chaos theory ; arachne&arissa

Fists pound the inside oh my skull, bright knives piercing closed lids and forcing my eyes open. The last night was a haze of lips and fists pushed through short hair. Of bitter tastes and bright lights and meaningless love. It's been but two hours since I stumbled home, unsure whether to be relieved or saddened that my parents no longer sit up, waiting for my return. (I decide upon the former because the latter is much too painful.) 

I slip pain pills into my morning coffee, watching the bitter white dissolve like sugar in the drink. Slipping frail fingers underneath the sharp porcelain I drink deeply, suppressing my stomach's recoil at the horrific taste and downing it with a child's vigor. I don't mind the bitter taste left upon stale taste buds as I flee into a world not made for me. 

Four is filled to the brim with careers, with children so willing to throw their lives to the wayside for a chance at glory. I once felt their hunger, the sharp biting that ran through my veins just as numbing opiates now do. The mission seemed such an important one. Worth dying for. Worth leaving families for. Worth everything. 

Two years after one finally came home I'm not so sure. 

I've seen nothing of Leon. Nothing of importance, at least. It seems that winning did nothing but break the boy and then force him into meaningless obscurity. And I'm not supposed to be glad that my nineteenth has passed. I'm supposed to mourn my survival because I could have died a hero or lived long enough to become a coward. 

Even as meaningless as my life has become I am so, so glad. 

The few blocks that I must travel to reach work have collapsed in upon themselves, as I have arrived in no time. The drugs haven't even taken the edge off as I slip through glass doors and smile at the students who almost literally have placed their lives within my palms. I never thought of it before, like that, of the pressure put on trainers. Because if I forgot to teach them anything, messed up one technique, it could very well be the reason they die, god forbid, their name be pulled.

The stress weighs on the corners of my lips and I cannot remember the last time a smile graced them. 

Angel tells me that I have a smile to light up a room. He says that it could replace the sun and he would enjoy every second of my radiance. (I have to laugh because my brother's words are going to charm a great girl one day.) And then he'd tug on my curly strands of auburn, pressing them against my top lip and informing me that I should never grow a mustache. We'd burst into a fit of giggles lasting so long that the both of us were on the floor clutching at our guts. 

She's here today. I press myself against one of the mirrors in the back and watch the girl with a body as smooth as water's currents, The waves are angry, rapids white as snow and sizzling as they overwhelm a dummy in the form of a sleek silver blade. 

Arissa Krigel is her name, a vixen in her own right with dark hair and bright eyes. She's a force of nature, knocking over the dummy and pressing into it with her blade. She's my age, perhaps even a year older, but she has not given up. Unlike me she keeps the title of career close to her. She arrives with the vigor of a twelve year old finally allowed into the gyms and bests even the strongest of eighteen year olds. I don't understand why she remains, but I cannot take my eyes off her as she moves. 

"I'll never understand what they do to you." I concede, pointing to her fallen enemy and approaching carefully. My hair is taught against my skull, contained by a colorful band as it nips the back of my neck. A single longsword becomes an extension of my body, a third limb, as I slice through thick air and downward into the dummy's skull. "But I think you've won."

And my voice is like satin, but my heart runs as rough as a cliff face.