I rested my head over the warm sheets piled up as a pillow. My eyes closed gently, and my breath slowly lost its tense.
My hands tugged one of the folded blankets beside me and spread it all over my body. For all I know, I'm not safe, at all. But rest remains to be an option.
Seconds, minutes, and hours have passed, yet, no rest at all has been taken. My body has remained its stress, and so has my mind. I can't seem to forget.
But what has happened is not something to forget. Just almost everything, and yet, none of them are acceptable.
But there's something in me, that just... tells me it's alright. Like the voice, which now, seems to be nowhere to be found.
I lost a lot in this journey,in this place itself, it took a lot away from me. Like my life itself, is gone. And I can't seem to understand why I am accepting everything and anything that happens or is about to happen.
How quick I've accepted this reality I now live in, this new world that I was simply put into, this stranger of a person that I am now. Everything happens so quickly, that doubt and acceptance aren't choices, they've become events.
I've never been this transparent to change before, never been this welcoming. Yet I can not seem to understand now, what I've become, and what my world has too. Why is there something in me telling me to embrace it? As if... I am a part of it? Why is there a feeling of certainty in me that I'll eventually be alright?
My mind has been perplexed and slovenly that I couldn't think straight anymore.
I need a break
I clutch the slack of a blanket off of my body as i lift my head and got up. I roamed my eyes around, hoping to see something of enjoyment, well, at least, in humane form.
As I raised my head towards the ceiling I could see the exact same things I first saw here. The gigantic and enormous bookshelves, the massive amount of books to read, before it felt like captivity, but now it's starting to feel like home. The gleaming illusion of the ceiling in the sky itself just felt as if it were comfort itself.
I'm certain it wasn't home, but it's starting to feel as if it were.
I paced barefoot towards the shelves, and grabbed a ladder. As i scanned through all the books my eyes could reach, I saw none of my interest, I mean, I'd love to read them, but they aren't what I seem to be looking for, what am I looking for?
My hands browsed for any book that's just not about their superpowers, or how to heal some stupid illness like disappearing hands or uncontrollable blinking, or myths about how these species so called "asymmetrics" were killed, its probably not a fun myth anyway.
My eyes and hands stopped in one corner, marsyll fiction the category label said. Well, I don't know what about "marsylls" or if I'm even pronouncing the word right, although I think Trystann has explained that to me before, but I sure am interested in fiction.
I pulled out the smallest book entitled "How to screw things up." The pages were parchment brown and the cover was simply deigned with a print of scraps and a simple text illuminating its title and the author, whose name is "Joanne Sene." The book itself looks new, untouched, but what else here doesn't anyway?
I tugged the book into my left arm and went down the tall wooden ladder which I still was in. Barefoot, I paced back to the bed and pulled the toppled sheets around me as I sit comfortably on the edge of the bed and lean back on its headboard.
I opened the book on a random page and started reading, for all I know, in this place I'm most likely not going to be able to finish this book anyway since there would hysterically be something wrong happening to me again in a few minutes now, I'm not even surprised to be honest. I started reading through the lines of the book.
[ Why did I do that to him? Clare questioned in her mind. She was on her way home on a Wednesday night carrying two paper bags that contained snacks, tugging them into her arms as she sat in the taxi on her way home. She looked out of the taxi's window, staring at the passing street lights and the corners of the road, until the taxi stopped right in front of the street to Paul's house, the exact street. Caught up in traffic and stuck looking at the street to Paul's house, she remembered a lot of memories.
Like when it was late at night and she was crying, freezing in the cold air and didn't know where to go, she ringed Paul's phone and just when nobody in her contacts answered her calls, Paul did, within two seconds of ringing. He answered in a warm voice, "are you alright? Why are you still up? It's two am?" Clare could feel herself shrill as she tried to speak, " I'm at the waiting shed in the highway, it's cold, and I- I don't know where to go." Clare sat down on the edge of the bench and tugged her coat closer as she heard Paul shrug, "what are you doing there? Are you alright? Stay where you are, I'm picking you up," Paul replied in anxiousness. Within an instant, Clare jerked off of her seat and said "no!" She knew that she needed a place to stay and also Paul, yet, she didn't want to cause another major inconvenience. "Yes, I am going to," Paul told her as he hung up the phone call. Clare had none of a choice but to sit down again on the bench, hug her coat, and hopefully wait for Paul to arrive. After a few moments, a rush of wind hit Clare and made her look up, as she did,she saw Paul walking to her, had his messy hair and was wearing an olive green sweatshirt and black pants. He had earphones with only one plugged in his ear, hanging from his neck,while he had his left hand carrying a jacket and his right, a cup of coffee. He smiled as his gaze laid upon Clare, she wiped her tears as Paul wrapped her in the jacket he was holding. In surprise, Clare rushed towards him and gave him a tight hug, Paul's left hand patted her back and his right fled away trying not to spill the coffee in his hand.
Or like the time Paul waited for her in a convenience store and brought her home to introduce her to his parents and siblings. Clare appreciated it yet couldn't wait to leave because she was shy of his family. They ordered pizza and bought drinks when she arrived, Clare could never forget how much Paul's mom liked her, saying she was pretty and innocent looking. And how his dad, through the video call, told her how she wasn't so Asian looking and smiled to her a lot through the phone screen because he was outside of the country that time. Clare wasn't so comfortable around his siblings, 'cause they were teenagers, just like her, which in this generation, have judgmental eyes and high standards. ]
I closed the book shut. I couldn't understand what I was feeling, or why I was feeling that way at all. As I placed the book on the bed side I began to wrap myself in the blanket.
I don't know what's wrong. Is it because I feel useless here? Or that I cause too much trouble? Would that be it?
I guess not.
There's this feeling lingering inside me, I feel like I want something I can't get at the moment. This feeling of unsatisfactory made me tug the sheets harder.
My chest was heavy and I could barely keep track of my breath. His shrill voice keeps playing in my head.
That moment his cold palms touched mine, that quick tug. The warm embrace, the soft grasp he did on my arm.
All of it,
The way I felt his heart race as if it were to explode. His visible frustration. How much he wanted to save me.
Felt different.
When my shoulders bumped his. That feeling he showed, as if he was grateful, as if his worries were gone. One word. Finally. That's what I think he felt.
And all of it,
The way I was so afraid, the way all of that fear left within one warm embrace. The way his mouth moved, the way he talked to Astra. Those words, they fill my ears well.
Is what I've been wanting.
It felt like home, his touch, his warmth and coldness, his voice, his tug. It felt like the first time I was carried, the first time I was cared for.
But can't have,
Aside from all of those feelings. There was also his visible disappointment upon realizing who I was.
enough of.
And it made me frustrated. To know he feels different now. To know all of those feelings wont ever be felt again. To know it wont happen. Again
Ever.