Prompt Table 09: Elowynn

01. Perception

Her eyes paused mid page and she flopped back on the bed, staring across the exposed ductwork of her loft ceiling.  The words she had just read were lingering in her mind.  As she steepled her fingers over the spine of her book, crisp pages pressed against the mostly bare skin of her chest as she spoke the lingering syllables aloud into the empty space.

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are," the words drifted from her lips into the hollows of the very empty space that surrounded her.

From a fantasy novel or no, the words remained a very honest reflection on perception. Literally or figuratively what you saw and what you heard, how you perceived a person, really did depend a whole lot on who you were. Lo, having spent her life having a great deal of very incorrect and problematic assumptions made about herself, tried very hard not to judge books by their covers (or people, for that matter). As she rolled over and rummaged for a bookmark by the glow of the white fairy lights strung between the crossbeams of her four-post bed, she wondered how long it would take her to meet someone in this city who would perceive her as she was. More importantly, as she could be.

02. Hold

"Mrs. Book's office, please hold!" piped the excessively cheerful female voice on the other line. A  mental image formed of a woman in her mid-twenties, wearing a lot of cheery robin's egg blue and blowing soft, pink, gummy bubbles between calls. The hold music tinkled away in what she assumed was supposed to be a soothing manner, although it skipped and crackled so much that it rather ruined the effect.

Lo was attempting to phone her mother. As usual, she had been put on hold. She made far more progress holding on the office line than she ever would have by calling her cell number. Any call to her mother's cell phone, unless made to the emergency line, resulted in leaving a voicemail that may or may not ever be responded to. As the line continued to emit its stilted & static-y piano waltz, Lo tried to remember what it had even been that made her dial the office number in the first place.  

"Thank you for holding! May I take a message?" The cheerful voice cut through the music minutes later, rather startling Lo.

"Oh! Pardon me, no. I was hoping to speak with Mrs. Book. I was holding…oh nevermind. Thank you." Lo moodily punched the little red phone receiver icon on below her screen , the click of her sliding the phone shut seeming a little loud in the predawn silence that permeated the air of her little loft.

"What exactly am I holding on to here?" She muttered to herself, "When a fifteen minute hold time can't even get me five seconds to wish her a happy birthday." She shrugged, "Please hold, indeed!"

03. Lessons

As she flipped through the music collection on her laptop she came to the conclusion that there really were an awful lot of songs about learning life lessons. She supposed though, that it probably was because there were a lot of lessons to be learned in life. Not only that, but everyone seemed to learn them at different times in their lives, for different reasons. She also thought that maybe songs could help teach you lessons. Not like children's songs that helped you remember things, while valid lessons, that was far from what she had in mind. If a song could help you get through or process a time in you life, low or high, then it (as far as she was concerned anyhow) had helped teach you a lesson. The harder she thought about it the more she came to the realization that maybe, just maybe, all songs were lessons waiting to be revealed to the right person.

04. Rebirth

As Lo drifted off that night, tears streaking her face and soaking the futon mattress below her she felt certain she was dying. Not literally, but in mental increments. The chill night air upon her balcony sucked the warmth, the life, from her limbs as surely as her first night admitting that this was her new existence sucked the life from deeper within. She did not know how to begin again without someone setting a routine for her to fall in to. She did not feel that this was a place in which she could be recreated, reincarnated, as a new being, a new version of her old self. She did not feel as she had in the past, the dull ache of loss and so much change like a cocoon that would let her emerge, a moth drawn to the light of a new culture, a new language, a new life. As the lidded darkness of her eyes led to the cerebral darkness at the genesis of sleep, sparks that could fan the flames of her rebirth flickered in the mental black.

She woke with a start, the beginnings of a torrential rain roaring to life around her.  Lights of the buildings that surrounded and loomed over the third story balcony shimmered like fireflies in the gloomy, water-fogged and weak dawn light. As she uncurled herself slowly, shedding sheets as surely as she pulled away layers of sleep, she found herself a part of a beauty she had yet to know before this time and place.  As her feet carried her into a rain that cleansed her inner self of fears every bit as much as it sluiced away the salty crust of her tears, she felt the beginning of rebirth. A realization washed over her with every drop that as truly as every night mirrored death, every morning meant rebirth.

