do to avoid the insistent girl, who has planted herself directly in front of you and will probably just move if you turn your head.

As you watch her, the stranger begins to fidget. It occurs to you that you should probably blink a few times, but you quickly decide that you don't need to change yourself for this girl who wandered into your life and will soon leave it. You keep your eyes trained on her blue ones—not unlike yours, actually, although hers are lighter and your own are closer to grey than a true blue—as you speak. "Can I help you?"

"I really was just curious. I didn't mean to offend you or anything."

Through her voice, another closes in on you. At first you think it's just another drop in the tidal wave of noise around you, but then you realize how clearly you can hear the words despite their low volume, and your already-pale face drains of blood. "We need to hit them where it hurts before our cause is crippled." Footsteps for a second, then a sharp tap. "Tomorrow morning I want..."

The voice fades before you can get a good feel for what it sounds like, let alone any idea what they're talking about. Hit who? Whose cause? When is this going to happen? You cover your small ears for a moment, as though that could retrieve the glimpse of the future, but it's already gone.

Presumably thinking that you're snubbing her intentionally, the girl makes a loud "Hhmph!" and crosses her arms.

You put your hands down and smile apologetically. "I'm sorry," you say, although your voice is distant, distracted. You're gathering your things to leave—sketchbook closed and in your book bag, pencils tucked in a side pocket. "I... I have to go."

She slips out of her seat and comes around the table as you stand. "Is something wrong?" She's shorter than you—most people are shorter than you—but somehow manages to hover over you, her face now a mask of concern.

Too distracted to be irritated, you shoulder your bag and start to walk. "No, nothing. It's fine, thanks. Bye!"

School has paused for lunch, so no one cares if you wander down the hallway by yourself. You're grateful for that, because you need the time alone to think. It's been a week or so since you heard anything from the future, and you want to think about how to interpret it, or whether you should interpret it. Telling anyone would be a mistake. No one pays attention to the 'hearings' you're sure about; with such vague details, no one would believe it's as important as you feel it must be. Even you almost don't believe it. Once you would have, instantly, but now... you've heard a lot of things the past few years that haven't come true, and you don't know what the cause of it is. Are you misremembering the ethereal voices? Are some of them piece of other people's futures, events that you only have access to in your own clairvoyant head?

Are you insane?

Wrapped in your thoughts, you make it halfway down the hallway before you realize that the girl from lunch followed you. She may have shadowed you forever without you noticing if she hadn't sped up to draw even with you and touch you on the shoulder. Startled, you jump away from her hand, hitting the lockers in your haste to get away.

"Sorry!" she yelps, reaching out a hand. Registering your glare, she thinks better of it and draws the hand close again.

Her mouth keeps moving, but you can't hear. "Hang on," you snap. She pulls up short, and you reach up to pull out the soft wax you stuffed in your ears as you left the lunchroom. You do that sometimes when you think future events might be trying to reach you; the present world doesn't go away when you hear the future, and blotting out your surroundings makes it easier to focus on those snippets. "Okay," you say, less sharply but in a voice still threaded with frustration. "What was that?"

"I- I was going to say I'm- sorry, why do you have wax in your ears?"

You press your lips together. "You're really annoying, you know that?"

The girl deflates. You feel bad for her, but this is for the best. If not the quickest to catch on, this girl is sweet, the kind who naturally draws good toward her. Good people, good things, good luck—she should have all of this in abundance, and if she sticks with you, she won't. Bullies tend to stay away these days, tired of the way you stare at them until your patience outlasts their antics, but they'll gladly use you to get to her, and her innocent reactions will be fuel for the flames. Even if she doesn't become an active target, no one will associate with anyone who willingly spends much time with you; befriending you means giving up anyone who could be a real friend to her.

Because you can't. You know that goodness exists—you see it all the time. Heck, you see it before your eyes at this very moment in the hurt expression that tells you, more clearly than any greeting or inquiry, how much this stranger wants to help you. For whatever reason, though, it has always lain just out of reach. So you don't know how to be a proper friend.

Beyond that—and this brings you back to your previous train of thought—you just can't trust her. You have people you nod at in the hallway and say hello to and work on projects with, but you have no friends, and you you’re your reasons for that. Friends tell each other things, and you can't tell her anything. Not when you don't know how she'll take your knowledge of the future, and not when you yourself don't know how to take it, as you so rarely do these days.

Besides, even though she seems sweet, you can't trust her to not touch you, to not turn on you, to not rip up the pictures that you pour your lonely heart into, to not tell an adult that you're unbalanced, to not hurt you. Sweet does not always mean kind, and good is not invincible.

She's squirming again under your gaze. You don't like to blink, because your sight is the only thing that thoroughly and effectively grounds you to the present, but you do so a few times, your own personal apology.

"Right. I'll... I'll see you around, then."

