Fragile - Sequel to Skyfall

Fragile

Eyes flip open, softly. My eyes, irises brown, pupils receding, flying smaller from the light. Skylight on the ceiling opening light to the room. The blue bed is low to the floor, piled tall with blankets, a small fairy girl burrowed into the white and pink cushion. White-blonde strands spread over the ruffling white pillowcase. Her tiny frame shivers once, and calms.

The pink bed is higher up, close to the window that snow covers. My bed. Lying on the floor, the cold air inside chilling my arms and legs. The light is cold, white, regal and icy.

My cold feet pad out of the room, closing the door with a soft click. Snow is piled outside, pushing up on the door, icing the steps, sending birds flying as far south as they can. I follow a lone cold sunbeam into the room from yesterday. The one with a fire and armchairs and bookshelves and little glass vials filled with dusty air, reminiscent of a lost spring day.

The window in the kitchen is open, only the screen as a bar between me and the white drifts outside. Crisp breeze buffets through the tiny lattices in the metal screen. I lean, tip-toed, elbows on the sill, letting the wind blow back my hair as a tiny snowflake flickers through the screen and onto my shoulder. Tiny cold pinprick growing as the drop melts.

"Hello?" I call softly, hoping to hear an answer, though I know one will never come. The Hello drifts into every hallway, crack, and crevice, only to come back empty handed. A lonely echo of the grandfather clock is its only companion. I often wish there was a different friend for Hello. Maybe I'm back or I missed you so much. But no one is ever here. If anyone was looking for me they wouldn't come to a stranger's house, anyway. A house they've never met, with each window covered by a heavy curtain, trying to keep out anything unwanted.

As my eyes skim the cabinets, a question pops, spiraling into my mind. What will we eat today? Hand in hand with Will we eat today at all? Because sometimes we don't. And we let pop-tarts go stale, unopened boxes of macaroni asleep for weeks. Always a small hunger rests in my stomach. It's okay, though. It's better to leave things boxed and sleeping. We don't want to run out. If we run out, someone will have to find a shop, and so many things could go wrong finding a shop. The world is too dangerous. The world breaks people.

Shelby's Converse-clad toes peek in the doorframe, her thin mousy blonde hair flitting about in the cold wind. Her eyes tell me she's going to the yard. I nod okay, my eyelids sliding down in an I understand blink. Shelby flickers down the hallway.

I lean my head back on my chair, a whooshing sigh dissipating in the air. I don't feel like going outside today. Today I want to stay here. Today even the snow-clad yard, bundled in white, is too frightening. Today maybe even the soft yard could break me. I don't know.

My knees curl to my chest as I wrap around myself. Today I am not at peace. Today I need to be inside and away from everything that could be strange or foreign or mean or unfamiliar. I don't want to have that feeling like my throat is blocked and my head is closed and I don't know what I'm supposed to do and every scrap of emotion, tiny sound, and flash of light collapses in on me and pushes me down and I crumple onto the floor and everyone stares and my hair is wet with tears and Shelby is left standing there like a mute deer in the headlights.

I let another long sigh in and out and shake my head. That won't happen today. Because I'm staying in today. I stand up and steady my whirling feet with the armrest of the chair. Closing my eyes, briefly engulfed in darkness, I open from the long blink and begin my way back down the hall.

The room with the red and blue armchair and bookshelf and fireplace with the dancing ceiling seems to welcome me back. I scrunch into the blue armchair, watching the dancing light and dust in the vials on the windowsill. Dashes of powdery white laugh outside, pressing my eyelids together, letting dreams come in, uninhibited.