Destiny's Path //Enoch

[gamemaker kelsier]

H E L E N A W U.

This life is the only one that I am used to, and I'm happy for it. Yet sometimes I wish that I was duller, more dimwitted, so that I did not have the full understanding of what I am, what my purpose is. If I was stupid, I could believe that this was all there was for me, that this life was all I needed. If I was dull I could believe that this was all I could ever hope for, that I am needed, that I am of some import. In reality, I am nothing more than an object, a china doll to be taken from a shelf and turned this way and that. I know that I am objectified because everything about what I do is based on my grace, on my looks. I am not meant to speak unless giving poetry, or in a lesson with mother. I am not sought after for my intellect, but for my beauty.

This is the way it is, and though I have looked over my house walls and seen a world outside it, it is not one that I will ever be allowed to belong to. I am the Geisha girl, the one who will make her parents rich by selling my virginity to the highest bidder. For me, there will be no first loves or kisses on the front step. For me, there is only this. I am alright with this, at seventeen I have accepted it. I will be passed around from man to man, until I am too old and then I will be forgotten. It is my fate. Just as we all must live and carry our burdens, mine is this. I cannot find it within myself to disappoint my parents and bring shame to our family, so I will allow this for myself. I do not have a choice in this. I am their marionette, to do with what they will.

Today we go to market, in full dress so that the men who sell their wares might look upon the Wu daughters and remember where they will spend their money in the evening. We go to look at the silks that are for sale so that my mother can order new robes for us. This time, she will buy me purples and reds. Although I hate having to shuffle through the market in all my 'glory', I love to look at all the tables, and like any girl, I do love new clothes.

We carry sun umbrellas although the winter sun is very weak today, but are warm in winter robes. We walk altogether, slowly and carefully, so as not to fall on any patches of ice. Only three of us go, Cassandra is nowhere to be found, as per usual. Still, we do create a lovely effect against the white snow with our red lips and hair, black as night and shining. This morning, my mother slipped a clip into my hair that was stuck with a red gem. I imagine it glitters beautifully. For all my weak objection to being objectified, I do like to think that I might be pretty, that I might have an effect on the boys in the district. If I am to be an object, let me enjoy it at least a little.

We reach the market, and my sisters and I stand obediently beside my mother as she speaks with Old Woman Jota about the fabrics she has for sale. We turn away from the cottons and silks and watch the market life around us. There are sounds, smells, colours everywhere. A man yells something about the freshwater fish he has for sale, a boy shows off the pies he has baked. They do smell heavenly. If I was one of the other girls walking by us now, I would stop and eat one. I don't understand why they do not, if they have the freedom to. People with freedom do not know what they have.

I let my attention be drawn to the table beside Jota's. It is covered in bits of ribbon, reds, golds, purple, silvers. They are beautiful. I would like one to weave through my hair, but asking my mother for anything is never good. It is too disrespectful to ask for more than what she already gives us everyday. My fingers longingly caress a wine red ribbon, thick and long. I am not vain, but I can imagine how lovely my hair might look with it in. I could weave it through so the boys in my art class might see how pretty I am. If I had ribbons in my hair, I could be more approachable, rather than the girl with a face painted white, and robes so tight that I can barely walk.

I turn away from the table again to study the market, and pull my hands inside my sleeves like my sisters do to keep them warm. Just as the people going by study us, we study them, equally as curious as they are.

There's a heart that must
b e f r e e t o f l y
That burns with a need to
k n o w t h e r e a s o n w h y

[L△LIA]

The boy and his borrowed bicycle trade stories as they zoom down the town streets together — the wind in his hair; the wind in its spokes — and one can hardly cease laughing long enough to hear the other by the time they turn the corner at the edge of the marketplace that will change both their lives today. Enoch retells the stories the birds chirp to him, because these are the bike's favorites. Be it elderly sparrows who know the woes of having sticky clouds stuck between their matted feathers or fledglings who've just taken their first fall out of the nest and into the victory of flight, this boy has heard them all and speaks each tale with so much enthusiasm it sounds as if these were his own experiences. Each word is a moment of glory which makes the bike daydream that, one day, it could grow wings and learn to fly as well, soaring through the air like metal was never meant to.

