2020, Claudius Valentine
This, maybe, the first time, I didn't get called "pussy" in PE class for it turns out I'm good at épée and saber-fencing, a combat sport known to having the use of sword to fight. Sounds like ancient. Then there's me on a bench just outside the café I worked on to get by, waiting for my shift, looking at the raven pen Helen gave before she left. "You're a quarter before a kilo year older than I am," she said.
At first, even how creative my mind works, I couldn't decode what she meant and so took it literally, leading my ass to google, searching for image about how people were during the 1700s and stumble on to a girl with crown. Women before sure look tough but soft and it got me smiling. She was curving her lips like a mandated kid to eat brocolli when everyone's eating ice cream and then up to the eyes that scream anguish. Whoever drawn this probably was lonely. If I were to analyzed the sketch, she hated her crown and probably forced to marry some kind of an elite like Netflix's.
I sketched her on my palm using the pen due to boredom that day, carefully leaving details on her lips and the fine wrinkles In it. Simultaneously inked her jaw for not getting what it really looks like. Then back to her eyes, scrutinizing the almost colored like tropical tree leaf, slightly dilating the pupil.
"Pardon, can you not get in the way?" says a fine voice that furrowed my brows. I mean since when a bench obstruct a way? And so I look back to tell off only to be astounded by a set of army in their weird-looking suit, chasing that girl in an even weirder aqua ball gown.
And in that moment, I knew, I was in the year 1770 where I am a quarter before millennium older than Helen and, or Chomsky and, or Lenneberg and it fucked the crap out of me.