Makeshift (Slow Updates)

Youth

"Katie...?"

I saw the small child in front of the silhouetted figure roll over, pulling the covers with her.

"Katie..."

The figure stood up from her crouched position, crawling quietly over to the other side of the metal frame bed.

"Katie." The figure reached a dim-golden paw over, calmly shaking the child's shoulder. "Time to get up."
"Nooo..." The child muttered, burying herself deeper into her warm blanket. "Don't wanna..."
"Are you sure?" The figure said slyly. "Because I'm pretty sure Fizzy and Cocoa wants to eat that chocolate fudge cake on the table without you..."

I looked on as the child flinched, then leapt out the bed with rising urgency. The figure laughed in loud meows, tugging on the bottom of the frantic child's pyjamas, holding her back using their strong jaws. Toys from the night before were scattered across the carpeted floor, and splatters of dark coloured paints were flung against the baby blue wall.

I knew that room.
That room of nostalgia.
I knew it all too well.

My old bedroom, in my old house, in a small town, by the small river. The house where I grew from toddler to child. Was I... dreaming? No, it looked more like a memory from where I stood. The outlines of the room were fuzzy and blurred, the exact lines and edges softer and invisible. But everything else was in place: my wooden bookshelf, my pink drawers, hand drawn pictures of my friends stuck on the wall, and many teddies sitting at one end of the bed.

I couldn't speak. Well, I tried to, but no sound came out. As though I had a hoarse throat, but it didn't scratch or itch like I thought it would. The edges of my eyes were clouded with darker tones, so dark I couldn't see through them, as though I was wearing black-lensed goggles and I was above water.

Even without seeing everything clearly, I knew what this was. What I was seeing.
The child... it was me.
The old me.

"Come on Skye! Let me go!!"
"I'd like to see you make me!"

The day of my fifth birthday.
That was the morning.

The silhouetted figure belonged to my four-legged fighting mentor.
Skystreak the Alpha-Cat.

----------------------

I woke up to tears clogging my eyes, and a pile of pink and white envelopes at the end of my bed. The number fifteen, scrawled on several of them.

I was back in the present day, stuck in a cursed body that was thin, bruised and misused.

I didn't want to wake up.
I noticed how quiet it seemed.

The mind I owned was troubled by it.

How the quiet lurched with its plague towards me, patience as my only shield.
How different the dream land, and this land, were so unmistakably obscure and identical at the same time.

Pain crippled my chest and stomach, a fresh wave of tears and gasps waking me fully from sleep. I didn't move, except for the trembling I could feel from my curled toes and shaking knees. The only relief that I had from the reality I had to endure was gone in an instant, and the recognition of the simple fact was enough to break me down. Tears brought themselves forwards, blinding me.

I cried.

I let it out.

I don't have the right words to say everything I felt.

No words at all.

There aren't enough words in the world to describe it accurately enough.

None.