and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires
This is not home.
It doesn’t call to her. It does not wind around her icy heart. It does not dig into her—does not lay claim to a soul that is utterly and entirely her own. Despite the parents that live here or, rather, lived here (ghosts that wisp around the edges of her vision and mind, barely real), despite the twin that still stalks the borders, she does not find herself drawn here. In fact, her returning is merely happenstance, a wrong turn, a few days of not paying attention—several forgotten shifts in direction and suddenly, here she is.
It would be irritating if it made her feel anything all.
She finds herself in one of the common spaces throughout Beqanna, the crowds too large, too boisterous for her liking. Their thoughts are clouded and thick, simple minds thinking simple thoughts, and her upper lip curls in distaste, annoyance flashing in her unnaturally dual-colored eyes. It is not surprising to know that the caliber of resident has not risen during her absence, but she finds it disheartening all the same.
One would think that they would either evolve or simply cease to exist.
Their durability is a shame.
She sniffs and then pulls back from the sticky masses, retreating into the shadows of trees that line the meadow, welcoming the cool air and the silence. She can still feel their thoughts, fluttering in the peripheral of her mind, but they are no longer so loud, no longer boisterous and demanding, and thus she can finally breathe—taking large gulps of cool air. Part of her wants to seek out the company of her brother, wondering what he has made of his life since she left. Another part of her wants to find perhaps the only other soul she even remotely considered a friend (although the very thought makes her stomach curl in annoyance). But, for the most part, she is content in the silence, in the alone.
Where she can hear her own thoughts. Where she does not sacrifice her sanity for another’s grievances.
Let them bicker and mourn and laugh—
She did not owe them residence in her own mind.
lynx