Fleeting on Dragonfly Wings

Fucking Titus

I sat at the back of my class. It was still within my first week of school.

"Hey Caius Star-Cunt," one of the boys laughed.

I flew around, murder in my eyes. I probably looked just like my father. I was cursed with his eyes. The eyes that fed into my nightmares. 

"Shut the fuck up," I glared.

The boys laughed in an uproar. I had learned there was a good gap of time between when teachers came into class versus the students. They had a way of getting around that allowed for time to socialize. I hated it. I was getting tired of being made fun of.

"What?" Titus sneered. "Or you'll cry again?"

I flew on top of his desk, leaning so close to him, I could inhale his rotten smell. I moved so fast, his was visibly startled.

"You have no fucking right," I felt my eyebrow twitch as my position pushed into the injuries on my thigh, the ones I now maintained with a shard of glass from a broken window in the library. "You don't know what the fuck I've been through. You keep my name out of your fucking mouth before I decide to cut it out."

He was shaken by my threat. I could see fear playing his face like a baby with a rattle. I bet this is what my father saw from me a million times over the course of my life, when he began beating me once Analeise was born. I felt a sting in my heart, wishing for my mother and sisters and the dead body of my father. 

"Caius!" the teacher walked in. "Sit down."

"Yes, sir," I made sure to meet Titus' eyes before I moved.

Classes were boring. They were always boring. Time flew by, days turning into weeks, weeks into months. I never was relented torment from my new school bullies. My remedial lessons with Miss Flittish taught me more than about basics of being a pixie than anything ever had. I delved into so many novels, I learned so much more about what existed outside of my realm. There were books about battles written and signed only as Fastoros, their trials so engaging. Then there was one book about a tragedy that befell an entire clan, one fused with fire. I grew rapidly. Turning fourteen, then fifteen, and finally sixteen. I was smarter than most of my classmates but I was secretive about it, keeping these things to myself but excelling in my grades.

I was in the shower room one night, not long after I had turned sixteen. I drew a bath, not paying mind to the rest of the boys in the room with me. I deserved to pamper myself every once in awhile. I waited aside the tub, reading over the newest letter from Sister Claire. She was congratulating me on getting this far. 

Suddenly, hands were upon me. My arms were held back, my wings clamped together, not hard enough to break them but hard enough to make sure I didn't move them. My head was submerged into my nearly filled bath. 

Water filled my mouth as I screamed. The hands didn't let up. My head began to feel fuzzy, like it used to. My mind was whirring, flooding with traumatic memories. My father my father my father my father my father my father my father my father my father.

My mind flew into overdrive. The hands flew back. I pulled my head out of the water, coughing and sputtering. I glared back to see Titus and his friends, thrown on the floor like the garbage they were. My eyes scanned the area, finding a stray nail on the floor flying into my hand. Things started to fly everywhere around me. Anything that wasn't held down, or a body, fluttered about in the air. I jumped on top of Titus, raising the nail in the air. I brought it down, barely scraping his arm. I stepped back, turning the wrath of the flying objects upon him. He fled, disappearing out of the shower room followed all the other boys in there. 

I coughed some more, finding myself to an empty shower to revolt the contents of my stomach in. Once I was sure I was done, I leaned back. Tears began to fall again. I was so miserably defenseless when it came to these things. I was being attacked brutalized harassed. There was nothing I could do about it. 

I was going to have to something about it. 

I found myself over to my tub. I picked up Sister Claire's letter, the ink running from becoming wet. I commanded a reverse spell, finding it lacking as the majority of it cleared but the letters were still runny. I dropped it onto a dry bench with the towel that I had lost in the fight. 

I sank into my bath. That night, my sheets were stained with my own blood.