Sloom {Pinip}
Nov 14, 2012 2:42:31 GMT -5
Post by gamemaker kelsier on Nov 14, 2012 2:42:31 GMT -5
Talking
Doing
Deep thought
Hearing
It's been two months, thirteen days, ten hours and twenty fur and a half minutes since the last time you saw Juniper, your bird. She told you that she couldn't do it, whatever it was you were doing, and you didn't understand. You didn't know what you were doing, you thought you were protecting her, but then she ran away, leaving you to sit confused and alone in a boiler room you didn't know how to get out of. Your side hurt, and when smelly smoke boy, Kaelen, finally found you roaming the halls he was angry about your shirt. But at the time it didn't matter, you were more worried, more afraid for Juniper. The girl you had saved from the room remember? The girl who looked more likely to shatter into a billion pieces rather than walk steadily away.
She said she couldn't do it, and you didn't know what that meant. You had to look it up in a book, well you couldn't. So you got Kaelen to read to you until one day you impatiently snatched the book from his hands and read yourself. You read Hemingway, and he told you nothing about Juniper. You read Orwell, Tolkein, Pratchett, and even Rowling. They told you about beauty, the problem with governments, different worlds, and pure, simple love. They told you nothing about the bird you caught that flew away. So you read the things that playmate sweater bow tie boy gave you. Colt. Colt gave you e.e. cummings, Bennet, Shakespeare, these only served to make your frustration grow. As you became more eloquent, more able to read people better, you never found any text that told you what Juniper meant, and where she went.
One day you ran out of books that your pack owned, so you had to go to the library. You'd spend all day in there, and come out only when it closed, avidly reading whatever you could find. You read about sciences, about maths. They went right over your head at first, but now you are beginning to slowly understand. You found books on the human body, and where the heart is. You learnt that the beasts that roam these halls don't have paws, but hands. You have hands too, but no! You have paws, you are a wolf. You still run on all fours when you forget yourself, sometimes forget to put on clothes. But you can speak now, can form coherent sentences, sometimes surprisingly smart ones. You pull words from your Shakespeare, your Hemingway. You called Kaelen an orc once and he got mad. Colt couldn't stop laughing. But still, where ever you looked, you could not find a trace of her anywhere.
In that first few weeks, you tracked her back to her den one day and watched in worry as she went in. You whimpered slightly, but it wasn't loud and she didn't hear. You saw her once, and then she disappeared. The last time you went to her den, it was silent and empty of her. She hadn't been there for days, and you began to worry, thinking she was gone. Maybe she was dead. Maybe some wolf had finally come along and put her out of her misery.You didn't want that. She wasn't a wolf, she was a beast from the underground. Then you thought that maybe the men in the coats had taken her away, had gotten her without your protection. Maybe they had. You began to think that you'd never see her again. Not ever. The thought of that loss was almost as bad as when your mother and father finally dwindled away and your brothers and sisters left. But ten times worse.
Now it's today and you haven't seen or heard of her. You haven't smelt her scent in days and days and you're beginning to forget it. Your smelly boy and bow tie boy are gone. The den is very quiet, and you're completely alone in a pack that doesn't really know what to do with you. You tried one of your boy's stupid sticks and you didn't understand what the great thing about it was. It made you cough and feel gross. You helpfully threw out all his sticks. Then you shredded the curtains and knocked over the garbage can. You waited and waited, and are still waiting because they haven't come home yet, and you're not sure if they will. In your solidarity, you have discovered a pattern.
Everybody leaves. It makes sense, because you are completely alone, and there is no one left. You don't know why you didn't realize sooner. Maybe it's because before coming down into this giant den, you didn't know books, didn't know words. Now you can speak, now you read and write like you have been your whole life in it's entirety. It is lonely. Having thoughts, being able to think without being afraid of all the new things around you. Everything has suddenly become clearer, and where you were always in an ignorant, blissfully unaware state before, now you have read books. Now you have read histories. Now you understand what a weapon is, and you understand the human tongue. You have become less happy, and more sad. It is not a nice thing.
Today you walk through the den, feet taking you to places you've been, and to places you haven't. You've been locked in that tomb of a library for a very long time, two turns of the long pokey thing on the big old thing that sits on the wall in there. So you suddenly stood, leaving the one copy of District Thirteen's history on the table you were at. You don't know why, but suddenly you just were itching for a walk. One hand tugs at the collar still around your neck, but there is no longer a boy to attach a rope to. So you have to take yourself out, and yourself follows it's nose with too much freedom. Today you didn't follow your nose, your feet followed it's memory. The reading glasses that the doctors gave you are tucked snugly into your pocket, and you burrow your chin down into your black coat. Winter is coming, and cold seeps into the den as if there are no walls to protect it from the winds.
When you finally look around you, there is the boiler room right in front of you, spots of blood still on the floor from when you were here before. But there is no bird, no wolf boy on the ground. There is no wolf boy anymore. There is only you.
