color that i breathe. / arissa + isobel

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

[presto][/presto]

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Cold. That is what the fire made me, in the end. It hollowed me out with its caustic claws. It all began with tearing into by chest, ripping open my rib cage and plucking them all out one by one. And then it claimed my lungs. And my heart. And everything else I once held inside- I am unsure if that includes my soul, too.

All I know
is that the fire took everything I loved
and in turn, I became a shell.
Hollow.

I rot here, in the grave destined just for me. It was built for bodies like mine- utterly void. When I close the door, it is shutting a coffin. I envelope myself in death, I suppose, because I have come to enjoy rotting in solitude more than rotting in company. I have found that company- this company- is a colder, darker.

Draped in a plain white dress with a skirt that flows like the tail of a ghost, I bind myself in the quilted blankets hanging all across the creaky mattress of my bed. I bind myself, in fear that I will fall to pieces if something does not embrace my bones. My hair, dripping down my back in golden rivulets, has already been brushed earlier this morning, but I lay my head down on my pillow anyway. It will be ruffled again by the time I rise from the grave a second time.

I pull the covers over my head; I bury myself.

The orphanage is submerged in utter silence. It has always been a void here, but it has never been a quiet void. The orphanage is a graveyard, but it is alive with the voices and the pitter-patter, like a heavy rain against the roof, of children. Hollow children, but children.

Just as I close my eyes to give into dying all over again, the door opens, the rusted metal hinges shrieking against one another. "Get up, Isobel," says the voice of one of the caretakers, Ms. Louisa-Anne. With a sigh, released from the deepest depths of my lungs, I throw the covers to the end of the bed and squint in protest against the morning sun, shockingly garish after succumbing to the dark again. I mark the light an intruder with a sour grimace.

Ms. Louisa-Anne is standing by the door with a glint in her eyes and pink flooding her cheeks- a look she does not often wear, a look not often seen in a graveyard such as this. When I hesitate, she speaks once more, urging me to get up get up get up. "Come on, Isobel, get up out of bed."

I groan, and press my bare feet to the floor. "Put your shoes, on, too," she follows up. And I do, with a raise of a bushy eyebrow that says pointedly, "What's this all about?" Ms. Louisa-Anne replies to my silent inquiry with a smile.

"It's your lucky day, Iso."

Sauntering lazily towards the door, I shake my head. "I don't have lucky days, Miss." My voice sounds like a groan. She just rolls her eyes playfully, and shoos me with her hand through the hallway and down the stairs.

I do not have lucky days.

I S O B E L. K R I G E L.

{ and the crashes are heaven to a sinner like me }

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[Deleted]

I've grown tired of being alone. 

Over two years I've gotten use to the feeling of opening the door to a house of still water, swarms of dead flies' corpses rotting and floating on my stomach acid. It's a funeral, every day for seven hundred and thirty days. I count the minutes on my fingers like dead bodies; the mortician of wasted time. (How did I get like this?) 

It wasn't always like this. 

Heavy eye bags are met with the thick of my calloused thumbs, sore and tired and it's tedious. Waking up every day in a a bed accompanied by the silhouette of someone new, I thought Arachne and I would've been something different. We are something different I guess. To an extent. To as much of a purpose you can find in it, it's like sleeping with a stranger except you can high five and get pizza afterwards; it's nothing romantic, nothing meaningful, nothing I'd want it to be for now I guess. 

And a part of me is fine with that, you know? I'm happy without strings attached between the two of us, just wingless entities trying to soar for the time being. So that the next time I crash land I won't take her with me, I can just crash alone but hell is it tiring. Fucking hell if it doesn't spite me every time I wake up in somebody else's bed for Arachne and I were supposed to be something different. 

Palms rub my tired eyes, a pounding headache crashing onto my cerebellum and my consciousness; I breathe. Moving out is no different from sneaking past Mother before she leaves to pray at Nat's funeral - ironic, for the one who buried him. My skin still smells like alcohol and the dirty apartment I slept in, like sweat and desperation to feel something different. It never works. 

But it's fun to fake it at least. 

Living alone might as well be the same as living with disappointment, the early morning ambiance picking at my ears with every bird chirp and the squeaks of every apartment door opening. Hot water stings my skin, acupuncture on my pores - I left the door open. I'm going to be a terrible foster mother, I'm not used to closing shower doors behind me anymore. 

Water patters against the tile walls, the morning life echoing through clenched teeth of a closed window; I'm not used to not being alone, why did I agree to this? The name clicking on my tongue as soap stings my eye - Isobel. Isobel Krigel. She's got blonde hair and a dancer's body, she's small and fourteen and the first time I spoke for the adoption they told me she looked like a younger sister of mine. And I smiled, retorting with, "just a half one, actually." My eyes crinkled with my soft voice. 

