Fireflies

Exit Stage Tree

"You're afraid of being wrong? Being wrong is the best-case scenario." He takes a step closer when she doesn't answer. Stops when she raises a hand between attempts to slow her breathing down.

Touching can't happen, but being seen by those beautiful dark eyes feels like clammy fingers on her skin. She can't take it. Put her back in her quiet corners. Her mind can't sort through every possible way this could go wrong fast enough. There are too many outcomes. And when she tries, everything falls into a blank, dark corridor opening up around her. Familiar might be lonely, but inside her dark corridor the only existence she can ruin is her own.

Except Mason's voice, penetrating the sanctuary her mind builds around her to thunder off its walls. "You haven't done anything wrong, Marley."

She stumbles towards the stairs. Clings to the banister with covered hands. She can't trust herself to get down them without falling. She'll take the concussion over being in the noisy, cramped hall a second longer. Mason must recognise the fight or flight obliterating her sense of self-preservation because he halts at the top of the stairs. Voice lost to the din for everyone's ears but Marley's, he calls after her,

"The only thing worse than failing to stop this is being too afraid to try."

Cool air chills the sweat at her temples. Her body, ever a traitorous construct, never tells her what's going on until the last second. Never hungry until she's starving. Never realises she needs to pee before she's bursting. Now, her hands shake as she speed walks away from the guild hall, vision spotty as panic continues to build inside her.

Of course they didn't believe her now, when she's the truth. Everyone believed her when she lied and said she was fine for all those years, when she hadn't wanted anything. But now that she's told the truth, she was unbelievable because it wasn't the story they wanted. Marley isn't something worth celebrating. She's just a stupid, useless girl who should have compromised and given up and stayed on the tracks laid down by her parents. Marley shouldn't have thought she saw something in Mason like her. She shouldn't have looked for something that wasn't there. She shouldn't have laughed with him, gone to Dearynn with him. She shouldn't have spoken back to her family.

She shouldn't have wanted.

As she moves through the streets of Cartasia, another Marley huddles in a corridor of her mind. It's long and empty in there, with only one light at the end. She moves away from it. Light's too bright, and the laughter of the silhouetted shapes basking in it is too loud. It stretches all the way back to the guild hall, growing the longer and darker the further she goes. More distance quietens the laughter, but she doesn't move completely out of its reach.

No one likes complete silence, not really. Not even Marley in her dark corridor, where she can't say the wrong thing to stop the laughter. Listening is just as good. Pretending to be a part of it is what she's used to. You can't ruin anything from so far away.

She'll have to leave this corridor behind. Coming to Dearynn was a mistake. She doesn't belong here. Her place, as it always was, is on the fringes. Not bathed in the light itself. When she gets too close, she only darkens.

J.J. always said if something was her idea, if she thought of it, it would be doomed to end in failure. Now she's spreading.

Classic Marley.

"Miss Chaser!"

The warm pie crust voice drips poison as Mercer approaches. No one is around to watch, yet his smile is warm. It tricked her once. Easy to do when the holder believes every spiteful word they spit.

"Kardinal." What could he possibly have to say to her? Why does he have to say it now when she's so tired?

"Congratulations are in order. Firefly really exceeded all expectations today."