Before you have a chance to respond, she turns and flees back to the cafeteria. You stare after her, chewing thoughtfully on one side of your lower lip. "Will you?" you ask quietly, although she is already out of earshot. People speak about the future so certainly. Even when they make perfunctory comments, like her parting statement, they act like they know how things will turn out, whereas you avoid making even simple plans because you frequently have to rework what you thought you knew about the future. Do they? Is there some certainty embedded in the human race that passed you over? Is the chaotic, unmanageable world you hear a fabrication?

You hear the future. They don't.

You ought to know so much more than them. You don't.

Sighing, you resume your meandering and try to recall the voice so you can think about what it means.

The entire incident is still on your mind when you get home. You can't avoid it. The noises have fluctuated for as long as you remember, but lately they've been quieter than they have been since you were five. Anything you hear is worth paying attention to. Unfortunately, you can't get anything out of this episode. It was too short, and the cafeteria was too noisy, for you to remember it well or for many clues to have leaked through.

Five. An interesting time, that age. You were five when you first tried to convince your parents that you heard the future; the result was a lot of worried looks, some angry words, and several frustrating meetings with a therapist. (An informal one, since District Ten doesn’t have any that you know of, and if it does then your family could hardly have afforded it, even then.) When you expanded your attempts to your classmates, the teasing began, and it only escalated after you retreated into your drawings and spent less and less time playing games with the other children. Even after you learned to keep your mouth shut in third grade, the little torments continued—stealing your supplies, small physical abuses, social ostracizing, nasty names. All things that could fly under the radar and that you couldn't prove to any teacher's satisfaction. You wonder, sometimes, what your life would have been like if you had never opened your mouth—but you always know that you never could have lived with yourself if you didn't at least try. Some of the things you've heard could have been important. Were important.

(If they were real at all. You used to be so sure, with the same childish certainty that made you think your parents could fix everything. Why aren't you anymore? Why does life have to ruin everything, even the things that should belong to you and you alone?)

The door is locked, so you fish out your own key. Why your family bother to keep the house locked, you're not entirely sure; it's more than humble, a collection of stolen goods and cheap things, all of it equally run-down. (Pretty much anything good is stolen. Even your own sketchbooks and pencils are carefully filched from your art teacher—something you have no remorse about, as you think you would go insane without them. Presuming you haven't already). Perhaps it's just for appearances.

"Hello?"

No answer. Your parents are probably still at work. Where your brother is, you don't know, and don't know whether you care. The two of you were never close, but in recent years, between his growing surliness and your deepening distaste for human contact in general, it's gotten particularly hard for you to stand in the same room together and keep up a good mood. Strange as he is to you, you love him, and you worry about the abuse he gets from the Peacekeepers and the simmering anger that could get him locked up (or worse) someday—but you don't mind getting through most of the day without having to talk to him. Or your parents, for that matter, whom you love, but who are far too affectionate for your reserved tastes. Not that that's difficult.

To prolong your time alone, you go to your room and shut the door as best as you can. (It's a tetchy thing, that door, popping open whenever it feels like it and often not even closing all the way to begin with. No matter how many times you try to fix it, it only works properly for a few days at a time, so you've pretty much given up on it.) It's a small place, barely big enough for a bed and some drawers for clothing and other belongings, but it's entirely yours, and it's private. As you flop down on your bed, you breathe a sigh of relief. Home.

In the silence of your room, you could probably take out the wax in your ears, but you don't. Quite apart from blocking out distracting real-world noises, the wax gives you a feeling of safety that few other things can approximate. That barrier between your ears and the world has protected you from bullies, helped you think, and created the void in which the entire world seems to fade away and you can ignore your hunger and questions and pain. By now, you are so used to it that the very feeling of it in your ears is comforting.

That makes school difficult sometimes, as your teachers don't appreciate it when you can't hear their lectures. Not that you were ever destined to do well in school anyway. You're not stupid or anything, but you don't learn well by hearing or even reading things. You need to get your hands on something to learn how it works. Otherwise, it feels insubstantial and untrustworthy, as though the information could abandon you as easily as one of your visions. The only things you've ever been good at are math, which never changes and which can be expressed in drawings, and art, for obvious reasons.

Of course, everyone else seems to think you're stupid. Or crazy. Or both. You've certainly heard both words—and worse—often enough.

But that's another story for another day, so you pull out your homework and set to work on it—math first, as always, then English, on which you give up halfway through. You hate English, all the uncertain answers and unsolvable problems. You want answers. You want certainty.

Agitated, you glance once at your history—Write about Panem's greatest accomplishment between the years of the first and twentieth Hunger Games, providing evidence to defend your response.—and dump it at the end of your bed in favour of your sketchbook. You flip through the pages until you find the birds, still flying together on their own, flying futilely toward a barrier that they will not see until the first of them crashes into it.

With a deep sigh, you settle down against your pillow and draw until your parents call you out for dinner.