Максим Пухов. (trepak) wrote in fableless, @ 2017-01-15 19:16:00 |
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Carter’s breathing hitched sharply as she startled awake. Her eyes squinted against the soft yellow light that slipped in from the hallway. It took her a moment to realize she had ended up sleeping well into the night. There was a number of parts of the day that stuck out in the eleven year old’s mind. Falling asleep wasn’t one of them. She remembered feeling numb on the ride home. She remembered crying so hard she had almost been sick on the towels her dad and her uncle Maks had wrapped around her, to hide her away. She remembered her dad’s voice. Deep, strong, and reassuring as he convinced her to leave the ocean. The screaming. Her breathing hitched as she rolled onto her back and stared up at the darkness. More and more the previous hours revealed themselves to her as she pushed past sleepiness. Carter recalled the screaming. It was kind of hard not to -- it had been so loud, and rapid, and everywhere. Especially, when it had followed the greatest feeling she ever felt. (Carter remembered submerging herself under the water. She had pretended she was a fish). She didn’t remember their faces, hadn’t really been able to make them out with her eyes so blurred by tears and ocean water. With her focus so centered on her tentacles. Carter could hear dad and her uncle Maks whisper outside her door. But she couldn’t hear what they were saying. It was probably about sending her away. They hadn’t wanted anyone to see her and they hadn’t said much to her on the car ride back. Fear and panic welled up in her. She jerked around on her bed until she turned her back to the door and slipped under her pillow to block their voices. “I’m never going swimming again,” She swore angrily. Hot tears began to fall. “So I may have an idea,” he proposed. Carter had been working on her music homework. Although, she hadn’t immediately looked up when her uncle Maks began talking, her pencil hovered above the next row of bar lines as she listened. It was enough to grab her attention. Therefore, out of respect to her uncle, she looked up with both brows raised in question. Her pencil thumped softly across her sheet. Despite Carter’s lack of words, Maxim took his niece’s eye contact as a sign that she was indeed listening and continued on: “I have talked to Marcello over at the Sanctuary and he has some extra space for you to practice your powers. We can have the space custom-built for you.” He inadvertently shifted his weight from side-to-side as he spoke, a particular quirk of his when deep in thought. “If you wish, that is.” “No.” Carter stated, so low and tight one could’ve missed it. She took in a sharp breath and pushed it out noisily. As much a steadying force as it was a distraction. Her frown had been both immediate and severe. However, after a moment, she pressed her lips tightly. It almost looked like a mockery of a smile but more than anything it was to keep from letting out another, shakier and embarrassing, breath as she tried to ignore how very aware of herself she felt in that moment. “Thank you but no.” She repeated wanting that to be the last of it. Well, this was unexpected. Maxim’s face faltered into a small frown. “Is there a specific reason why no?” He asked. “Is it privacy? The lack of parity? Those things can very well be prioritized.” “I don’t know what parity means.” A lack of pairs? That didn’t make sense. “It refers to having the water in the space mimic the ocean, to establish a parity. So it would be as similar to the dark water as much as possible,” Maxim explained, in a manner not unlike a professor. OK, Carter thought, parity. A sharp sense of yearning clawed at her chest. It was almost -- it was almost like the feeling she got when her band instructor had handed out those papers on camp last week. As if her breath had been robbed from her chest but in a good way. A deep wanting. But this was kind of worst. Because she couldn’t. Carter wouldn’t. She didn’t want to flood anything again. The cleanup was not fun. And even if she could get away with flooding all the things, without having to spend hours mopping the floor -- The mopping, or the lack of it, wasn’t the problem. The problem was she had read what the Kraken could do. And what’s more she had known it even before picking up a book. She had known it with the same certain comfort she felt when learning how to pirouette. And that’s what scared her. God, it had only been last year but she still remembered how everyone had looked at her. And she remembered not caring, for one brief terrifying, great