Silent

Enter, Kary

Chapter 1

A girl was lying on the grass in, seemingly, the middle of nowhere. At first glance, she would appear to be sleeping. The wind blew gently, tickling the girl's nose with her own hair. She sneezed.

_ _ _ _ _

Kary sat up, wiggling her nose in an attempt to avoid another sneeze. It didn't work. Sneezing yet again, Kary started laughing. Once she finished her spontaneous bout of laughter, she lay down again, watching the clouds. While most other children her age were playing on their day off from school, she preferred to watch the sky on her own. It required less energy for one.

Eventually the skies darkened, signaling the end of the day. Groaning, Kary got up. She had to get home or her parents would be mad at her. It was such a pain to get moving again though. With a drawn out sigh, she began the journey home. It actually wasn't that long of a walk but to her it felt like the longest walk she had ever taken. Funnily enough, it was. She didn't go anywhere apart from her cloud watching spot, and she never bothered to go on trips with her parents to other villages nearby.

She arrived at her door with a slight slouch. Opening it, she took off her shoes and stepped inside. The wooden floor creaked as she walked, annoying the living daylights out of her. She really needed to ask her parents to do something about it. That or figure out how to walk lighter. Doing so would involve her actually listening to the boring parts in her sports class. So troublesome...

Kary's parents reached her before she could get to her room. As usual, they lectured her on her posture and then expressed their worry by insisting that she should at least try to make friends. They believed that the reason for her laziness and bad posture was due to her being in her own company far to often. They thought that she slouched because she was lonely and was lazy due to lack of motivation. Quite frankly, they were right about the last part, she really wasn't motivated to do much.

She didn't care about what her parents thought. She found her own company more enjoyable than that of most people and slouching required less energy than standing straight.

However, Kary's reasoning was not accepted (or believed) by her parents and so she was subjected these lectures often when she was at home. While she appreciated that her parents cared about her wellbeing, it really did get on her nerves at times. She did have friends, technically, and she did well enough with most things that interested her (which wasn't very much). By her reckoning, she wasn't anti-social at all. She spoke, occasionally, and she interacted with people when necessary. She and one of her friends even watched the clouds together, usually falling asleep but it had to count.

While Kary was going through her reasoning in her head, her parents continued speaking. Eventually realizing that there was an expectant silence, Kary looked up slightly confused.

"Kary, did you hear us?"

"Uh, maybe? What was the question again?"

Kary's father sighed. "We asked if you wanted to come with us to the festival next week or if you will be hiding somewhere out of sight again. We need to know so that we can make the arrangements for the correct number of people. There would be no use in buying you festival clothing if you don't intend to appear anyway."

"Which festival is it? And where is it? How many people do you think will be there?" Rapidly firing off questions, Kary continued, "Would I have to dress girly? Would I need to interact with... normal people?" as Kary asked the last question she shuddered.

'Normal people' were most people. They expected her to be girly or smiling the whole time, which was a serious pain. Being girly meant she had to act shy, frail and stupid. Shy she was not, frail not really and stupid? Well there was stupid and stupid, Kary preferred to think she was very smart and just had a teeny weeny bit of recklessness and idiocy here and there. She was certainly not an Airhead though. Airheads were also annoying, always whining and giggling stupidly over some unimportant thing instead of finding something useful to do. Regrettably they were also the majority of the females in her class.

Once again lost in her thoughts, Kary forgot to answer the question. Eventually giving up on getting an answer any time soon, her parents left.

Kary ambled her way to her room, it was messy as usual. Cleaning it up was useless because it just got messy again. She'd made little pathways through the chaos, which required very little effort to maintain, allowing her to reach the important places with relative ease. One couldn't say that she had no method in her madness, although she certainly had some madness in her method.

Flopping onto her bed, Kary sighed. It wasn't a sad sigh nor was it a sigh of contentment. It was a combination of habit, tiredness and slight frustration. Contrary to popular belief, she wasn't deaf when she zoned out. She just filed the information away for processing at another time. Normally she would ignore her parents' invitation or say no outright. However this time she had a funny feeling. She'd had it for the past few days and it intensified when her parents asked her if she wanted to accompany them to the festival. It really was a weird feeling, almost like what she'd been told loneliness felt like. It couldn't have been loneliness though, she didn't feel the need to surround herself with more people. It was already enough trouble to deal with her classmates and family.

She decided to sleep on her decision. Nodding off, Kary began to dream.