Brilliant Bruisers :: [Kronos + Basil]
Sept 28, 2014 23:17:31 GMT -5
Post by L△LIA on Sept 28, 2014 23:17:31 GMT -5
I know every second of every day that they need me, but I'm too young to be their dad. That's not even to mention how I was never meant to be anyone's mother — not now, not ever. Yet each morning comes and I wake with the dawn, cracking eggs into frying pans to feed the open mouths of four hungry baby birds, smoothing down the cowlicks in Pony's hair as he trundles by and bringing Mosca breakfast in bed when she's too weak to lift the sheets I tucked up under her chin the evening before. Months have passed this way: herding my younger brothers down the road and off to school, a trio of wayward lambs that nag at my worries, and dragging my father's axe out into the woods in a desperate attempt to pretend my shoulders are just as broad and capable as his were.
THWACK. I know I'm the oldest and when the time without our parents was still being measured in days and weeks, I thought age was enough. THWACK. The reflection in the mirror was almost proud at first, confident that I was a man and that this sudden weight of responsibility was something I could carry, maybe even with ease. THWACK. Except that each day I come into this forest to chop wood, the act of slamming a sharpened steel blade into the trees feels less like self-preservation and more like a race to see which of us will fall first. THWACK. The trees are older than I am. THWACK. Taller than I am. THWACK. Stronger than I am. THWACK THWACK THWA—
My father's axe lodges itself too deeply into the bark and stubbornly refuses to be pulled free. After ten minutes of tugging, I fall.
Sprawled out on the ground, I punch the earth with empty fists, burying my knuckles in dirt and hollering nonsense at the canopy of leaves above me. Our mother used to tell us endless stories of the faeries that watched over us from up there — from all around — but my mother was a liar. There's no one watching over me. So much of my life was wasted chasing her stories of magic and mischief through these woods, invisible glitter embedded into the lifelines stretched across my curious palms and now the memories of her tales taunt me with unfulfilled promises. For all the deer tracks I followed in hopes of meeting a centaur or every message for the Fair Folk I scrawled onto scraps of paper and tucked away into hollow trees... I feel cheated. It's enough to make me hate these woods, enough perhaps, to be the reason I continue coming out here each day, trying to single-handedly tear them down.
Today the trees continue to stand while I lay with my back pressed into the soil, however.
Hauling myself up, I glare at the axe. It leers back at me, taunting me with blunt evidence of how I'm probably not strong enough to keep going. These are the things my younger siblings don't see, can't see. Around them I have to be better than this, every look swearing that taking care of them is horribly easy, so that no one worries. We've all worried enough since our parents disappeared and now it's up to me to quell their fears and keep the magic alive for them, even when I don't believe anymore. Looking into their eyes, I know all too well that I can't get away from this... but right now it's just me and I don't have to put up a front for anyone.
I spit childishly at the axe and turn on my heel, stomping off in the opposite direction of my responsibilities. On and on, I walk until I reach the creek that stretches out in two directions: one way leads back toward home and the other runs away to somewhere less familiar. My feet refuse to turn back and I follow the water until the fence rears up before me, caging me into this place of false magic and too much, too much, too much. Without thinking, I'm already in the water, ducking beneath the surface and escaping with the fish that swim so freely to the other side. It's the first thing I've done in a while that has truly felt easy.
The forest beyond the fence feels different and if I still believed in magic, maybe I'd describe it that way. It's not a sixth sense for faeries dancing in the branches above me or flocks of rainbow crows cawing out in the distance, but that the air feels lighter. Less heavy. More free. Even the footprints I leave behind seem less weighted and when I close my eyes and turn my face up to the sun, I'm not thinking about Pony or Atreyu or Ama or Mosca. Here, there's just me. It's a warm kind of selfishness.
Coming up on a stretch of sun-bathed grass, I strip my sopping shirt off and hang it on a low tree branch before laying down in the light, sprawled out with no cares for anything. The incriminating water of escape that lingers on my skin slowly dries and I think I could stay here forever. I feel eighteen again. Not in the way where I'm supposed to be a man, but in the way where I'm still allowed to be a kid. Here, I'm no one's dad and that's okay. Everything is okay.