Just a half sister, but she's still my blood and hell, from what I've heard she just as tired as me. 

Still, the water bleeds out as I turn off the faucet and water still runs in veins down the thick of my hair. My eyes pop, the gentle buzzing covering that of outside like the faint fog smothering the room as heat floods out. I'm not nervous or scared of Isobel, besides I'll be the one training her. Thuds of my heart reverberate through my skeleton as I dry my hair first, the smell of cigarette ash drowned out by soap. 

Maybe she's scared of me. 

I don't eat at all before, goosebumps lining my skin in the morning cold like tattoo's. Facts repeat, fourteen, blonde, Isobel, clockwork, gentle ticking and beats and my stomach turns - I've only seen photos of her. She might not know who I am, who I look like, I am no Leon, I'm not even Nat. Nobody knows the beat of syllables to my name, she might not even care who I am. Good. Good, I'd rather a clean slate maybe. I slam the front door behind me after getting dressed, my hair wavy and still damp to a point on my shoulder. 

Arachne doesn't know of her either, I haven't said anything about adopting to her; it's not like we're serious anyways. This is serious, at least it should be, in five years - it's been five years, shit, - I've barely been able to force my chin up so that I won't drown. I've barely been able to fend for myself so how the hell am I supposed to keep both of us alive now. 

There's a short walk, the frizz of my hair tickling my neck but focused to hard on my own voice to notice; what if she's scared of me? Is that good? 

I'm pacing in the lobby, the handle of the front door's cold still lingering on my palm like a ghost's kiss. I'm focused on it, "ma'am?" My eyebrows raise and my mouth's open, heart drops for a second - "yes?"

"Please stop pacing, you're making me nervous." 

Fuck you? Who the hell gets nervous by that in an adoption lobby. I sit down, my leg shaking and my jaw clenched - what do I do if my adopted sister child hates me and my friend with benefits who doesn't want any romantic attachments? They don't have that in parental magazines, in the behavior handbooks laying around the lobby, I can't focus. Words repeat faintly in my mind - Isobel, fourteen, blonde.

("Mrs. Krigel, is that you?"

"Yes ma'am, that's me."

"Leon's sister? Wow, you've aged so much!"

"Yes ma'am, his twin that's me. I'm here for Isobel.")

I breathe, the smell of shampoo fresh in my hair and the clothes are light against my skin. I'm so fucking tired of being alone, the name Isobel still in the back of my throat - "Mrs. Krigel?" I turn my head, she's a Krigel. 

She can't be scared. 

The lobby lady comes down the stairs and blonde, fourteen, I breathe and smile with open teeth trying to control my nerves as I stand to walk to her. 

"Isobel."

[ a lion's roar ]

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

[presto][/presto]

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The boards of the stairs groan beneath my footsteps. Beneath the air vent just above me, the delicate lace of my skirt whispers ever so slightly. It billows gently, brushing against my thigh with its hem.

My gaze is lowered to the ground when I walk down to the lobby. It traces my footsteps and does not rise to so much as glance at my surroundings until I am already down the stairs. When I do raise my head and my eyes to look, I am met with a smile. It reminds me of the summer, of warmth, of the seashore. It reminds me of the sun on my back, planting copper kisses as I sit in the sand and let the waves run and disperse over my feet.

A woman stands with the sun on her face.

I freeze.

I do not know why I freeze, but I do. It all unfolds in what feels like a split second- the moment I see the curve of her smile, ice creeps over my bones. I become petrified, like one of the statues in an old story of a woman with serpents for hair that I heard when I was a child. (My mother was a skilled storyteller- when she told tales and myths, she painted them into the air.) She drew pictures of the serpent-haired woman, Medusa, in the sand and held my hand through the story.

(She can't hold my hand anymore.)

It is shock that jolts through every vein of mine; it is fear that turns my flesh into stone. They ride through my body and my mind like headless horsemen- but there is something almost mechanical about the way they clash against one another and the sparks that hiss into my bloodstream from their fray.

I cannot pinpoint what I am afraid of. This fear is a shadow. I can feel it creeping up on me, prowling through inky darkness. And worst of all, it is a ghost, too. I am completely, utterly blind and flailing in blackness against it- its strike is inevitable.

I can feel it in my bones.

The woman who stands before me softens her expression, and I soften mine. She has eyes of a color between the sky and the sea on the days that it is blue rather than green or gray. Her skin is sunkissed as mine, dark against her pale brown locks. She has I face that I swear I know- or at least, I think I know a ghost of it.

