save me from the dark {South}

I wish I were pretty, I wish I were brave
If I owned this city then I'd make it behave
And if I were fearless then I'd speak more truth
And the world would hear this
That's what I wish I'd do, yeah

When I climb, the world spirals so far away that nothing can touch me. With scrabbling hands and dirty feet I can climb so high that the rest of humanity look like nothing but ants on the ground of my dream-canvas world, so far away from the hungry faces and sharp words of my oversized, underfed family that I can simply clamber my way up to simpler days, when the mottled picture of my hallucinatory world wasn't shot through with so many dark splotches of increasing poverty and unfounded desires for me to grow up. No one understands that I can't grow up; I am the product of a child's mind and therefore cling to a child's life even as it begins to slip through my fingers. Sometimes I wonder if growing up and waking up equate to the same thing for a me, a dream-death that will send me gasping into consciousness, locked in a feverish haze, five-years-old and fresh from hallucinated years of boundless adventure. Either way, I'm not too excited to find out. There is so much left in this world of my subconscious design left to discover, and I would hate to leave it in favor of sterile hospital sheets and a reality with too many limits.

The texture of the tree is rough and familiar against my bare, dirt-dusted feet, welcoming me back like the embrace its own prodigal daughter. My real home has never been on the ground, where I stumble easily and see too much despair. The sky holds the answers for the things I can't find, and I breathe a little easier when I can reach up to kiss the clouds. The afternoon weather is beautiful, the first hints of fall coloring the air and the leaves, and the inside of my crowded house had begun to feel suffocatingly small, even my usual escape-place on the roof outside Robin's window feeling too limited. So I had clambered down one of the creaky beams holding up the sagging porch roof, scrambling off into the vast unknown of Six's bustling rush hour until I'd stumbled upon the tree with which I've started to get acquainted, a strong old maple with a promising height and sturdy looking branches. One of the books Robin gave me is tucked into the waistband of my patched, threadbare skirt, a story of a noble king and brave knights and wise sorcerers that he said I would like. Once I reach the highest branches I'll burrow into the pages and get lost in a fantasy world, a dream-within-a-dream that will carry me away from the pursuing worries that follow me and nip at my heels.

The stretching of my limbs as I begin my ascent pulls dangerously at the worn thread holding together the pieces of my shirt, a three-or-four times hand me down that surely passed from Mama Nina to Persia to Baby to Gypsy to me, but I can't bring myself to care as blunt nails with a crust of dirt forever caked beneath them dig into the bark and pull me upward, nimble hands and feet scrabbling for holds and catching on the most innocuous branches until the ground begins to sink beneath me. I smile, already breathing a little freer after escaping the hated force of gravity.

I can see even from close to street level that the way upwards is clear, a convenient ladder of thick, steady branches, but I find more of an opportunity for a thrill in the less-traveled path of narrow limbs and footholds that are few and far between. In a world where even the great horror of death only means returning to consciousness, I fear nothing, rushing into the arms of danger with a blinding-bright smile and a rush in my veins that is as close as I will ever feel to touching the sun. The smaller branches creak dangerously beneath even my malnourished weight and I smile broadly, the ghost of a laugh blooming across my lips as I give a small hop in an effort to reach the steadier handhold above me.

Crrrrrrrrack! With a shuddering snap the branch beneath me gives way, the sensation of flying falling swooping in my stomach as I tumble towards the ground. Where most people would scream in terror, I find myself shrieking with laughter as the grassy carpet at the base of the tree looms nearer, hands darting out to grip the surrounding branches only enough to slow my descent, to prolong the fantastic feeling of being suspended in midair for a few milliseconds longer. I've found that a world without fear holds so much more possibility for joy that I could never allow myself to be afraid of anything. With a final, joyful whoop I let my grip slip from the branch overhead, plummeting groundwards uninhibited until I collide with a dark-haired form beneath me, sending the both of us tumbling into the grass in a tangle of limbs and a shared, sharp exhalation of air.

I blink once, twice, newly-found breath passing over my lips in exhilarated puffs as I let my vision focus on the boy pinned underneath my wispy weight, all deep, dark eyes and delicate, brooding features like one of the tortured heroes in Robin's precious books. He looks so horribly, bone-deep sad that it stops my heart for a second, the kind of sorrow that mixes with anger and eats away at a person's soul (he'll never admit to it but I know that's why Bear keeps trying to find something to destroy, because he thinks it will fill all that emptiness inside him). My exited wheezing stutter-stops to a halt and I tilt my head to the side curiously, the bark-roughened heels of my hands still pressed into his shoulders from where I pushed myself up to look at him. "Why do you look so sad? I bet you'd be real handsome if you smiled."

Hold on to worry so tight
It's safe in here
Right next to my heart
And I'll shout at the top of my voice
"Let me go, let me out, this is not my choice!"

