Algid (#TronnorAU)

Chapter 43: Into the birdcage

Sometimes, when she is alone by herself, she starts to wonder things.

She wonders, for example, why does the moon seem so close when it's really so far away. She wonders why the smell of the early morning after a rainy night is so calming and, at the same time, saddening. She wonders why people in the street don't say hi to one another, not even when they see each other nearly every day when they take the same bus stop to go to work.

She wonders many, many things. Trivial things, like those, and sometimes, some more other not so trivial things. It's in times like those when she's most afraid.

She stops and looks herself in the mirror, and asks... why? Why does she wonder oh such an amount of things? Why does she keep asking questions that get no answers? And still, why does she keep asking them knowing she will never get them? Every time she things about this, it tingles the back of the head and the front of her palms begin to twitch. The noises come back. Her eyes feel tired and her sight becomes blurry. And then, after it's passed, it's another day for a new set of questions without answer, and back to the asking. It's a vicious cycle, and never once in her life it has seemed to stop.

She's learned to live with it, she's had no other choice. And even if she did, she knows it wouldn't be the same that way. Many things would be different, if that weren't the case.

She thinks about how it all started. About the story she's been told time and time again. By her parents, by her big brother. She knows it by heart, and if they all asked her to recite it, she probably would. She just doesn't think anyone will ever ask her to do that. But she still goes over it inside her head, whenever she feels bored, or whenever the tingling comes back. She feels like it soothes her. Maybe just a little tiny bit, but it's enough for the tingling to go away sometimes.

The story goes back to the first day, the first minute, the first second, the first breath... Doctors were all growing with worry because the labor had lasted overnight, and there were no signs of progress. Yet at the edge of midnight, they were able to deliver the baby. But it wasn't a usual birth; in fact, at first, they were almost positive she had been born dead.

What kind of baby is born asleep?

Despite the predicament, after struggling for a couple of hours, she opened her eyes, and cried like every other baby does at the time they first come to the world. It's a harsh world, after all, as they all come to learn. She always thought that, deep inside, babies already know they are coming to bad place when they leave the womb, so that's why they wake up crying. Because they want to go back to the safe inside.

Her case was famous at the hospital, and soon it became local news. Well, as far as local as Perth, Australia can be. She even appeared in the papers: "Baby girl is born fast asleep, almost given for dead." Her parents weren't superstitious, but some of her mother's close friends were. They were convinced that her being born asleep wasn't a good sign. They kept telling her mum that she had to be careful, that perhaps the girl had to be taken to a spirit guide. They didn't listen, though.

Maybe they should have.

Growing up, her eldest brother didn't pay much attention to her. He didn't seem to know how to have a little sister. When she was born he was almost six, after all, so it wasn't strange. Her other brother, on the other hand, was a different story. He was only older than her for about a year, and that meant that the two of them were toddlers together; people sometimes mistook them for twins. They had their first food fight together, they messed up the kitchen together as well. Her little brother was born soon after, so it was quite a load of work for their parents. And despite how much of a hassle they all were, she was always the easiest to handle out of the three. She always ate her meals, fell asleep at reasonable hours, and she hardly ever cried. Her mother would sometimes tell her friends that she hadn't seen her cry once, but that wasn't true. She hardly ever cried, but sometimes she did. The first time she remembers crying was the day when Troye went to his first day of school and she was to stay at her home with her mum and her baby brother, Tyde. That day she cried in silence inside her bedroom, and didn't let anyone know.