"Who are you?" the question rises in my head, but the words break against my lips. "Who are you?" I ask again, but only silence meets me once more.

As she saunters towards me, I feel myself melting. The once rigid muscles of my body have relaxed, no longer made of pure stone and ice. But despite it, bullets are still firing in my head and fire raises its rebellion in my blood. Fear is not an easy foe to sway to lay down their arms; it hardly knows surrender.

I do not know what I am anymore- perhaps I am free matter, just empty air.

"Isobel," she says, and she says it like she knows me.

Yes, that is what I must be. Empty air.

"Who are you?" I think I almost say it this time, but it's like there is salt water running up my throat and if I speak, it will all come rushing up viciously and pour down to the floor from my lips and I will drown.

Silence is consuming, enveloping. It is like a sea of thick black ink. It sticks to every fiber of me, gradually trickling onto the floor in a pool. I say nothing. I only meet her eyes and nod gently in response, brushing the locks of unruly hair from my face.

I think I lost my vocal cords somewhere in the back of my throat. I think something buried them there- but I find them again after another moment of deafening silence. I expect to ask, "Who are you?" but they are not the words that come to me.

"Miss Lou says it's my lucky day," I tell her. There are no introductions- she must already know who I am.

They are quiet words, tranquil as a still pond.

"Is it?" I inquire.

(You don't have lucky days, remember?)

I S O B E L. K R I G E L.

{ and the crashes are heaven to a sinner like me }

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[Deleted]

ARISSA KRIGEL.

the east coast kids, man
we just don't k n o w
singing wait, wait, wait
stop drop me, go, go, go

It feels like fireflies in my stomach; warm and nervous in my stomach and the summer heat rising to my neck just by putting my eyes on - Nat.

"Isobel."

Her name feels like a sermon on my tongue, nearly damn biblical and she's me, she's a Krigel and she's mine in a single second. Isobel, Isobel, Isobel, Isobel, her name's liquid, sweet soda fizzing in my gut - "what a lovely name." I whisper it nearly, like I finally got through the spring storm and finally hit land once again; nothing left but a soft drizzle. What a lovely fucking name. 

"Miss Lou says it's my lucky day," who the hell is that. And there's a silence, a buzzing in my ear and the smell of shampoo faint.

"Is it?" 

I stay with a small grin, my palms pressed together in front of me - we're Krigels, Isobel. We don't have lucky days. I don't have luck and Nat doesn't have days, Leon himself barely has minutes alone anymore; we don't have lucky days. We have golden crowns and the will to make it as well as we can. And I stutter to respond - we can't be scared or we'll fall even faster, Isobel. 

"Krigels don't have luck, Isobel."

We have blood and hurricane spring weather, wilted may flowers on gravestones and cry during drunken sex so we can ignore that we're too broken for anything real; the chances of finding ourselves whole when we look in the mirrors is less likely than throwing up after waking up in somebody else's bed. The chances of finding ourselves home lowered every time we raise the bottle and finding the power to face another damn day is harder than looking at my own reflection - "we just have the strength to make it."

My gaze solidifying back onto her, barely able to catch the slipping grin, and I look at her. Nat Isobel. I want to reach out to her, to grab onto warmth but I can barely pray that she can't tell I'm lying. She's barely a child, she's barely younger than when Nat died and she's barely innocent, the survivor of lost family and I don't know how she's made it. I don't know how I've made it. And I hope that I can make it for her, with her, make it to land again so we can walk together; can I do this? (We find the strength.)

Can I do that? 

I couldn't for Leon, and I couldn't for Nat. I couldn't for myself or Arachne; how can I do it for her? And I look into her eyes and they're like looking into my own, and how could I question it. For her, hell, it can't be a question - we find the strength, and I find her in front of me and it's how I know we can. I find Nat in my mind and I find Arachne in the smell of shampoo; how did I get like this?

For Nat, I have to, to actually get it right for once. Five times deep, I can't risk to fuck this up again.  

I reach my hand out to her, soft eyes upon her as I find a way to keep myself from falling apart - Isobel. Hell, I've got to get this right for her at least, not for a tomb or for alcohol. Not for a lion or a king; for her. We may not have luck, and I may have fleeting strength but for her I'll bare the weight of them both and stuff summer flowers in our sleeves.

"I'm Arissa," and I won't fall trying, because we're Krigels.


"Your sister."

And for her, I've got to get this right for once. 

but i'm taken by the hand
to a blue pay phone
we can break blue laws 
with our s k i n and b o n e s