05. Haven

As odd as it may have sounded to some, the bathroom had always been her haven. Even before she had found the pleasure of baths as a place to empty her mind at the end of a long day, she had learned that the bathroom was a place where you could get away from things. As much as they might wonder to themselves, very few people would ever openly question how long you took in a bathroom, when you excused yourself to use a bathroom, or what had been occurring when you disappeared to a bathroom. She had learned that it was a very effective place to get away from people and things. Once she discovered the luxury of a bath and a book, the deal was sealed. The bathroom would always be her haven.

06. Double

When Lo was quite young she had always wished she had a double. She had been so starved for companionship that she had dreamed herself up an imaginary twin. She had referred to this imaginary friend as her double, though she very rarely made mention of her to any other people. She could imagine a better companion, as a child, than a double of herself. After all, who could possibly be more understanding of her life, her feelings, her needs for reassurance and commiseration than herself.

Sometimes, as years went on and she had given up her dependency on her double, she still spent many an afternoon contemplating what it would have been like to have a twin. At the very least she wished, rather frequently, that she had been blessed with a sibling to share it all with. The older she grew and the more wisdom she gained, however, the more she realized that her double had been all she really needed to become the person she was today.

07. Carry You

Lo had a very hazy early memory of herself reaching up as high as she could stretch towards her father. The image was bathed in golden light until the word "No" filtered through. The golden warmth was swept away by the gloom of disappointment, her tiny mouth forming the words, "Why not?"

The words her father spoke next were probably one of the very few things he ever said  that she remembered word for word, even as young as she was. They were strong words, true words and even if she had not understood them at the time, they had carried her farther than anyone else ever would.

"If I carry you forever, who will carry you when I am gone?" The memory crackled. "Your legs will always be more dependable than most and will carry you for as long as they are able. Keep walking."

08. Blindsided

To say that she was blindsided by the news of her father's death would have been an understatement, but it was as close to the truth as most words could come. That initial phone call had left her so speechless, so hollow that it was hours before she called her mother back to hear all the details. Upon finding out how totally, in her mind, her mother had betrayed her she had hung up on her for the second time that morning.

Not only had she been blindsided by the death of her father, but by the news that he had known for a very long time that he was dying and both he and her mother had kept the news to themselves. She had lost her father and the only person she knew she could process the grief with, share stories of healing with, come to terms with all that was now changed with all in one go. To say she had been blindsided that day was most assuredly an understatement.

09. Never Again

There was a very angry point in the weeks and first few months following her father's death in which she vowed to herself, on nearly a daily basis, to never love again. She said the words aloud, wrote them in journals, crafted them into songs, even painted them on fabric and sewed those words up tight into bags she sold to people who had promised themselves the very same thing. "Never Again."

Several months later "Never love again," turned into "Never love a person again" the day she found Bacon. Nearly a year later "Never love a person again" turned into "Maybe love a person again, but only the innocence of a child" the day she was handed a crayons-and-construction-paper drawing by a little girl, smiling and silent in a sunny breakfast nook.  
She was still editing her "Never again."

10. Commit

There were very few things in Lo's short sixteen years that she had been willing to commit to. Especially if any of those commitments had involved her parents, or had to be made more than a week in advance. After all, she could never be assured that her parents wouldn't cancel in favor of things they viewed to be more important, or that she would even still be living in the same country in more than a week's time.

Now that she was in control of her own schedule and her own life she still found it incredibly hard to commit to things. She kept forgetting that she was the only one in charge of her ability to commit these days. So, as she wrote the number on the card she had been given by the kindly older gentleman that owned the drycleaners a few blocks over from her loft down in her leaf green leather planner, she committed to calling it. After all, a call and possibly an interview about a part-time, afternoon nannying position she felt fairly certain she would never get wasn't too much of a commitment to make for starters.