Author's Note: This is just something I wrote down because I needed to vent one day and take a break from that annoying thing called real life and the bureaucratic mess of having two dead parents can generate. It's extremely unpolished, and I'm not sure if I'd ever have any ideas for it again and some of the shifts are... messy. Urgh. I don't know what I could do to improve it, though. So, without further ado...

(Very) minor edit on 13th of April 2014: My thanks to Honoria Granger for spotting a spelling mistake. I used implacable instead of impeccable somewhere down there, and now it's fixed. As for how this meanders... well, it is. I have no other purpose in writing this but some character reflection.

01 - In which boredom is a drowning desolation

The young woman with a deep brown hair and an open, curious face lounged on the armchair carelessly, the waning sunlight falling as a pale shroud over her. There were fresh lilies on the table next to hers, the bouquet strangely full for a table that small, in such an out-of-the-way corner of the library. Several open books were scattered on the table, a few even on the floor—all in humble supplication of the lady above them. Her bright green eyes drank words from the world, words hidden and unhidden, her glances landing and taking flight from every single interesting detail with a hummingbird's heartbeat. If anyone were to pass and observe the tableau, they will agree that for all that she was dressed in jeans and a ratty poet's shirt, she still managed to be arresting all the same.

This was the second afternoon in that week that Sarah spent in the library casually reading various books that had caught her fancy. She flitted between them with exaggerated care, a most discerning butterfly cherry-picking her drops of sweet wisdom. She often read more than two books at once.

(Because she gets intensely bored, and she could quickly jump between stories that way).

Her cell phone gave a muted ping, and she pushed it deeper into her bag after glancing at the first line of the text. Sharon was incensed because Jackie Ormond was badmouthing Sarah without Sarah's presence among them (and God knows that Jackie was a jackal enough in trying to get herself higher in the pecking order, Sarah thought with an amused snort). Maddie was wondering where Sarah was, because the drama club just might convene this afternoon—hadn't Sarah said she wanted to try at being Titania? Well, this was a good opportunity to improve her chance by meeting with the more permanent part of the crew.

Sarah took a long sigh and replied to both of them that no, she wasn't at school, and she has no plans on going anywhere near school right now. She was perfectly happy where she is, thank you. She snuggled deeper into an armchair she had appropriated for herself (once there was someone else who cleared his throat at her when he saw the chair had been occupied. She gave him her coldest, most haughty glare, and the poor young man shuffled awkwardly away—she noted when she passed him later on, reading at a different table, that he was probably older than her, and maybe even a college student).

Ping! Ping!

Sarah let out another long-suffering sigh as she checked her text again. Sharon insisted that Jackie needed to be faced head on. Maddie said that really, this would be a very good opportunity for Sarah...

She sighed and glanced out the window. The trees outside had shed most of their coat for the coming winter, and the landscape had turned stark and bare. Grey. Boring. Just like school and everything else felt for her on some days (and today was one of them). She knew her answer to her friends even before she wrote them down. No.

I'm not coming this afternoon. My head feels a bit off. I'm sorry.

Which was a much better answer than the real reason she had in her head (I'm not interested in doing any of that right now), because people tend to get hurt when she was being honest.

(Jackie Ormond wants to be the Homecoming Queen? Go ahead, I don't give a damn. Yes, that also means that I know you fully support me to become the Queen, Sharon, but I don't actually give a rat's entrails about the overrated pageant when I'm too bored to humour you, and right now, you're boring me). Sarah massaged her temples and pushed her thoughts down with only the slightest twinge of guilt. Sharon didn't deserve to hear any of that at all. Not when she'd been a very good friend to her. (No, Maddie, I know I've auditioned for Titania last week, but I really don't want to meet up today, not when I'm only told a mere two hours before meeting up. Today is just not drama day for me. Today is Sarah William's Day for Herself)

Guilt grew inside her precisely because she didn't even feel the slightest amount of guilt for her current disregard of whatever it was that she had been involved in several days ago. It's not Sharon or Maddie's fault that she was bored. She just... is. It wasn't even a good idea to tell them what she felt right now, not when she knew it could pass in a day... or three. She called her friends and gave a solemn apology about her absence other than general words about not-feeling-well. Sharon and Maddie were worried for her, but understanding. She assuaged their concern, but didn't give them too many details.

She wasn't sure they could ever understand.

She gritted her teeth. Right now, everything was mind-numbingly uninteresting that she was almost out of her wits. It was as close to boredom as a headache was to having one's skull cleaved in.

Sarah wanted her life to glide on a knife's edge again (If a prince begged for her assistance to fight a dragon and recover his kingdom's treasures, she would've agreed to help him in a blink, without even knowing all the risks yet, nor the prize). Her fingers danced a rapid tap-tap-tap across several pages at once, continuously searching for that elusive feeling of fascination to distract from the encroaching drabness.

