Eternal Infinity

STARSATNIGHT

13/8/2013

Summary: Some things just don't leave you.

On that fateful day nineteen years ago, I was sitting up on my father's lap in the fifty-year old rocking chair by the hearth, where infant flames burned, flickering and still crying out for wooden nourishment. My mother was off in the kitchen cooking rabbit stew from the bunny my father caught earlier in the day, in his state-of-the-art snare, and Rory the one-month old baby was with her. He almost never leaves her arms.

I just loved winter days like that, when the fire burned and the snow fell and the whole family was home – Mummy cooking, and Daddy sitting and telling me stories about his past. The teacher at school, Mrs Campion, said non-fiction stories were good for me, so I asked Daddy to tell me more of his marvellous tales.

He was just figuring out which of his adventures would be appropriate for that particular Sunday evening – the only day I saw him in the whole week. He stared out the window, watching the flurries of snow whipping around in the wind beyond the old glass. A family of four – parents and two girls – walked past. The father and the older daughter, who was three or four, were evidently Seam, but the mother and the baby looked like they were from town. An odd combination, I thought, but my father seemed to think it was very fitting. A faint smile touched his lips.

"Ah," he sighed. "I know just what to tell you, Gale."

And so he began.

"It was a long time ago, way before I met your mother. I'd done my hunting that day, and was going to trade some bunny with the old lady who sells clothes, but first I decided to drop by the apothecary and see how they were doing, because your granny is friends with them. Also, I had some herbs on me that I decided would maybe do for a good trade.

"So in I went. The parents were manning the counter, and Mrs Everdeen, who was just a young woman then and known by the name Lilie, was sitting and talking with the current Mrs Undersee. They'd said that Lilie was a beautiful young lady, but I'd not glimpsed her since we were kids in school, and I didn't know what she looked like then.

"Well, Lilie was beautiful. Her eyes were blue like the summer sky -" I flinched, and he laughed. He knew I didn't, and still don't, like summer. "Well, autumn then. You like autumn, don't you?" I nodded, and he grinned, and then he continued.

"She had eyes the colour of the autumn sky, and golden hair like corn, and this incredibly kind look about her that I loved. I loved her then, and I didn't want to let her go, even after she ran off with one of the miners on my crew." He kissed my forehead, and smiled again like the sun, all traces of sad nostalgia gone. "And I found Hazelle, your pretty mummy, who's so beautiful and loving and more than I could ever ask for, and I could let her go."

I laughed, and he laughed, and Mummy came in with baby Rory and we all did the laughing together, right by that tiny fire whose sobs had since turned to giggles, and I told my father, "Daddy, that wasn't an adventure, but I like it."

And they all leaned down to kiss my head, beaming and saying that it truly was an adventure, and a wonderful one at that.

And I wondered, Is love really like that? An adventure?

I decided that I had to try it someday – after all, Daddy always said I had an adventurer's blood in my veins.

And try I did.

I regret trying so much.

I had reinvented the well-known cat drug, also known as 'catnip', and made it into something that would work on me. I did it quite by accident, actually, when I misheard some girl's name.

It wasn't until that day, sitting in a black market and consuming something as inedible as rocks, that the drug started to take effect.

The new version of the drug took the form of that small sixteen-year old girl (with a body looking fourteen but the heart, strength and spirit of a thirty-year old), with a long dark braid and silvery-grey eyes. (She's like silver. Precious, durable, difficult to find and even harder to get, beautiful, precious and strong). At the time, she was playfully irritated with a young man, the proud owner of sticky-uppy red hair and pristine white clothes, as he kept flicking her beautifully plaited hair and begging her for a kiss.

I watched and I was seriously (not playfully) annoyed.

Even though the lesson started years ago on that day, I learned something today.

I learned that some things, like the drug I took, last forever. Its effects and the terrible longing for it only got stronger with each passing day, and no other drug I took would counteract it.

Even though I grew up in starvation, I had never experienced a stronger craving.

The drug was (still is) beautiful too. Always too small for her age, with the same long black braid, sterling-grey eyes and olive-toned skin fraught with scars both big and small.

She went on several trips and met people that erased all marks from her skin (though the first and the third added more) but then those regular trips stopped and she grew those scars back.

The first few times, I grew back with them, but then time and fate didn't let me, and I stopped growing and left instead.

Then the craving started and everything else stopped.

The first drug I turned to was ignorance, enhanced with a touch of routine. I did things as normal as I could, as best as I could – taking out the trash, doing my work well, consuming regular food and regular water.

When that didn't work, I tried drugs similar (yet so different) to the one I was hiding from. Ones with alabaster, golden or brown skin, blue, green, brown or grey (but never sterling-silver grey) eyes, dark, light or medium-toned hair.

When that didn't help either, I went for the last possible remedy – one that that first drug's mentor had turned to. I heard that it helped somewhat. Although I knew it never would do a complete job, I was desperate for whatever little nugget of relief I could get my hands on.

I went to that mentor first, since he had the biggest supply of it, more than anyone I had ever heard of. He agreed to share with me, grudgingly happy that he had a brother in his drunken misery.

And we were brothers, partners, laughing manically till the sun went down and till it went up, until a roaring (Roary?) lion found me.

He'd been just a baby the day my misadventure started, safe in the cradle of my mother's arms. Young enough that he did not understand a word of what my father told me. Young and lucky enough that he did not have the insanity to see what I put upon myself to see.

He found me only five minutes ago, and he's sitting across from me now, talking to me, trying to convince me to get my face out of that bottle and go home before it does permanent damage to my body.

"But damage to my harrt," I slur at him. "Why no damage to body?"

"Goo' one boy," the mentor says, laughing wickedly.

But the lion doesn't think it's so funny. He stands up from the chair, towering way above me. When did he grow so tall? I wonder idly. Lions don't grow so tall.

He snatches the bottle away and crushes it in his hand. Fiery liquor flies everywhere and dark red blood runs down his hand, which has green shards of glass poking out of it, but he doesn't seem to notice. He just takes me by the arm and drags me out the door, too fast for me to grab another bottle.

"I know the liquor feels like fire going down the throat," the lion says softly and very uncharacteristically, looking down at me. "You like fire, Gale, my long-lost brother? It'll be good if you do. What you need is the girl on fire."