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Making Waves

Rivers and Tears, the Dance and Fears

Graverobber's painted lips quirked as he watched Shilo Wallace sway to a faint melody through her second-floor bedroom window. It was one of Blind Mag's songs. This had become a habit of his; almost a ritual. Sad, really, how a loner and a cynic like him had so easily become obsessed by this child, this waif-like creature. Seeing her for the first time in the graveyard behind her mother's tomb, daring to venture outside after a silly little bug, he should have known she'd be trouble. Then, again, in the tent at the festival, so desperate to escape. And after, in the alley with the Zydrate addicts and Amber Sweet, so meek in the face of sin and depravity, yet still curious. Yes, trouble. But then, did he ever listen to his own instincts? Not really.

Clenching his fists, he wrenched himself around, trenchcoat flaring, and raced away from temptation. He ran from a child.

--

Shilo danced around her room, the music her only thought. No, not thought; instinct. It flowed through her, a river rushing off with her fears, taking her sorrow with it. For a few stolen moments, she was free, a leaf carried on the tide; swirling in the current, taken wherever the river willed. Shilo was at peace. Calm and still within the movement of the dance.

Then the song ended and she was just Shilo again. Orphan, child of deception, pain-filled and hollow at the same time. She crumpled to the floor, gasping, holding her chest together because it was going to crack open. Surely noone could hold all this anger, fear, and pain inside without exploding. It was too much. Tears fell unheeded to the carpet, washing through forgotten eyeliner and mascara she'd been too overwrought to remember to clean off.

Her wig was lost in the pile of dirty laundry on the floor in the corner of her room. She'd thrown it there in her first tantrum after... after. There had been many others since. Her room was a disaster of ripped fabric, shattered glass entymology cases, and broken dolls. The plastic curtains had been ripped from her bed, and the heart monitor lay dark on it's side, screen caved in, by the door. Food wrappers and cups lay discarded everywhere.

It had only been a week since the OPERA. That's how she thought of it, in capital letters. The night that changed her life, brought it crashing down around her ears and burning through her emotions until she was a soot-ridden carcass, the mere husk of a rebellious 17–year-old girl. She hadn't even been allowed to bury her father or Blind Mag. They were Gene-Co property and, try as she might, Gene-Co lawyers would not release their bodies.

Shilo didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to live alone. There was hardly any food left in the kitchen and her last clean clothes were the ones she was wearing. She had been ghosting around the house, avoiding her father's room and study, sometimes standing in one spot for hours, reliving this moment or that. 'Chase the Morning' running through her head until her knees collapsed on the hard tiles of the foyer, crying once more over the godmother she had known only through her songs and magazine articles.

What does one do when the world changes so much so fast? She wondered, curling up on the floor of her room. Where do I go from here? She remembered that her father had told her that it was up to her to change the world, but how did one accomplish that? And a seventeen year old at that! She wished someone would just come tell her what she was supposed to do. Wasn't that what adults were supposed to do? Order everyone around and make it all run right? Well everyone, her father, Mag, Largo, had just fucked it all up royally, hadn't they?

The wash of emotion finally dragging her under the veil of sleep, her last thought as she pulled the comforter off her bed and cuddled it around her thin body, was What am i going to do now? Then she knew no more.