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May 29, 2019 01:03
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wordcount: 990 The Unthinkable Melody stormed down the staircase of Peaseblossom Hall, her term paper scrunched tightly in her fist. Her face was red as rose petals and her eyes as wet as dew and she felt the D minus burning in her hand, its 'must do better' in its smug, purple handwriting taunting her eternal ineptitude. In her haste she almost bowled over a fellow student heading upwards. The other student stumbled, missed her footing, and flittered into the air to prevent a nasty fall. "Careful there, Melody!" cautioned the pixie. "Sorry!" called Melody in her lilting pixie voice, barely glancing over her shoulder as she raced away, not giving anyone a chance to see her tears. Melody plonked herself down on the stone steps of the Quad, ignoring the many students chatting and laughing and playing float-ball around her. Another D minus in Intermediate Budding? Why am I even here? I really thought I'd understood it this time. It's enough to a make a pixie do the unthinkable. She wiped her eyes with one silken sleeve and took a moment to calm herself, looking up to the glass dome that covered the Quad, letting its refracted sunlight bathe her thin face in rainbows, and thinking of marigolds and honeycombs, sunshine and raindrops and ARRGH! D minus! She straightened out the crumpled paper, smoothing it against her thigh. Maybe she'd misread it, maybe there was mistake... But no--. There it was, still at the top of the page. The gaping maw of the D. The dagger through the heart of the minus. A strong wind gusted around her, swirling leaves and dust in tiny vortexes, then suddenly died. Melody looked up to see a crow had landed on the stone floor beside her. It was as large as she was, and as black as a sackful of midnight, with two faceted, obsidian jewels for eyes that she had always slightly feared might steal her soul if she looked too deeply into them. "Oh, hi, Melchior," said Melody. "Come join the pity party." "Caw," said Melchior. Alright. "Just look at this, will you?" Melody waved the paper in front of her. "Yet another D minus, can you believe it? 'Must do better?'" "Caw," said Melchior. Unbelievable. "Right?" said Melody. "I mean, I've been budding in the Meadowlands for a thousand years, just wishing for something new to happen, and then, like a dream, I get accepted at PeaseBlossom, to take it to the "next level" and now my budding isn't even good enough? I don't even like budding." "Caw," said Melchior. Sucks. Melody cast her face downward, and studied her perky boots. "I thought I wanted to be here. That it would be different and new, but it's just the same old thing, only this time everybody is judging you for it." Melody was quiet a breath or two, then continued. "Melchior, I don't know that I want it any more. Any of it - the flowers, the wings, I don't even like the pixie boots much." She wiggled her feet, then looked up at the crow shyly. "What's it like, the unthinkable?" Melchior shifted to stand directly in front of Melody, and she saw herself reflected in his two soul-hungry gems. The bird's eyes ate, rather than reflected light. Melody found herself spiralling into twin abysses and deep, deep within she saw two visions of herself, one in each jewelled eye. "Melody!" screamed one of them, in a hollow, broken voice, devoid of all delight. "Please don't do it. It's not worth it. Please!" "Is that me?" whispered Melody. She barely recognised her own voice, no longer the tinkling of brooks but the gurgling of stagnant swamp water, but she knew the answer was yes. She felt the wings on her back shrivel, their glitterdust clumping into sticky, heavy discharge. Her bones were filled with lead, heavy and poisonous. She was a bag of blood and sick and hate. She leaked cancer and she spewed bile. She was imprisoned by crowdark, with only a single porthole to the outside world. Outside she could see herself, still in the sunlight, still surrounded by the thousand rainbows of the Quad, a look of abject horror on her face. "Melody!" she screamed, hammering at the faceted window. "Listen!" But Melody-outside had already looked away, toward the crow's other eye, toward the other future. Melody blinked, and found herself back within herself, sitting in the Quad, the term paper once again crushed in her white-knuckled fist. She was shaking all over, the warmth of the day not even close to thawing the chill she felt. She drew her skirt over her knees, hugged her legs close to her, and just rocked for a few moments. Melchior watched over her, a dark and sombre guardian. Eventually she unwrapped herself from herself and sat calmly on the step. "Thank you, Melchior," she said, "for being honest." "Caw," said Melchior. Sure. "I've made up my mind. If there's a chance of something better, I have to take it. And you'll take care of things..of me...if it goes wrong?" Melchior gave a single nod "Well, then." Melody stood on the steps of the Quad, in the center of the great school she'd once felt so lucky to have been accepted into, surrounded by colleagues and teachers and people she'd never even met. She did the unthinkable thing. She lifted her arms and eyes to the great dome above her and sang the word that would unmake her. Silence followed. It had to. The translucent dome opened slowly, its segments separating like an orange flower at dawn, uncovering the sky. Something that once shone with bright eternity, but was now a dusky mix of risk, uncertainty and power, blossomed from it, released at last from its glass cage. Born anew, it sped into the unknown, followed a breath-width away by the beat of black wings.
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Jun 3, 2019 01:32
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