Sherlock's hair falls in sooty tufts over the creases on his forehead. He sits cross legged, dirty feet wedged uncomfortably beneath the seat of his raggedy pyjama bottoms, stained and torn from his recent 'expedition' into the nearby woods. Apparently he was searching for spies hiding their painted faces among the leaves. There's a book he's got wedged open with his bony elbows, and his cherub lips move slowly as he forms the words, clearly frustrated with his sluggish mind.
My idiot brother is trying to read poetry again, in an effort not to appear quite so much of a dullard, no doubt. I have long done away with the wistful words he's stumbling over like an infant haltingly reciting the alphabet. I've cast it away like all the childish whimsy my precocious sibling so desperately clings to.
His jumper hangs, rumpled, off his back, too loose despite its age. I was under the impression that children were supposed to grow, but Sherlock eats only when mother assumes her self-acclaimed 'monstrous' form, practically forcing some gruel or other through his pouting lips. Stubborn to a definite fault is my brother. I watch his as he turns the page with a frustrated sign. He's rogue thin, like an urchin from the bloody sixteenth century, but there's brittle strength in his fingers. I've had experience with that strength, and have little desire to subject myself to such physical strain again, though I doubt I shall avoid his voracious hunger for violence for very long.
We're opposites, Sherlock and I. Where I eat compulsively, he treats sustenance as a means of continuing with his erratic existence. I exult in fixing things, Sherlock in breaking them. I crave perfection, and he delights in the griminess of the world. Putting this laborious analogy simply, as I always find myself having to do, my brother is a loose cannon, as like to fire upon his friends as at the enemy, and the fragile boundaries between the two sides of him lie locked away in his musty head, which he is too stubborn to let me explore.
There's a jagged, roughly wrought scimitar wedged down the back of his shirt, the pommel protruding from his collar, no doubt grating against the knobs of his spine. Sherlock is forever caught between two sides of himself. There is a glimmer of myself somewhere, which desires knowledge simply for its own sake, and a darker sheen of chaos I find myself morbidly fascinated by. I can't help but scoff at his forced studiousness. At four years of age my brother has barely moved onto Keats, and his knowledge of all things useful is rudimentary. You have to feel sorry for him.
I feel a flutter of impatience in my chest, calmed by the comforting reminder that tomorrow I will be bound for boarding school, borne toward a world far larger than the limited culture of our family home, with Sherlock bumbling around like an imbecile. Soon I will be far from the veritable farm yard of intellect my mother so charitably calls home, among individuals who can actually hold semi-intelligent conversation. I rest my head back against the grass-stained leather and breathe a sigh of quiet contentment.
A/N: So there's the first chapter. Hope you liked it. If you did, please let me know.