I wish I were pretty, I wish I were brave
If I owned this city then I'd make it behave
And if I were fearless then I'd speak more truth
And the world would hear this
That's what I wish I'd do, yeah

This boy is something the like of which my dreaming consciousness has never seen before, all spun-glass delicate bone structure and eyes that hold galaxies behind them. There's an odd mix of strength and fragility inherent in him that seems an impossible paradox, and I'm nearly tempted to touch his skin just to see if he'd either splinter beneath my fingers or stand hard and unyielding as a stone. I don't, though, because Robin always tells me that there's a thing called personal space and I don't do a very good job respecting it (I can't help it; I explore the world by the desire to feel it in my own hands, I work in close encounters and that's just another part of me that people seem to have a problem coming to terms with), so instead I push myself off him with a muffled oof of effort, crouching in the grass with my head cocked in a curious, searching expression as I watch him. Sometimes I wonder at the lack of logic in my dream-landscape life, and I can't quite make sense of why my subconscious would choose for me to fall out of a tree and onto a walking contradiction.

But then he breaks into a grin as per my suggestion and the world lights up, a sticky-bright flash of teeth and a beaming curvature of lips that could outshine the sun. His smile is that heartbreak kind of pretty the way Mama Nina's is when you can actually get her to smile, the rarity of it and the fragile sadness still hiding behind it blending together to make it something rare and precious. I wish I could take that smile and roll it up and put it in my pocket, carry it around with me and pull it out in the darkest part of the night when it feels like the walls are closing in on me. I find myself with an answering grin of my own blooming across my face, not near as pretty with my chapped lips and somewhat crooked teeth but just as earnest. "See, I told you! You got a real nice smile. You should smile all the time."

”Well, a very pretty girl just crashed into me from a tree, it is very hard not to smile,” he says, extending his hand toward my spot on the ground. ”Here, let me help you up.”

"I don't need help!" I reply, a little affronted. A lifetime of tumbling around in the dirt with my brothers has taught me to always haul myself up by the bootstraps and keep going, especially when there is too much I haven't seen yet to sit around and wait for someone's help. I scramble to my feet in a clumsy blur of movement, nearly tripping over myself in the process. I've always been far more graceful off the ground than on it, and suddenly I feel awkward and stilted with my feet planted in the grass. Even though I've always been tiny there's a need for height that sits in my veins and never leaves. Without a second thought I dash back over to the tree and shimmy up the trunk quick as a flash, clever hands darting out to the sturdier branches this time until I shuffle out on one of the thicker limbs and come to a rest, perched in a monkey-ish crouch and staring down at my new acquaintance with the sunshine smile. It occurs to me a little late that he might find me a bit odd (almost everyone does); while my brothers and sisters are used to having normal conversations with me when I'm perched on top of the bookshelf or even the roof, the same can't be said for the rest of the world.

Still, he's different, with his starshine eyes and a soul so quietly broken that it seems to paint his skin into a pastel canvas of fragility. Whatever part of my dreaming mind this boy came from, he's a manifestation of something so beautifully shattered that the whole world turns into a mosaic around him, fractured and flawed but unique in a sad, melancholy sort of way. Maybe Bear's right and I'm too nosy for my own good and one day that'll get me into trouble, but he fascinates me. Head still tilted to the side and face still contorted in concentration, I shift forward into a sitting position on the branch, pinning the worn fabric of my skirt beneath my legs to that it doesn't shift on the breeze. Then with another thrilling falling sensation and a high-pitched giggle I let myself topple backwards off the branch, hanging on skillfully by my knees and swinging back and forth until my momentum wears out and I'm face-to-face with the sun-smile boy, even though he's still standing on the ground and I am upside-down, my hair falling towards gravity in a tangled curtain.

"I don't know what you think you're saying, though, 'cause I ain't even close to pretty." My eyes narrow speculatively, trying to see through his words and figure out if he's playing some kind of trick on me like that one time Bear told me he was getting me a unicorn for my birthday. "My sister Persia, she's real pretty, but she spends forever in the bathroom and I think it'd be awful boring taking all that time just to be pretty. Robin says I'm pretty but he has to say that 'cause he's littler than me and he knows I'd kick him if he said I was ugly."

Forever trapped in the fever-dream loop of a childhood I'll never outgrow, I tend to ramble when I get started talking. The words flow over my lips like a babbling brook, nonsensical half-musings that hang in the air as I let my arms drop over my head and use the momentum to start swinging again, the blood rushing to my head making the world blur into a mottled back-and-forth smear. "Besides, I got no use for being pretty. S'not like it's any fun. No siree, I'll take my trees and my dirt and leave the makeup and curlers to my sisters. Don't you think being pretty's overrated when you gotta work so hard? You're the don't-have-to-try kinda pretty, though, my sister Gypsy's like that. She's not sad-pretty like you, though. Hey, what's your name? I'm Lark. Lark Keeni."

The rushing in my head finally gets to be too much and with a small grunt of effort I curl in on myself and haul my own weight back up to a sitting position on the branch, the blood-blush fading from my face and bare feet swinging absently through the open air. Most of the time I know Robin's my only friend, but that never stops me from trying to make new ones and feeling a quiet sort of heartbreak as they all outgrow me.

Hold on to worry so tight
It's safe in here
Right next to my heart
And I'll shout at the top of my voice
"Let me go, let me out, this is not my choice!"