ALTAIR YUE, DISTRICT SIX

ALTAIR YUE, DISTRICT SIX Dec 5, 2013 6:32:55 GMT -5

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Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on Dec 5, 2013 6:32:55 GMT -5

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ALTAIR YUE

I slipped along the ivy, feeling it catch on my pinafore and roots scrape across my skin. Beside me, the little boy giggled, a smile so crooked that it was nearly straight, frozen across his face. I glanced back at him sharply, narrowing my eyes at him, a playful spark in my gaze. "Remember Altair," I say, voice high and melodic, "Don't let the sphinx see you, or he'll ask a riddle and if you get it wrong, he'll zap you."

The little boy nods, a look of concentration transforming his features. I take his smaller hand in mine, and push my hair behind my ear in nervousness. I've already brought two others this way, only to lose them to the Sphinx. Together, we step out from behind our hiding spot, and my knees tighten almost instantly. There before us, as if waiting, is the Sphinx. I almost scream in frustration, but before I can do anything, the beast opens it's great, rocky maw and speaks:

"If you break me
I do not stop working,
If you touch me
I may be snared,
If you lose me
Nothing will matter."

I was born to be an earthquake.

The entirety of myself was formed out of crumbling rock and swirling ash, bits of space fallen from the sky. I was collected out of the corners of every house in the district, dust bunnies come together to form a body. I was made to shake, to wreak havoc upon my surrounding like a poltergeist. My limbs fly out against my command, at the slightest instigation. They do not belong to me and I watch sometimes, as my body becomes a crumbling world and the eyes of the person I know to be me roll into the back of their head. A thousand butterflies erupt from my chest and my mouth tastes of sand. It is fitting, I am made of sand too.

I remember being little, smiling all the time even though earth cannot bend and dirt would rather crumble than mold to my wishes. My mother told me that this showed how strong I was, that I could smile even as everything was wrong and I was born with a body that hated our union of flesh and soul. It was always rebelling, angry and spiteful. I was always storming, anything set me off. Really anything, if my sister dropped a plate, the noise of it's meeting with the tile would be enough to turn my body into lightning, and my rib cage into doves that scattered with screams.

In rainstorms with thunder and lightning, my mother had to wrap me in blankets and hold my ears tight shut, but it was like my feet could taste the air and the world would come crashing down anyway. I broke bones; feet, hands, arms and legs. My world was formed from the stars, and what they allowed. They were content to sit and watch, so that had to be my life too. It was like asking for the tide to stop coming in, to attempt to stop the epilepsy that I was born with. An impossible feat, but one my parents undertook nonetheless. My father was a biological scientist, my mother a naturopath. Both were convinced they could heal the tremors that rocked me.

I have tectonic plates that shift beneath my skin, slipping and sliding, sometimes too fast, and that is why I have seizures. I have a sister that is ten times stronger than me, and a father who thinks I might as well have been born a girl. My mother thinks I should not have been born at all, she should have terminated the pregnancy. Neither of them set out to have a son that cannot control his own limbs, that death looms over like a shroud. I like living, even if every day I lose track of the minutes and hours that fly by. Even if my body insists on self destruction, by way of tossing my limbs out to the wind just because I have moved to quickly, or my sister squealed to loudly.

They tried to contain me, to keep me safe they said. They put me in a room with padded floors and a mattress, nothing sharp, nothing I could fall against and hurt myself on. I spent my pre-teen years at a window that they had forgotten to encase in padding as well. My mother didn't want me breaking anymore bones, my father was tired of having to explain my episodes to the neighbors, so in that room I stayed.

I learned the stars from my place behind the glass, tasted autumn and spring from my open window. I felt like Sleeping Beauty, except I wasn't really a prince, just a prisoner to my own self. My parents had declared the flesh the champion, the spirit the loser. Yet, it wasn't broken, because whenever I woke up, out of sorts on the ground, in tears, I rubbed them away with a smile and got back on with my life. My sickness had conquered my parents, but never me.

Never me.

I'm never sure exactly what I was doing when the big one came, but I think my sister had slipped into my room and we were having a play fight. My sister never treated me as glass spun by elves, but as dwarven metal, forged in the depths of the earth where I was made. I guess her presence made me too excited. When I came to, I was surrounded by hedges that rose up on tiptoes to touch the sun, and wore a garment of silk over a body that was mine but wasn't.

Now that I sit here with open eyes, and a body that is no longer hooked up to various machines with tubes, I can say quite honestly that I can never remember which which in particular that I am supposed to be living. I cannot remember if I'm meant to be the one in the bed, or the one with the clipboard. I put the wrong clothes on, forgetting that mine are not the right ones, they are too boyish, too big. My wrists are bigger than I remember but I was in the labyrinth for two years, running forwards, always running forward but unable to find my way out.

My body is different than when I fell asleep, I know this. My father told me, I remember that, he told me that I was weak. He told me that I was a girl. I was a girl. I can remember running, nothing stopping me, no seizures making my body convulse, my eyes roll back. I remember long hair, a dress with knee socks, an apron and black shoes. I have delicate features, always have, thin wrists and a pointed chin. I have eyes that swallow up the light in the room, and spit it out again. My fingers are thin, bony, I am bony. Doc says it's because I've been on life support for two years. Doc says that the only reason they kept me plugged in was because my brain patterns were still going crazy.

Everything is wrong here, I am allowed to walk around, alone, with no one around. My feet take me through the halls, slowly building my stamina back up. I want to run again, like I did when I slept. I still have seizures, the earth still shakes, butterflies live inside my bones. I can remember the way the grass felt beneath my feet, as I ran, how sometimes there was concrete. I can remember the way my body felt, strong and capable. I remember the shape of it too, how it's so wrong to this one. My hair is too short, my chest too flat. I still have a grin that makes it's way across my face as quick as a jackrabbit, but it feels wrong. I am too tall, I shake too much, my body screams more than ever before. I am more fragile than I was.

I shut my eyes for what felt like minutes, but what I know was to be two years. When I awoke, it was here, in the hospital, in my new home. I haven't seen my family since I woke up. I belong here, in this hospital, I am legally theirs. I wonder if they are the ones who did it, who changed my skin, my very sex. I was not born a boy, I know I wasn't. What have they done to me?

I stared at the sphinx, incredulous. I have stood here again and again, waiting for a riddle that makes sense to me, watching as my companions fell around me, unable to do anything. This one, this one I know. I can't remember from where. I don't know from where. When I look down at the boy beside me, his face is screwed up in thought. The sphinx is expressionless, stony faced and uncaring as ever. The answer seems too obvious to me, I cannot tell if it is right. I just know that I am done waiting for the labyrinth to release me, I want to get out myself. So I press my tongue against the roof of my mouth, and hesitantly, answer,

"Heart."

I held the fort, and I swung my sword
I have muted the screams I have broken the falls
oh I have fought, and I swung my sword I have
muted the screams I have broken the falls

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