the androgynous keeper of plushfrogs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
crossfortune) wrote2011-05-06 02:02 pm
crossfortune) wrote2011-05-06 02:02 pm
Entry tags:
lost and never found
Title: lost and never found
Prompt: trapped
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 785
Content Warnings/Notes: aftermath of (assumed) sibling death, implied violence
Summary: When the entire world turns upside down, it doesn't change anything for Noel Srivastava, because her world already turned upside down.
Her brother is gone, and nothing will ever be the same, and as if it's the sky and the whole world has collapsed in on her. Noel is twelve, and doesn't pretend to understand: she has no answers, and no one has answers for her, as to what took her brother away. She has no answers for why her brother's letter appeared in her room, and no answers for why she knows she'll never see him again.
(she won't stop screaming inside her head the day their parents bury an empty coffin: there is no body to bury, nothing to burn and her family has lost touch with tradition and its heritage anyway. she won't stop screaming inside her head, though she won't cry and no words come out, and all the church windows shatter)
After that, things break when she is angry, or sad, or even very happy, fly across the room or just shatter into a thousand pieces. It doesn't take her long to realize, when nothing happens when she doesn't feel strongly, that she can't let herself feel, she has to stay detached or else things happen that she doesn't always want: she can make things move herself otherwise if she wants, and she practices with small things, lawn-darts that she throws into the air with her mind, or coins, or really anything at all. Practices throwing things with her mind and practices putting her emotions into a cage, practicing for something, anything, she doesn't know why.
(she remembers how her brother made the flower petals dance for her when she was small: she tries, but she can't do the same thing, and just gives up, because trying to make them dance like he did makes her sad, and then the flower petals shred)
She is thirteen when the world comes down for everyone else: she awakens Easter Sunday, late, with her mother pounding frantically on her door. Rome is gone, destroyed: not burned, but simply taken out of existence, there is nothing where the city once stood, an angel appeared above the city and then it was gone. Noel doesn't understand why, or what happened, but no one does.
Gods, people say: not gods, the government says later, though it calls them Deva, creatures from the astral realm that want to destroy humanity and take on the form of gods and wield godlike power, gods in all but name. Gods exist, psychic powers exist, there is a world of dreams with things trying to kill the human race, the world is turning upside down: everything is changing, but Noel's world was already upside down, and now everyone else's is, too.
(Noel had never believed in gods, and she still doesn't really: it was Aamin who taught her their names and their stories, the same way he had taught her everything that matters, and it doesn't matter, not really, does it)
She keeps practicing in silence and occasionally dreams of her brother, dreams in which he isn't her brother but wears his face, perfect tranquility that never fades and no recognition in blankly serene eyes and wakes wanting to scream but never does, because that isn't her brother in those nightmares no matter how that creature wears his skin.
Practicing and waiting, waiting, as her frustration and grief and self-imposed detachment close in on her like a cage, and Noel still has no idea what she is waiting for, only that she's still waiting and she's tired of waiting, so tired of waiting, and she's still waiting, until she's eighteen and the knock comes at the door, and there's a squad of young people, her age and a little younger, in military uniform waiting for her.
They don't give her a choice, really - ANW, the Advanced Neural Warfare Unit for Continued International Stability, yet something else that had come into being after Rome was destroyed, needs psychics, like them, like her, and like it or not, she was being pressed into a war, and really, what else can she say? She's tired of waiting, she has no idea what she was even waiting for, maybe for this, and her world fell in a long time ago, being drafted into the military isn't so bad in comparison, even if it means fighting psychic death gods in their own realm in a giant robot made from her own mind. There are worse things out there, and at least she's done with waiting.
(she still doesn't believe in gods, and yet she's fighting them: Noel imagines that her brother would laugh at her right now if he could see her, and fingers the silver chain in her pocket, as she gets ready to fly)
Prompt: trapped
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 785
Content Warnings/Notes: aftermath of (assumed) sibling death, implied violence
Summary: When the entire world turns upside down, it doesn't change anything for Noel Srivastava, because her world already turned upside down.
Her brother is gone, and nothing will ever be the same, and as if it's the sky and the whole world has collapsed in on her. Noel is twelve, and doesn't pretend to understand: she has no answers, and no one has answers for her, as to what took her brother away. She has no answers for why her brother's letter appeared in her room, and no answers for why she knows she'll never see him again.
(she won't stop screaming inside her head the day their parents bury an empty coffin: there is no body to bury, nothing to burn and her family has lost touch with tradition and its heritage anyway. she won't stop screaming inside her head, though she won't cry and no words come out, and all the church windows shatter)
After that, things break when she is angry, or sad, or even very happy, fly across the room or just shatter into a thousand pieces. It doesn't take her long to realize, when nothing happens when she doesn't feel strongly, that she can't let herself feel, she has to stay detached or else things happen that she doesn't always want: she can make things move herself otherwise if she wants, and she practices with small things, lawn-darts that she throws into the air with her mind, or coins, or really anything at all. Practices throwing things with her mind and practices putting her emotions into a cage, practicing for something, anything, she doesn't know why.
(she remembers how her brother made the flower petals dance for her when she was small: she tries, but she can't do the same thing, and just gives up, because trying to make them dance like he did makes her sad, and then the flower petals shred)
She is thirteen when the world comes down for everyone else: she awakens Easter Sunday, late, with her mother pounding frantically on her door. Rome is gone, destroyed: not burned, but simply taken out of existence, there is nothing where the city once stood, an angel appeared above the city and then it was gone. Noel doesn't understand why, or what happened, but no one does.
Gods, people say: not gods, the government says later, though it calls them Deva, creatures from the astral realm that want to destroy humanity and take on the form of gods and wield godlike power, gods in all but name. Gods exist, psychic powers exist, there is a world of dreams with things trying to kill the human race, the world is turning upside down: everything is changing, but Noel's world was already upside down, and now everyone else's is, too.
(Noel had never believed in gods, and she still doesn't really: it was Aamin who taught her their names and their stories, the same way he had taught her everything that matters, and it doesn't matter, not really, does it)
She keeps practicing in silence and occasionally dreams of her brother, dreams in which he isn't her brother but wears his face, perfect tranquility that never fades and no recognition in blankly serene eyes and wakes wanting to scream but never does, because that isn't her brother in those nightmares no matter how that creature wears his skin.
Practicing and waiting, waiting, as her frustration and grief and self-imposed detachment close in on her like a cage, and Noel still has no idea what she is waiting for, only that she's still waiting and she's tired of waiting, so tired of waiting, and she's still waiting, until she's eighteen and the knock comes at the door, and there's a squad of young people, her age and a little younger, in military uniform waiting for her.
They don't give her a choice, really - ANW, the Advanced Neural Warfare Unit for Continued International Stability, yet something else that had come into being after Rome was destroyed, needs psychics, like them, like her, and like it or not, she was being pressed into a war, and really, what else can she say? She's tired of waiting, she has no idea what she was even waiting for, maybe for this, and her world fell in a long time ago, being drafted into the military isn't so bad in comparison, even if it means fighting psychic death gods in their own realm in a giant robot made from her own mind. There are worse things out there, and at least she's done with waiting.
(she still doesn't believe in gods, and yet she's fighting them: Noel imagines that her brother would laugh at her right now if he could see her, and fingers the silver chain in her pocket, as she gets ready to fly)