Thou Shalt {Zoe|Tattle}

.// cassandra freya larker

Some say dreamers are the selfish ones. They stay cooped up in their own world, trying to protect themselves with the fragments of their imagination while the rest of the world crumbled to dust. She was seated by the window with the porcelain vase on the ledge, where the rattan chair was. Pale afternoon light passed through the dirty window panes and I admired how it gently touched the week-old petals, how it shown how dust settled on her quilt, and how it illuminated her face and casted shadows behind the slopes and valleys of her face. She looked so peaceful, so beautiful in the work of Time, and so unlike the ravaging mess that her lungs were and so Cassandra slightly tilted her head and transformed it into a painting in her imagination's eye. Grandmother turned, and it was like the soft decrescendo of a lullaby that led you further down the land what never was. Her wrinkled lips parted and she started to speak, "Cassa―" but what would've been the finishing touch for a living masterpiece shattered, rewinded back to one when her words dissolved into a frenzy of dry and heavy coughs. What would've been such a beautiful sculpture pulverized back into the earth, and it was then there that you see a girl, with flowers in her chestnut hair and paint in between her fingernails, was only looking through a looking-glass gilded with gold and out to the romanticized world of destruction.

Then yes. Maybe dreamers ― maybe this girl, was selfish.

But rejuvenation to humanity does not happen within a second, and no matter how delicate these numerous worlds Cassandra surrounds herself with may seem, the years that separated her from the day of her father's death and her mother's flight of strengthened them. The more seconds passed by, the better, and from the bare expanse of aversion something beautiful was made. The way the pigments blended to form a picture, the way ink made its mark on the paper and created a world, the way melodies transported you to a world where nothing was wrong and everything was safe; yes, it was beyond beautiful, and it lay as her present, like being inside a brickwall between the past and the future.

Ripred knows when she'll ever dig her way out of that brickwall, perhaps when she opens her fairy-dusted eyes and realizes that there's no way of breathing when you're trapped in a cage you made for yourself. But right now she was the same as always: the only beam of light inside a glass jar, while rest went on to cultivate fields and bring something to life. She passed by the dusty roads of the Seam, and while you would be quick to say that "now this is a girl stuck in her own world, and so she would dance her way through life ― or at least through roads," her feet hadn't got that certain bounce that made you think she would leap the next minute. Her old blue dress was no better than the next, and it paled once you look up and see her blue eyes, like the sky on a sunny day or maybe the water when you're lucky to have it clean, but they weren't gems you could sell in exchange for comfort. Though her slender hands carried her book of drawings and a charcoal pen in between the pages, it was useless either way when nobody had the time to stop and indulge in silly luxuries when there was a whole family waiting to be fed. Take away Cassandra's frivolities, and she was the same as everyone else. While she didn't have a family waiting to be fed at the end of the day, she had her own fair? fair share of tragedies and joys. The past hinged at her steps, but so did everyone else's burdens.

But that was not the case.

Majority of the world would do something in order the lighten the load on their shoulders, but she was not part of that lucky group. Instead, she cocooned herself with twigs and leaves, with spindles and stems, with dead branches and cobwebs that glisten in the morning sun. She reached the clearing, past the Meadow and into the clearing that stretched out until the fences. There was her willow, right in front of her, hanging leaves swaying with the wind to their own silent music that went on from years back and onto eternity. She chose to not rest by it this time, which was definitely something new when she was quite used to walking up the weeping tree and lean on its bark, or maybe climb on a branch and sketch from there or pretend she's a bird and sing, and soon enough she would hear a faint notes of a mockingjay from a distance and they'd be in inaudible harmony. But this time she sat on the base of the tree right next to it, where she could see and draw the willow. The ridges of the pen fell in familiarity between her middle, index finger and thumb, unlike the trunk of the oak tree against her back. Nevertheless, she drew her second home on the water-stained pages.

Just like every other artist doing their work, Cassandra gets lost with each charcoal stroke made on her paper. Each line becomes a wave, and the waves become an ocean and she's treading through what she would never in the dryland that was Twelve. But that was the use of imagination, wasn't it? To experience what could never be, to do what you could never do, to be someone who you could never be, to pretend. It was powerful, very much powerful. You could pretend as if you have wings, running around with your arms stretched out and looking up and you're flying. To pretend as if you were a princess that never needed anything else, where everything else was alright in that faraway land, so far far away that your problems never caught up to you. To pretend that your last resort for a chance in comfort was slowly dissipating into the wind, to pretend that those coughs were just something that anybody can have (and they were, but oh how she wished they didn't choose to live in her Grandmother instead) and something that would go away and be gone. And it will be gone, together with her beloved.

Fear touches her and she cringes away (breathe in, breathe out, in and out, do what your Grandmother can never seem to do), now wishing for imagination to be a lot more powerful than what it pretends to be. If it can create worlds, then it should banish unseen enemies. But if it can only banish night terrors, then at least it should bring back what never should've left. This time, she knew these were childish wishes. Even she knew was no bringing back her dead father. She had seen his dead body laying in his own blood, seeping from his cut skin, and joining the rain that conveniently poured from the dark skies. And there was no bringing back her mother, who ran away with her own will no matter how pained she looked. All this she saw from the same window, the slithering raindrops from the opposite side racing with her own tears. Not gilded with gold and fantasies this time, but thorns that pricked at her skin and willed her to wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up little girl, it's time to grow up. Wake up, wake up, wake up little girl, no one will wake up for you.

But apparently it wasn't the same with crying.

She looked up, to make sure the details were just like what she was drawing, only to finally see a pale figure with a shock of red hair on top of it. He ― or at least she could guess ― had his back against the tree and she noticed how she could clearly see how his chest heaves up and down, and up and down, as if breathing was a tedious thing to do. And right beside him was a brunette who too had her own set of pencil and paper. Cassandra smiled, but the corners of her lips immediately faltered when she looked back at the boy. She stood up, slowly now, careful as if he might run away with such delicate stature. To be honest, she had no other worries for the other girl, for she seemed like a ray of sunshine that just goes around to brighten everyone's days. She should've given them the privacy they needed, just like how everyone else seems to back away when she keeps her silence, but wasn't she a selfish, selfish girl? prospect of finally being with people who shared her interests looked aboslutely inviting, and so Cassandra sat at a reasonable distance from them, and smiled.

"Are... are you okay?" She said cautiously, as if this boy was a deer who would run away in fear.

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