Hi everyone!
I hope you're surviving the crisis, not getting too bored nor crazy (a bit of craziness is always good tho, I speak with experience). Anyway, here's finally a slightly longer chapter, that I took way too long to translate and where you'll finally learn the name of the protagonist!
Next chapter will be even longer, and really important (spoiler alert: magic will finally appear!).
Hope you'll enjoy this one and let me a thousand reviews (one can hope).
August 2013. I'm six years old. Or twenty-three, if you count my other life, but I'm not feeling like an adult. My development is frozen, blocked by my obsession of finding an answer then killing myself. I'm a taciturn, dark and dreadfully smart kid. The adults are uneasy around me, even my parents have been contaminated. Their hesitant affection is awkward, even for them. They feel like I'm slipping away from them, when they actually never got me. They feel that I'm different, and they can't really handle it.
I grew up alone. My crazy theories, my compulsive researches didn't bring any convincing result. I start being out of patience. Every day I have the feeling of being closer to insanity. More and more, I think about giving up and trying to kill myself again just to see if I'll reincarnate again. However, I don't do it, not yet. Out of fear. And also because the situation could be worse.
This week my parents are sending me to a camp on a small island close to a coastal city. It's a one week camp for "difficult" or "different" children. As good a way as any for the wealthy parents to get rid of their progeny for some time while keeping a good conscience. Apparently, mine think that frequenting children of my age (and coming from the same background as my reincarnation) could be beneficial for me. Oh, they don't see me as sick or insane. But there's this je-ne-sais-quoi in me (I know what, they don't) that makes them uneasy and scares them.
I don't expect much from this camp, but after all I always loved traveling, so why not change air… At least Mrs Winston will get off my back for some time. She's nice, but apparently impervious to my aura screaming "get out and don't even dare try touching me again, you cunt!" at every moment (yes, my aura is vulgar). Once at the holiday camp, I'm the youngest (but certainly not the most immature). We're about fifteen children between six and fifteen. Two adults and a cook are in charge of us. They explain us upon arrival that we'll be quite free. There will be activities proposed to which we can sign up, but otherwise we'll be free to do whatever we please as long as we stay on the camp's grounds.
I sign up for climbing, jet ski (one of those things I would never have had the opportunity to try in my first life) but move away from the manual activities. I like doing some, but not supervised.. We're hosted in four people dormitories, but luckily we're only three girls. I take possession of the upper bed of the bunk bed without hesitation and put my bag on the lower couch, letting the two kids (once is eleven and the other thirteen) take the twin beds on the other side of the room. They ignore me, finding me too young for their "grown up" discussions, and not talkative enough anyway. I find it convenient, cause I wouldn't have had the patience to speak with them.
Once my stuff is installed I retrieve my blue notebook before joining the refectory where we're supposed to attend a welcome meeting. I've had this notebook for six months already, and I never leave it. I covered the pages with poems, mostly written in French, in my still unskillful writing. I encoded most of it to be sure to be the only one to understand. I worked a bit on it to be able to attach a pen to it, and I hide some razor blades inside the cover. Might as well say that I watch this notebook very closely, it is one of my two most cherished possessions, the second one being a small dagger that I stole in one of my great uncle's manor that I always keep tied to my ankle.
At the welcome meeting I discover the other participants. Other than my two roommates there's two cousins, Arthur and James Clifford (their family is part of the English aristocracy) aged respectively twelve and thirteen, a kind of goth scarecrow around fifteen and some others that I don't even bother to notice aged between eight and fourteen years old. We obediently follow our leaders that make us visit the four stars campsite, showing us the borders. Apart from this territory, we're allowed to walk to the beach below if we're in a group, but not to swim. There's a swimming pool inside of the campsite that we are allowed to use freely if we pass a swimming test prepared by the leaders. I decide to take it as soon as possible, and to simply ignore the instructions regarding "not going to the beach on our own". I don't want to mingle with those kids. Well, maybe with the older ones, if it's absolutely mandatory.
By luck it is possible to attend the test at the beginning of the afternoon already, which I pass easily. As a matter of fact I've learned swimming pretty early, and climbing gave endurance to my kid's muscles. While dressing, I think to myself that this body isn't that bad. It's healthy, muscled but not too much (I don't really want to destroy that body by doing too much sport), slim but not skinny (it helps to already be aware of the use of a healthy lifestyle at three years old), tanned. Green eyes, straight black hair cut short, it looks like my previous life's except for the color. Scars as well, but rather discrete. My growing body erases them fast, which is good, cause I wouldn't have been able to hide them forever, and the excuses "It was a cat" or "I feel in the brambles" have their limits.
