Chapter Text
The room is well lit. A gold floor lamp stands as a sentinel to the right of a plaid red-violet bed. It was strong enough to cast light all the way to the opposite corner, where an aisle and unfinished paintings lay. On the other side of the room, a black desk lamp hangs in mourning over an oak roll-top desk. A figure wearing a grey sleepshirt and pants sits in its chair. A yellow green blanket is draped over their shoulders.
It’s silent, except for the scratch of pen against paper. Words are written, some shift out of place. Again becomes agian, and totally becomes totality. The message is intact.
A songbird caged, it sings its song.
Away from the wind, which does it harm.
Agian and agian, its breath is stolen.
Totality broken, the bird is freed.
The pencil stops. It's wrong, this passage. This poem. The bird isn't free. The poet looks up from their work. Towards the window. its dark outside, the polluted sky had no give to stars. The absence of blinds allows them to gaze into their reflection.
Their hair is straight and brown. Light on the surface, almost blonde, dark on the inside like chestnuts. It's short too, cut into a fringed-fanned bob. Their eyebrows are thick and mostly symmetrical. Their eyelashes are long. Their eyes are blue, one darker than the other, and hold flecks of gold inside. Their nose is greek, slightly aqualine, and crooked, a memorial to when they fell off their bike three summers ago. Their lips are small and far too chapped. Their face is broad, high cheekboned, but softened by youth. Their body, much like their face, is more broad than small. Their skin is a pale tan, freckled in places and drawn on from markers.
Their name is Náttsóll Skaðadóttir, though, they just go by Nátt. They are thirteen years old, and their birthday is June 21st. They and their mother, Skaði Dalrúnardóttir, moved from Akureyri, Iceland to New York, America two years ago.
It wasn’t an unexpected move. Skaði had been going on business trips to America for years, heck if she hadn’t Nátt wouldn’t be alive. This is the country where their dad is from. They wonder how he's doing.
But just because it was anticipated doesn’t mean it was easy. Joining a new school, In a new country, that values conformity and really hates when someone is different. It sucked. The only real upside is that they already knew English (As is common in Iceland), though they had an accent.
Back home Nátt’s hearing was above-average, here it was exceptional. Too many cars, maybe a bit of placebo too. Back home the dark was unsettling, here it was downright terrifying. It’s fine, Nátt had told themself. It’s probably just living in an area with a high crime rate. Back home their headaches weren’t this bad, now it feels like their skull is splitting open. Bodies change with time, it’s normal.
They’ve held these fears since they first got settled. They ran from it quietly, not wanting to make anything worse than it already was. They ran for a long time before it all came crashing down. That fateful day, that stupid field trip! Heh. Sorry. They should probably start from the beginning shouldn’t they?