"Oh!" Enoch exclaims in response to that hint of pessimism, "there are birds made of metal too! Hovercrafts. I've never spoken with one, but I see one every once in a while, way up high." The bike's creaky gears scream with delight at that, bursting with newfound validation for its aspirations and whispering nanny-nanny-boo-boo to the envious, eavesdropping road below. Today, the boy is the bike's friend and they are too busy to stop now, however much the asphalt is yearning to know if it might possess the ability to fly as well. "If you look up long enough, I'm sure you could see one too."

Whipping around the corner, the ecstatic bike begins telling the boy about all of the races it has won. Belonging to Enoch's friend Jasper and put into storage a couple years ago in favor of a newer, shinier model, in its heyday these wheels used to kick up dirt on forest paths like the wicked breath of a hurricane and outrun panicked jackrabbits or even deer. Today feels like that. The air is chilly, but wonderful and the sun glints off the metal as though catching on pride, despite the creeping patches of rust. "I remember," his laugh rings through the afternoon, bright with contentment, "I was the one you and Jasper would race against. I always lost." But not now, the bike thinks happily, right now you aren't losing anything. We're going to fly together.

Maybe this is why they are moving too quickly to stop. Maybe the bike meant for it to happen all along.

When destiny hits the duo, Enoch forgets how to tell the difference between gentle and hard; it's as though he has been punched in the chest by an iron battering ram and it hurts, but for some reason he can't explain, he likes the pain. Around the corner and into the marketplace there are tables full of delicious produce — ripe cherries, freshly baked sweet potatoes, peaches bursting against their own seams — and the most curious and intriguing knick-knacks the District has to offer. Women sell flowers as their giggling children tug the petals off daisies behind their backs and a river fisherman is unloading an impressive haul of salmon, however, none of this is enough to capture the attention of the newly arrived teenager as he catches sight of the most beautiful girl who has ever existed. This feeling is enough to bring his entire world to a halt —

— but momentum keeps going. The bike skids against a scatter of gravel and suddenly everything is airborne. Like a flock of birds, the bike, the boy, and the loose asphalt take flight into a trio of daydreams none of them knew they possessed until today. Everything that was logical has been turned upside-down as the earth forgets its jealousy and becomes the sky in the same moment a bicycle is transformed into a hovercraft and Enoch realizes that the tales he has been telling all day are love stories. He didn't know that before, but it's all so obvious now — one look at this girl and he has learned how to fly. Surely, gravity and fate whisper in tandem, they all know they must come back down, but for now, there is only this moment of stunning glory.

i can see a lot of life in
y o u
i can see a lot of bright in you
and i think the dress looks nice on
y o u

[gamemaker kelsier]

H E L E N A W U.

I read a story once, just once mind you but I remember it perfectly, about a girl that was beautiful. She was so beautiful that in jealousy, a wicked witch locked her away in a big old house on a hill and always made her do all the cleaning. She never went outside, she wasn't allowed to. Yet, the girl had special friends in the shape of birds and other animals. They would come to her window and bring her presents of flowers to press inside her diary, or fresh berries for her to taste. With this, the girl was content because although she could not step foot outside, she could warm her cheeks by the window's sunlight, and still feel the softness of a flower's petal beneath her fingertips. She was happy with what she had, because it was all that she knew. So she grew up innocent, and alone in the world but for her animals and her mother.

One day, the girl's mother went out and forgot to lock the girl in her rooms, so she could not escape. Against her better judgement, she left the house, and went into the woods surrounding. She walked for many hours, but was unafraid because her friends walked with her, and there were so many new things to see, things to taste, things to touch. The world was much bigger than she thought it was, having grown up underneath a ceiling and between four walls. Everything was beautiful, everything new and wondrous. Yet, it was also terrifying, overpowering. It was too much, it was far too much. Her sanity slipped away underneath trees that rose to kiss the sky.

I can feel my thoughts slipping away as a boy turns into the market on a bicycle with a smile lighting up his face so much that he almost shines and I wonder if I am allowed to believe in love at first sight or if that is just some silly myth.

It is like looking up at the sky above me for the first time and wondering if the trees brush it tenderly or if it is really quite far away, miles and miles above us.

I feel terrific insanity.

I stare at him, the boy and his bike. They are so free, so happy looking. It is the face of a boy that has never been caged but has been, oh he has. He must have been. Life is a cage. How could he look so free? So happy? So handsome.

