Born of starlight and shadows

~Part twenty two: Stella(?)~

"So this is her," the man standing in front of me said.

The way he surveyed me made me incredibly uncomfortable, like I was a valuable object he was interested in buying rather than a person. It made me shiver. Then the other man-the one who had taken me out of that cell-tightened his grip on my shoulder.

I shivered once more when I realize my mind had corrected 'person' to 'prisoner' almost automatically. I almost wished I was still wearing the blindfold.

Though, of course, that hadn't erased the noise.

It had, weirdly enough, provided a sense of security. I couldn't see the place I was being forced to walk through. And that was the only distraction I needed to delve deep into my own mind, where my thoughts lurked.

I had a lot to think about. A lot.

I suppose I always did. I couldn't remember a single time, in fact, where my mind was completely free of any worry, of anything.

Even when I was sitting in a particularly monotonous class, maybe math or history my mind was still buzzing. More often than not, about things completely unrelated to the subject I was supposed to be engrossed in.

Ideas, inspiration for artwork I would have to wait to draw until school was over, particularly striking moments in books I'd read recently, snippets of conversations I'd heard-not eavesdropped on, as it was most definitely not my fault anyone talked about anything at volume that was easy for a passerby to hear, or my fault people seemed to always forget I was even around when they spoke, especially in places like school-overall stress about school and about life, and, of course, the fear that I would get called to speak (I found that I knew the correct answer rather often, but I never felt the need to raise my hand), or the realization that I needed to get a tissue or throw something away but didn't know how to do so in the maze of desks, people, and backpacks that was inside every classroom...those were just some of the swirls of thought I can remember occupying my mind.

Things-they've changed far, far too fast. Not for the better, either.

An example of this is what I found myself thinking about just a few moments ago. I haven't used this trick since I actually wrote things in my journal-a while ago-but my thoughts were bouncing off my brain even crazier than usual, so I tried to organize them to the best of my ability in the order they occurred in.

-> I was surprised and yet not surprised to find that the boy that had appeared in my dream was still in the back of my mind. I couldn't stop wondering who he was, if he was even real-though he certainly had seemed real. Besides, I didn't think my imagination, though stretched as it may have been due to all the time I spent trying to escape from my own reality, could come up with a person that...the word that came to mind was 'broken.'

-> For some reason that made me think of Hannah. If I had been talking with her right then, would she have spouted song lyrics? Actually she probably would have done so at any point in the conversation where she was reminded of a song. I wanted to know what she would have said.

-> That train of thought was dangerous. Hannah had told me I was safe, but she had been wrong, so very wrong.

-> So I quickly abandoned it, not wanting to wonder what Hannah's situation was like now and how she was faring.

-> Another fact that had taken hold of my mind: both my eyes and the maybe-almost hopefully-just-a-dream boy's were blue. And we had black hair. We looked pretty alike, honestly. Yet I knew I had never seen him before in my life. I had said so, and I meant it.

-> I was adopted, so it was possible for there to be other family members I had that I knew nothing about.

-> It was possible that this boy and I were related. Was it probable, though, or was this just some sort of strange coincidence?