moment. And she remembered being hungry. And she remembered being mad. Carter grabbed at her pencil, turned it in her fingers, until it was horizontal between her hands -- in front of her like a wall. I don’t want to. Carter looked down at her staff paper, one of her hands released the pencil, she began tracing the symbols with her fingers as she tried to force out and summarize her emotions. “I .. just …. don’t want ... to. I don’t need it.” She took in another breath but her chest, her ribs, felt heavy and her throat felt dry. Carter flicked a glance at her water bottle. It felt stupid, when she knew now, that it couldn’t do anything to her. But, at the moment, she would ather juice. Asking her ‘Are you sure’ seemed rather repetitive at this point. And Carter did not look to be in the position to want to justify herself. “You would have a place that would make it easier to control your powers,” Maxim explained. “The power adjustment period is difficult, but it is unfortunately inevitable no matter what your tale. A space in the sanctuary would allow you greater privacy.” Her skin felt too tight for her bones. Carter put her pencil down with a sharp thud. “No! Gosh, you sound like --” Anna. Anna also liked to insist but no amount of words would sway the twelve year old. “I’m not interested. Thank you.” She grumbled after a few beats. He meant well, she tried to remind herself. Anna meant well. But Carter didn’t see things the way they did. “I’m sorry for -- yelling.” “Well, I hope I don’t sound like Stalin.” The joke, perhaps only darkly funny to Maxim, only seemed to lift the corners of his smile. “But, very well. That is fine if you are not interested. I will nevertheless be building an aquarium for Marcello’s sanctuary, should you change your mind.” Despite herself, his joke managed to bring out a small smile. “I won’t.” Probably. Never. It’s endeavors like these that keep his mind sharp. The blueprints, the endless pencils he sharpens, only to flatten within minutes, the discarded sheets of paper that he tears from his sketchbook (“No, this won’t do,” he mumbles audibly), the cups of tea he needs to refill. At first he envisions an elevated water tank. He calculates that twenty meters in elevation with one kilopascal per 10.2 centimeters will lead to about two hundred kilopascals of discharge pressure, which is enough stored water to create a distribution system. He thinks of tertiary factors, like whether said distribution system can be used to store water later, to create a reusable system, but his eyes and imagination are bigger than what regular physics allow, so he scraps it. Form follows function, the saying goes. So he thinks of the Kraken and its love of the cold and dark. He thinks of octopi and their nocturnal natures. And, of course, he thinks of Carter and perhaps how equally comforting and discomfiting she’d find the dark waters, and sometimes he thinks that getting a read on her is like reading somebody through a foggy and filtered lens, and that’s the a-ha moment that turns the cogwheels in his head. Carter pressed her hand against the glass wall. She watched open fascination as her fingers wormed themselves lazily like little tentacles. A smile curved her mouth at the sensation of suctioning grasped at the glass. She gently pulled her fingertips away from the glass. And then pressed it again. She had never looked at herself before after a transformation. Not really. Not even the first time when she had felt a sort of rightness in her skin for the first time. The thought caused her chest to seize as if she were drowning under all of this water. It was a habit. A guilty feeling, more than shame, over occasionally feeling more comfortable with green-brown skin than as a teenage girl. A recollection that bad things tended to follow or lead up to her transformations. This time had been similar. Or really, the time before this time. The time that led her to the realization that maybe Anna was right. And Uncle Maks. This part of her was something that needed confronting. Carter knew she couldn’t blow up again. She couldn’t risk doing that to her family, risk being caught. Risk almost hurting somebody. Even though it had felt good. This felt better. The burn in her chest loosened, slightly. Carter pushed off from the glass wall and swam and swam and kept going toward the other end. Her breaths came more easily as she moved. In the tank Uncle Maks had built for her. It felt free. Carter looked down at her body again. Her hand no longer resembled anything human. And when she pressed her tentacle on the glass wall, she couldn’t help wonder for how long would it be enough. |