Bright Eyes

25.2. Autumn Talks

For the past weekends since training began, Lyn would come to the library to get work done, before she and her friends—a concept she still found quite strange—would head over to Mr. Brighteyes' cabin.

She would clock in every Saturday morning at eight, and every Sunday morning after mass, as her parents would constantly remind her. Although, in her opinion, she could never take religion quite seriously, considering the hypocrisy among these so-called "Christians", who were nothing like the holy man they believed in once they left the walls of the church and went about their daily lives. Some stupid stained glass masquerade every Sunday—Hail the hypocrites! Hail the Pharisee-like Christ fanatics and their legalistic ways!

It was a Saturday morning, and was nearing ten o'clock as the huge white digits on her phone showed her. With a sigh, she placed her phone back down on the table, and shut her Chemistry textbook, deliberately leaving a sheet of paper to jut out of the fore edge, marking the specific pages of her assignment. She glanced at her to-do list. History assignment—done, check—a soft tap of her pen on the check mark etched onto the page. Math assignment—done, check—another tap. She glanced over at the fat book in front of her—Chemistry homework halfway done.

Lyn dropped her pen right beside the small notebook of her to-do lists. She picked up her phone, glanced at the screen to see the Hands Like Houses album still playing, the song spilling out through her earbuds. Then she placed her phone down on the table again and sat back, and her eyes wandered the still nothingness of the library. It wasn't nothing per se, but nothing happened. There was only the presence of Lyn and the librarian in the large room, no other movements but their own, no other sound but the scratch of a pen and the seldom turn of the page, the faint rustling of papers and the even fainter music from Lyn's earbuds.

Lyn sighed again, and rested her head on the table, on her forearms, for a moment. She didn't like this. She wasn't talking about the music that played on from her phone, or the quietness that filled the library. It was the ideal environment for getting work done, really, supposedly. But for the past months, she seemed to be going through things at a significantly slower pace than she once did, unable to concentrate long enough to get things done in a more efficient timeframe.

A perpetual haze filled her headspace, and everything would shut to a strange blankness that she would have to pull herself out of. And it would take time, and the act of swimming out of the fog was exhausting in itself, and she would have to do it again and again and again.

And worse than the fog in her brain, she thought, were the voices that sang in the dark. Always the voices, loud and intrusive and incessant. They would come out of nowhere—as she walked down the road to school with the boys, or as she studied for tests, or as she wrote down or typed out her homework, or even in the events of complete nothingness—they would spring at her, grab her by the throat, force her to listen to their mockery—but is it truly mockery if they speak the truth, sing out her sins in the vast shadows of her headspace?

She would pick up a book, then—a novel, a book of poetry, a collection of short stories—anything within reach, and she would read, drink in the words and the metaphors and the imagery, watch the aurora of colors play out before her eyes, listen to the music the words and punctuations wove through her mind, all to drown the demon voices out.

But there were times the demons were persistent, and their voices would rise, louder and louder and louder, scream to a degree it pained her mind to listen any further. Lyn would grab her earbuds, plug them to her phone, and turn the volume up, music blasting through her earbuds, into her ears.

And if that didn't work, she'd pick up a pen and her notebook, and scribble out a poem, the deepest parts of herself bleeding out in ink, into words and verses and stanzas.