Drabble One: Be Yourself
Okay, Drabble Number One, which was actually requested second, by mrstater, but it's the first one I finished, so onward we go.
501 words, and I'm trying my hand at angst(tell me how it is), courtesy of the good ship R/T and the prompt 'mirror'.
Good thing I'm confined to a chair. I've been writing all day. And I swear I didn't steal the title from Audioslave.
"Just be yourself."
Her mother had long abandoned 'Tojours Pur', instilling her only daughter with a mantra more suiting and yet completely contradictory to who Tonks was. She was always herself, and never herself- her only consistency lay in her inconsistency, her ability to be a thousand different people in the span of an hour, and still be herself- in shades of personality that few had the privilege of witnessing. She had been compared to many things, by many people, and had never agreed with any of them, save the last.
"Your whole family has star names, Dora. You're brighter than that, you're like...like a supernova."
She glared at her own reflection, taking a white-knuckled grip on the bathroom sink. A supernova, she'd read, is a dying star, and for all its fire, and force, and color, and brilliance, it would eventually collapse from the inside out, dragging everything around it into a silent black oblivion.
He was always right.
Her fingertips left the cold porcelain and found her own face, tugging through lank, mud brown hair, tracing lips that were too thin, eyes too round and scared. She leaned her wrist against the mirror, brushing the back of her hand across her eyes, then brought the side of her fist down as hard as she could against the glass. The corner shattered, slivers falling, ringing on the tile, catching in the sink. She left her hand on the wall, the white paint spattered with red drops that immediately started a race towards the floor. A thin river of blood trickled down her wrist, falling from her elbow to mingle with the dust on the toe of her boot.
"Because supernovas," He had wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, tilting her chin up to look at the night sky. "They're brighter than entire galaxies. Also, they pretty much destroy everything in their path, and they turn funny colours..."
She took a step back from the mirror, calmly pulling a needle-thin sliver of glass from her palm. She thought, numbly, that maybe he had taken everything he liked about her, all of her fire, and force, and color, and brilliance, and had stolen it...maybe plotted it on a star chart, now rolled up and packed safely away in the knapsack slung over his shoulder, probably between a folded-up jumper and a copy of 'Prufrock and Other Observations'...maybe he was saving it for her, maybe he would bring it back. But he had said he might not come back, there was a chance...
He was always right, but this time she wanted him to be wrong. Then again, even if he did come back, there was no chance...
She turned on her heel and strode from the room without a backwards glance. If she had to be herself, if this was who she was, she didn't want to waste anymore time looking at it.
501 words, and I'm trying my hand at angst(tell me how it is), courtesy of the good ship R/T and the prompt 'mirror'.
Good thing I'm confined to a chair. I've been writing all day. And I swear I didn't steal the title from Audioslave.
"Just be yourself."
Her mother had long abandoned 'Tojours Pur', instilling her only daughter with a mantra more suiting and yet completely contradictory to who Tonks was. She was always herself, and never herself- her only consistency lay in her inconsistency, her ability to be a thousand different people in the span of an hour, and still be herself- in shades of personality that few had the privilege of witnessing. She had been compared to many things, by many people, and had never agreed with any of them, save the last.
"Your whole family has star names, Dora. You're brighter than that, you're like...like a supernova."
She glared at her own reflection, taking a white-knuckled grip on the bathroom sink. A supernova, she'd read, is a dying star, and for all its fire, and force, and color, and brilliance, it would eventually collapse from the inside out, dragging everything around it into a silent black oblivion.
He was always right.
Her fingertips left the cold porcelain and found her own face, tugging through lank, mud brown hair, tracing lips that were too thin, eyes too round and scared. She leaned her wrist against the mirror, brushing the back of her hand across her eyes, then brought the side of her fist down as hard as she could against the glass. The corner shattered, slivers falling, ringing on the tile, catching in the sink. She left her hand on the wall, the white paint spattered with red drops that immediately started a race towards the floor. A thin river of blood trickled down her wrist, falling from her elbow to mingle with the dust on the toe of her boot.
"Because supernovas," He had wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, tilting her chin up to look at the night sky. "They're brighter than entire galaxies. Also, they pretty much destroy everything in their path, and they turn funny colours..."
She took a step back from the mirror, calmly pulling a needle-thin sliver of glass from her palm. She thought, numbly, that maybe he had taken everything he liked about her, all of her fire, and force, and color, and brilliance, and had stolen it...maybe plotted it on a star chart, now rolled up and packed safely away in the knapsack slung over his shoulder, probably between a folded-up jumper and a copy of 'Prufrock and Other Observations'...maybe he was saving it for her, maybe he would bring it back. But he had said he might not come back, there was a chance...
He was always right, but this time she wanted him to be wrong. Then again, even if he did come back, there was no chance...
She turned on her heel and strode from the room without a backwards glance. If she had to be herself, if this was who she was, she didn't want to waste anymore time looking at it.