Entwined in This Infinity

9. Obsession - Iris

There’s nothing you’re not open about. You can blab about any number of personal things to acquaintances you met moments ago. It doesn’t bother you. There are some parts of you that aren’t pleasant to the eye, but they are a part of you. You’re not proud of them, but you’re fine with talking about them, about anything.

Except for this thing. This one little thing.

It’s . . . it’s practically nothing. You just don’t want to share it is all. If you tell someone, it will lose that alluring shine that everything secret has.

You want something to yourself.

Sometimes, you close your eyes and shut off the rest of the world. Life is more vivid here. Comparatively, reality is dull. It’s unimaginative. There’s no flare. When you look under your bed, it will be empty. The fireflies drifting in the front yard will be fireflies. Your parents are normal, wholly human.

Here, it could be anything. Here, your mother is an Altered with golden claws. Dust motes are miniscule airships traveling on an endless sea. Death is a being that exists in atoms, curling in anticipation for the end. Magic is supercharged, a seed of it in each person, animal, and stone, rather than siphoned and stored randomly throughout the planet.

Here is better. It’s malleable. It’s a thundercloud of unpredictability, lightning striking and shifting anything it happens to touch.

But you can’t tell anyone how perfect it is.

Firstly, they wouldn’t understand. No one wishes to know an Altered. No one wishes that the unknown, distorted creatures of space would visit the surface. You would be seen as a radical, and you would be shunned over a few daydreams and wistful hopes.

Secondly, you don’t want anyone to know. The closest you’ve gotten to confessing is with your cousin, telling them your dreams while weaving in pieces of your imaginings. They’re skittish but find your tales wondrous nonetheless. That bit of recognition is good enough.

If you let it be known to the world at large, it will be destroyed. Anyone who has a beef with it or a suggestion for it will stick their nose where it doesn’t belong and dirty the masterpiece of your thoughts. They will want to question it, they will want to change it, and they will demand you tell them more of it. They will split it apart and break it down until the result is a fragmented mess of the original, a mirror that’s been shattered and lies in irreparable shards on the floor. You will cut yourself trying to put them back together, but nothing can salvage it.

You can tell anyone about anything. You can talk about your horrid grasp on chemistry, or your unfortunate habit of running red lights. But when you close your eyes and it melts away to here, it will rest there. It’s too thrilling of a secret to speak of anyway.