[fancypost borderwidth=0;font-size:8pt; text-align:justify; line-height:125%; width:350px; margin-top: -5px;]I AM SOBER, LYING IN MY BED
Breathe, it had said.
Eden had been breathing all her life, and as she swallowed down another gulp of icy air, the feeble emotion of helplessness lingered in her chest. It wouldn’t work. It never did. She didn’t even know how she managed to do it twice in the past, nor how others could do it at the snap of a second without much training or thought. It was easy to say she was jealous of them – how good it must be, to have such ease working with such an important power. Why was she so different?
She sucked in another mouthful. The chilly air was making her mouth dry, and she felt cold from forcing it down into her lungs. But, she did as the book said, and the book said to breathe. So breathe she did.
The details of “HOW TO: SHAPESHIFT” had long been tattooed in her head, each instruction polished to perfection so it was understandable and brief. There was no way she could mess it up this time. But still, as the feeling of despair continued to grow inside (much to her frantic distaste) she would allow her limbs to relax, falling out of instruction number two. The casual condescending voice in her head had started up again, and her lips pulled taunt against her teeth in a grimace.
Helpless. Such a child she was. She couldn’t even shift, something that everyone could do. Who even was she? A kid, pretending to be comfortable in a crown that was too big for her head. And now she was hiding. She hadn’t had the courage to go out in ColouredClan’s territory again, fearing what was out there, as well as so humiliated to show that she couldn’t shift as easily as everyone else, she decided she didn’t want to see anyone. She had shut herself up in her cottage for the past few days under the excuse she was getting everything set up. Not like that was a lie; she had moved some furniture around recently, hoping it looked decent. She had never decorated anything larger than a room, after all, and it wasn’t like the apartment she had lived in had anything fancy in it
She opened her eyes, staring dully in front of her. In the low light, a vision of bending irises on the wall greeted her, their purples bleak and their greens practically missing. Worn away from the pressure of time. She had once thought of painting over the vintage wallpaper, thinking it unfit, but after a few days of hanging around her new home, it had grown onto her. They had similarities, Eden and the wallpaper. They both were tired. Maybe even sad. Affected by time, and negatively so.
What an exciting resemblance.
Then again, this wallpaper surely had been long present before Eden had been born. Probably installed when humans still resided in the ColouredClan village.
Reaching out with a paw, she traced it over the droop on one iris’s stem, feeling melancholy. Thoughts of her mother had returned to her the night before – still chock full of missing and wanting and needing something that had never been there. Later came the realization that it was likely she would never get over the loss of that, and she broke a little bit inside, wanting it more than ever before. She wished her siblings were still around. Eden had long forgotten what they were like, and their names hardly held stable in her head. It was often she let everything about them slip from her memory. There were other pressing matters, after all, though sometimes when she got enough time to herself they sulkily returned.
Dropping the foot, she slowly lifted herself off the ground, body stiff from sitting still for so long. Her face twitched with effort as she stretched out a leg, trying to get the tension out of her muscles.
She had chosen out one of the empty rooms in order to make another attempt at shapeshifting – it was the room in the very back of her small cottage, where she found it was hard to drag or push any furniture. Thus she had left it bare, finding it too much of a hassle to tend to alone.
It was a relatively small room, with a petite window to the west wall. Another building nearby towered over her cottage, however, so she got no light besides the occasional reflected kind (only if it was sunny enough, which was rare) from it. Not to mention there were heavy draping velvet curtains, so she could just unleash them whenever she needed complete darkness. Today, though, she had kept them off to the side, since it was such a dark and cloudy day.
Making choppy steps towards the curtain (luckily the previous ColouredClanner who had resided in the cottage had replaced all the inside doors with either curtains, sheets, or a layer of beads strung together) she nosed her way through it, nose wrinkling as it brushed against the relatively rough fabric. As it blanketed over her coat, brushing against it as she passed, she would shiver, not liking the feeling.
She still had to get used to having more than one room, and it was incredibly odd. To have more than one place to go… and to be all alone in a whole house, too. It was eye-opening, and though she hadn’t detected it yet, she definitely felt lonely having all the space to herself.
With a soft yawn, she made her way down the short hall, padding into her small kitchen. It was sectioned off from the rest of the tiny living room and dining area, and she often had to leap across the counter to get to the other side.
Lower legs bunching, she jumped onto the granite, not quite fluidly as she liked (a dog body was certainly built differently from a cat’s) but able to get on anyways. Her nails clicked against the countertop as she made her way to the junky stove (which, somehow, still worked with leftover gas in it, and she was lucky enough that she didn’t blow herself up figuring out how to use it) where a bowl of ready water waited. Using her left paw, which she found was efficient when it came to operating human items, she switched it on, listening to the telltale clacks of it sparking before twisting it to medium. Of course, bowls weren’t really supposed to be put on top of stoves, but Eden didn’t know that.
As the water started to warm up, she hopped down into the dining room, trotting over to the window. For privacy purposes, she had covered it up with a loose lace curtain, and she pushed it aside with her muzzle to peer outside.
It was mid-evening, and she blinked hazily, wondering how the day slipped by so fast. It seemed to be mostly barren outside – after a moment of hesitation, she would pull herself away, then began towards her door, which she would unlock clumsily and open.
Poking her head outside, she would quickly scan the horizon for figures. After a clean inspection, she would hesitate for a second more, then stepped outside, leaving the door open behind her.
The sound of nature surged into her ears, and she would listen silently, eyelashes fluttering. It had been awhile since she had dare escaped outside.
( 1235 words ; apologies for typos, scatteredness, and anything wrong. This was written very late, which wasn’t the best idea, since I thought I had time when I wasn’t drop-dead tired, but I don’t do well past 10 PM, haha
So yeah! Consider this a return from the sort inactivity I had! Hello! )