(It had happened several times over several months now. She tried not to think about the first time it happened and what triggered it—because she didn't want to think about the ache that she felt, for a place she wasn't sure she could still visit. She didn't even want to try going away, to cross the barriers between worlds, because to actually experience failure of going there would have been too much for her).

Even the library was not enough to hold her attention, and after two hours of jumping between book and listless reading, she gave up and went home. On days like these, she forced herself not to drive because she would give half the drivers she passed on the way home a heart attack.

On days like these, she smiled far too often into the shadows, all teeth and humour sans mercy... and she pretended she didn't feel any of them smiling right back, yipping at her heels like overexcited little hell hounds even when she kicked them. Especially when she kicked them.

(Goblins, it would seem, are not the only masochists around).

On days like these, she avoided her friends to save them from herself.

...

(She does not allow herself to feel sorry for the strangest of homesickness and longing that she felt, because isn't she home already right now? It does not make much sense and she disliked things that do not quite make sense. It made her think about [him] nonsensical things. As such she wasn't in the mood to feel sorry for anyone else).

...

On days like these, she gladly went when Karen and her father dragged her to one of their parties where work is disguised as leisure. She had gone before, after all, and found entertainment for herself.

Really.

She chose her dress carefully (one of the perks of being Linda Williams' daughter is that one barely ever has any need to buy any new clothes, or new shoes, or new bags… or new anything, really. Whatever the woman was, she had an impeccable taste). It was white, sleeveless and a open at the back a little as well. There was a hint of cleavage without being tasteless. For some reason she couldn't bring herself to leave without taking her long white silk gloves too. She chose sophistication instead of innocence, and Karen had always admired her taste for however weird their relationship still is.

"I had never thought you'd wear something like that." Linda had said.

Sarah snorted in amusement. "What, it's just not me?"

"No, now that I see it again, it's very you. I just thought that you'd chose something more… fantastic?"

Sarah heard that as princess-like, and held back the urge to laugh. No, a mere princess she wouldn't be. No. Not anymore. "Maybe for Halloween, Karen. I'll be sure to look swashbuckling enough. In the meantime, shall we?"

"Of course."

They took the arm of Robert Williams and went out the door.

(The two female Williams ignored the consternation of her father, of course, who realised well enough that he wouldn't want to let his guard down when his daughter was looking like that).

…

(It was not until they were almost there that Sarah realised she had chosen white without even another thought or consideration, that she had easily dismissed all other colours. And for goodness' sakes, why did she choose an Art Noveau hair clip whose ornaments was mostly feathers? Or accentuate her piercing gaze with a smoky eyes look and deep red lipstick?

Sarah decided that no, she didn't want to know more about her subconscious decision. At all.)

…

The party was glamorous. As usual. It did not surprise Sarah the least, or awe her. Then again, very few things could surprise her anymore nowadays.

She amused herself by telling Karen all of the secret glances and bravado she could see in every stiff back, every precise poise held, and every upright or drooping shoulder. (That petite blonde in the robin's egg blue dress by the hors d'ouvres? She's having an affair with that guy with greasy hair—she keeps trying to catch his eye, and he's pretending that he doesn't see her when he's dancing with his wife…

How do I know that's his wife?

Oh come on, Karen, it's so obvious. They came together and they have wedding rings matching in ostentation.

Once the wife is distracted among her friends, greasy hair and blondie do that eye-sex thing at each other. Yes, Karen, I declare that eye-sex is a proper word for it and I will put my hands over my ears and sing off-key loudly if you attempt to debate me on it.

The reedy guy at the corner clutching his glass like a lifeline is embezzling his office in what probably is small amount regularly over a long time. I'd bet twenty bucks that he hasn't taken a single day off in a long, long time because he doesn't want anyone else to see his files... and oh, he has a crush on the blondie with robin's egg blue).

Sarah would hoard and file their little secrets the way a weapons master would stock his armoury. She would easily inform her father of how he could easily use those little scattered vices to finish a case faster, to move higher in his career ladder. Her father might be appalled at times of her casual disregard of the humanity milling around them, other than as little pockets of hidden stories, but good, steady, unimaginative Karen would laugh and pat her hand in unsaid praise, not really seeing how her stepdaughter's eyes were shining like shards of glass.

She's just like you, Robert; she has the nose to be a good lawyer, Karen had said.

...

(...your eyes could be so cruel, Precious...)

...

She blinked and shoved the last errant memory down an oubliette.

(For a caught moment there was a hint of pride, of being flattered).