Everything happens at once. One moment, I stand beside the table with my sisters, and my mother barters with Old Woman Jota, the very next, there is a boy that has taught his bicycle to grow wings coming straight for us. Our dress does not usually for quick escapes, but today our terror gives us the ability to move much faster than any girl wearing a kimono before us. Two sturdy hands push me out of the path of the bicycle and I fall into the arms of my other sister, hands extended to catch me. WE stand aside and watch, solemn as the boy flies through the air.

It feels like it happens in slow motion and I think I should not be smiling, but I do. I don't know why. I don't understand why there is a feeling in my chest, similar to that of a balloon expanding or champagne bubbles in my throat. Even as he flies, he smiles. He doesn't look worried for the landing, he only enjoys the moment in full. It is all I ever think about, the landing. I have never considered the freedom of flight. That would make me a masochist.

When he finally does land, a pile of old crates are the worth for wear. I look to my mother but all she does is yatter on to Jota. She didn't even notice. My sisters and I look down at the pile of dirt, wood and bicycle called a boy. There is a protocol to follow in moments like these, but I've never liked asking someone if they are alright even if they don't look it. My sisters are speechless beside me. I doubt that they have ever seen a flying boy either. It is up to me then.

"Did you enjoy your flight, sir?"

There's a heart that must
b e f r e e t o f l y
That burns with a need to
k n o w t h e r e a s o n w h y

[L△LIA]

are you kidding me right now

He has heard love stories before, but this is his first time feeling one. So many of his tales are second or third hand retellings learned from spoons or what they overhead from mouths whispering at the dinner table. It's not that he dislikes his own experiences — although few could blame an orphan for being more fascinated with the lives of others than his own — but more, perhaps, to do with the way he feels his own youth like an infinite heart attack. Overwhelming and intense, it is so often a terrifying threat that could end him at any moment, and when he remembers to breathe, it occurs to him how little he has lived. As he listens to the wise world surrounding him, it is a way of cheating that system and experiencing the past, the future, and the now of everything, all at once.

The face peering down at him isn't like the ones the mirrors in the orphanage describe when he asks them what the prettiest girls they ever saw looked like. It can't be. For all the adorably freckled noses and dimpled grins that undoubtedly walked the halls of his current home before he came along, there is no way any of of them possessed features so perfect that they could inspire ten thousand clumsy poems in this way. The moon-shadow glow of her eyes; the seashell curves of her ears; the summer sidewalk warmth of her skin; the way her mouth makes him want to change his name to anything that's at least thirty-two syllables long, so if she ever speaks it, he'll have enough time to shake himself out of this stupor to at least hear the ending cross her lips.

"Did you enjoy your flight, sir?" First love feels like being punched in the gut and he can't understand why he wouldn't have this feeling be any other way. By all rights, he should want relief from whatever this is, but instead he props himself up on his elbows so he can be just a couple inches closer to this glorious form of misery. Sprawled out and dizzy from more than just a bicycle crash, his mouth sort of hangs open for a minute, jaw swinging silent on its hinges as he tries to remember what the question was. Memory evades him. There is only the strangled breath in his lungs and the way he wishes blinking were a little more optional, because those fractions of his seconds spent blinded make him feel too far from where he wants to be — which is only here.

A scraped elbow oozes a slow promise of blood and at least one of those crates definitely smacked him upside the head in petty revenge, shouting about how only a very rude boy would cause such a ruckus. "I'm sorry," he half-heartedly apologizes for his offense, any sentiment of regret for the crates undermined by the giddy shimmer rolling through his voice, the way he can't spare them a glance when his eyes are locked so stubbornly on the pair that deigned to meet his, and an open-mouthed smile that probably makes him look completely addled. He is, so that's alright. "I didn't mean to knock everything over, but I'd do it again. You know?" Honestly, he's not sure who he's talking to anymore — the girl, the crates, himself. As if it even matters. "I didn't know I could fly."

There is a list of things Enoch doesn't know. It is a very long list. Most of the time he thinks he enjoys his ignorance and the way it makes each day an endless revelation, but the longer he stares at this girl, the more impatience is beginning to stir within him. Enough time living vicariously through spoons and birds, it says, you are just as alive as any of that. "It turns out anything can fly if it wants to. Birds and bicycles and people. I mean, of course birds can fly —" If you want to hear a love story, Enoch, it's time to listen to the sound of your own voice. Go ahead, give the heart attack of your youth a real reason to absolutely lose its mind. "— but I didn't know this was how it felt."