ZENITH
a highest point or state; culmination.
0o8o0
As a child, you always liked the What does not belong? column in the magazines. They made you think; about the differences between people. About the in-betweens of "freaks! The lot of you!" and "respectable people," she'd uttered, nose lifting.
You'd had two of these pages, a long time ago. You can definitively remember one – five varying red birds and one dark orange one. A little obvious, you'd thought – it spoke volumes that you received the ones that frustrated Dudley. The others you cannot remember as well, but you do recall a little blue-green crab, its cartoon eyes cheery and faded, from the countless times your fingers brushed over the little aquatic icon.
You are reminded of it now, as you stand there, a cool, trickling breeze tossing your hair; the sunset, luminescent orange, burning through your closed lids. You allow them to drift open again, and you're momentarily stilled by the thunderous surge of hot light entering your eyes. You blink harshly and look down – down at the white-pebbled shoreline, interspersed with miniature fields of dirt and sudden sprouts of watery greens. The ground melts down into water, and as you look up, you are again struck by the vastness of the liquid-black lake. The water is very still – the breeze is not enough to stir it – and you admire the flawless architecture of the topmost towers that are reflected in it. Your true home.
You realize that you wish you were angry, that it's ending this way.
You're not.
You're eerily calm, though. Numb. You feel as though you once did – when you walked into the Forbidden Forest to meet your fate in the form of a spider-fingered man, face flat and white and eyes red.
The recollections of that feeling – aloneness, save for the burn of your scar; it triggers you into moving forward, one step.
They tell me, shaking their heads:
"You should be kinder… You are somehow furious."
I used to be kind. It didn't last long.
The water that soaks into your shoes feels like death.
It is welcome.