Sarah had been amused enough that she didn't even try to correct her stepmother about what she wanted to be (traveller, adventurer, secret agent, occultist, journalist, writer, storyteller, champion, ruler... any other but never, ever, just a lawyer). At times like these, Karen would nod away at her correct observations and explain more on the inside politics and office grapevine gossip if Sarah was curious enough. Sarah would be strangely, curiously giddy when Karen introduced her to any of the people who had unconsciously starred in the various scenarios she could see them in.

(Because now she could dig deeper, to ascertain just how correct her eyes had been. Sarah William's eyes, after all, had a history of being right.)

She liked accepting the challenge of presenting them with the image of the dazzling, mercurial daughter of the Williams (acting is still acting, whatever the setting). She would burrow so far under their skin, fish for details of their life as a most attentive listener until she had caught too much, her knowledge an iron grip over their hearts, clutching their souls.

(They think that they and their petty insecurities are cruel? Oh, I'll show them cruel...)

Many of the people in those parties were politicians, and obstructive bureaucrats, so she told herself that it was really, really alright if she let herself loose.

(After all, hadn't her father complained often enough under his breath that he wished some of the people he had to work with had more sense? That they will listen to what he had to say? Well, hadn't she just given him the way to do it?)

Most of them didn't know better about what they had gifted her with their own words, their own tongue no better for them than adders nursed to their breasts. She gave them her smiles and laughter and grace, a balm of enjoyable company for the moment before the poison of exposure hits (even if her dad was having second thoughts about it, Karen would be much more pragmatic than he is in using what Sarah had said. She wanted to secure the family's future, after all—in this case, stepmother and stepdaughter were in complete agreement).

Sarah consoled herself with the thought that at the very least she had pity where mercy was absent.

(If she was with Sharon right now, she would shred Jackie Ormond the moment the other girl tried the slightest attack on herself. It would be so easy. All she had to do was mention something about Jackie's divorced parents, or how pathetic she is, trying to live up to a mother who didn't even care about the child she left behind, because at least Linda Williams still asked her daughter to spend some time with her during the summer break. It wasn't as if Marianne Ormond was a better class of actress than Linda Williams, either. Yes, the Ormonds probably have more money than the Williams, but it isn't as if any of that had allowed their family to buy a new wife and mother, is it? What with Jackie's father's uninteresting personality that even the paralegals in her father's office talked about his aborted attempts at dating one of them a month after it was over. Such a pathetic man, really.

Yes, Sarah knows that it's really in poor taste to dish that kind of dirt and damage for whatever pitiful attempt Jackie might mount, but Sarah could see herself doing it with relish if provoked. Hence why she avoided Jackie Ormond this week—she still had pity).

(If she was with Maddie right now, she would definitely enjoy talking with everyone else in the drama club as her completely charming self. Yet the moment she sniffed the slightest hint of jealousy, of envy fed by insecurity from her presence, she would follow it like a shark tracking blood in the water—meticulously and mercilessly. Like that pixie-like girl, Hope something-or-other, who'd always hovered closely to Sarah whenever she talked a little too long with Andy Hopkins; Hope who was always tart and unrestrained in her opinion of Sarah. Sarah herself could see the signs of a desperate crush from a mile away. All she had to do was go on one date with Andy, make sure they both enjoyed themselves and... no, she's not evil enough to crush someone's heart at the smallest implied insult).

She shook those thoughts away, banishing them again into but a wispy spider's thread of a might-have-been, refusing to give them any grounds to become a will-have-been.

For deep in her hearts of hearts, Sarah Williams was cruel.

That realisation did not spark the same sort of indignation it used to—she refused to give him any more power over her, not when she could help it. Her denial would've only serve to amuse him and mislead herself from what she really is. Truth is truth, no matter the messenger, and there is a simple power in them. She had come to terms with that, and now she's learning to live with it. Her callousness was a streak that ran deep like an ice-covered sea in the Antarctic—most of the time, it was out of sight and the permafrost above it firm, and she knew not to heed it. Yet there would be days where it ran close to the surface, when cracks happened (when she was tired, spent, and her control was dangerously fraying). Anyone standing too close to her at those times risked getting frostbite at the very least, and losing some limbs or their heart at most.

On days like these, she avoided normal people because there is still a part of her that knew that normal people does not deserve to face Sarah Williams cruelty (most of the time, anyway). She generally liked her friends enough that she gave them the gift of absence from her company.

She might be cruel, but she also had a mostly-working conscience...

...mostly being the operative word here. Mostly.

She had put enough faith her control that she doesn't think about it much. Most of the time.

At the other (few) times...

...even the end of the world is not enough to save you from Sarah Williams.

Any comments, pointers or review will be greatly appreciated.