The first days of camp go quietly. We do climbing, and I find myself in a group with the Clifford cousins, James being the only one apart from me that knows how to climb. As I'm too light to belay him, his cousin Arthur has to take care of it. This guy is a bit strange. He seems confused by everything around him, and keeps on whispering with his cousin all the time. This matter put aside, I find the two boys rather sympathetic, especially James, who his quite reckless and who despite my apparent age ends up doing challenges with me. Who will keep his head under water the longest? Who will be the fastest to climb the wall, but blind? Who will do the coolest dive at the swimming pool? Arthur never go far from James, and tries our challenges as well after I made him notice that even a six-years old girl could take them.
On the third day, as I'm walking on the beach, after escaping the relative vigilance from the adults, I notice a seemingly abandoned lighthouse. There's no one around, except the cousins. I hesitate briefly before calling them, and convince them to follow me. I don't do it because I appreciate them, even if it plays a bit of a role. It's mostly to avoid them telling everything to the adults by making them accomplices. We walk for about ten minutes before reaching our goal. The lighthouse is about thirty meter high, and my child size makes I even more impressive. It is made of old, slightly unsealed stones. We walk around the building, and I see a broken window, pretty small, two meters above the ground. Arthur gives me a leg up, and I slide into the opening, cutting myself on the way with a shard of glass.
I land inside almost safely, just slightly imbalanced. It's quite dark, but I can distinguish some scrap on the ground, and I move towards the door. A bar is blocking it, that I remove, then try to open the door to let the cousins come in. The door moves a bit, but doesn't open. I'm too weak. Arthur and James ask me what is happening, and I tell them to break the door down. I move to the side, and after a short hesitation they try without conviction. The door gives way almost immediately, and the boys join me. While they're getting used to the darkness, I go to the half destroyed stairs and start climbing it without hesitation. They follow me after some protestations. "Dangerous"… If they knew…
There's a room halfway from the top, which rotten wooden floor doesn't seem reliable to me. Fortunately, I am light. I recommend to the others to stick to the walls, and go first into the room. Arthur catches my arm, and ask:
"You're sure we shouldn't stop here? It doesn't look solid…"
"Do whatever you please", I say, freeing myself. "I will keep going. The view will probably be great at the top."
He doesn't insist and just rolls his eyes. He follows me, then James brings up the rear. The top of the lighthouse is a bit collapsed, and the end of the stairs is a pile of debris. The lamp is broken, as well as the windows that used to protect the people working here in the past from the wind. I step closer to the void, made happy by the wind whistling in my ears. I almost feel the call of the void, I remember the times I was afraid of jumping. I barely felt anything when I crashed on the ground, when I died. Or I don't remember. I think it healed me from the spontaneous apprehension I used to feel, before, at the idea of jumping into the air without water below. The view sweeps far. A panicked exclamation from Arthur gets me out of my thoughts.
"Vivian, you're bleeding!" He shows my arm and indeed, there's a nice gash on it. I remember I cut myself at the window. I shrug.
"It's nothing, I will survive."
"You need to heal!"
"No worries, you'll see when I'll have cleaned it with sea water, it's not much."
Arthur doesn't look convinced, but doesn't add anything. James shrugs his shoulders and calls me stubborn, but I feel like I accidentally impressed them a bit. We remain some more minutes on the top before carefully going back down. We leave the lighthouse after trying to put back the door correctly so that no one finds out that the building is open.
I clean up my wound hastily while joking with the cousins. They're not really mature, but I work with what I'm given, and they seem to have forgotten my alleged age, which I appreciate. I refuse to put on any bandage, preferring to let the cut in the open air. It stopped bleeding anyway. I tell the cousins to answer that I fell on a pointy rock, if anyone asks questions. We arrive at the camp just in time for the meal, that we share, sitting together at a table. I decide that James and Arthur will make decent distractions for the rest of the camp. And, who knows, maybe I'll be able to discover what they're trying to hide? Teenagers' secrets, probably. But my instinct tells me those kids are interesting.
Danser avec les nuages
Aller gravir le ciel
Enlacer ses mirages
M'enivrer de son miel
S'éveiller dans la nuit
Quitter les lieux clos
M'enfuir ou je puis
Ne pas éclater en sanglots
Étoiles froides et brillantes
Vide intersidéral et béant
Obscurité rassurante
Me fondre avec le néant*
xxx
Danse with the clouds
Climb up the sky
Embrace its mirages
Get drunk from its honey
Wake up in the night
Leave the enclosed spaces
Run away where I can
Don't burst into tears
Cold and bright stars
Interstellar and gaping void
Reassuring darkness
Blend in with nothingness
-Extract from a notebook from Aurore Berger, 14/10/07-
That's it for this chapter! First discussions with human beings! I know, it's amazing. Well, at the point where I am with the French part, it's mostly talking xD
But hey, enjoy the silence!
I'll hopefully post the next chapter soon.
Stay safe,
Kuro