Eridanos - Entry 03a - Kiley
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Warning: Language, domestic violence, way too much text
Disclaimer: All writing and any grammar errors belong to the character writing the entry.
It's especially important to keep that in mind this time, because Kiley writes in 3rd person.
Note: Due to length, this entry is divided into two. ^^;;; You'll find a link at the bottom of this part.
Once upon a time, there was a faraway city known as Eridanos, a mostly beautiful place where two sparkling rivers divided the land into three unequal kingdoms.
The first and grandest of these kingdoms was Downtown, a shining realm of steel splendor, excess, secrets, and power. Permanent entry into Downtown was for the elite only. All others could only visit and gaze in awe at what they were not allowed to touch.
Then there was the Middle Kingdom, nestled between the rivers, and the shadow and protection of the mountains. The privileged lived here, with their amenities - health clubs, malls, and fine dining - and their lives perfect enough for prime time television. Though they were not truly a part of it, those of the Middle Kingdom were nonetheless highly interested in everything that happened Downtown, and showed very little consideration for those who inhabited the final and lowliest of the three realms.
This place was called by many names, and very few of them were charitable, but the Commons was the most accurate, for it was here that everyday people lived their lives, far from the glittery falseness of Downtown. Here dwelled the workers whose sweat fueled the workings of the entire system. This was home to the employed poor and the downtrodden, the sad, the criminal, and the ones who were still fighting and hoping, those who gazed across the wide expanses of the twin rivers and dreamed of the distant day when they too might be able to cross over to something better. A day that likely would never come for most.
In the Commons, within sight of the rivers and the bridges which spanned them, there lived a young girl by the name of Kiley. She wasn’t very pretty, or even anything much worth noticing, but she unfailingly did her best to be kind and friendly, and had the foolish habit of always looking on the bright side of even the darkest situations and hoping for a better future. She loved nature and being outside and even though the air in the Commons was heavy and stale with the collective broken dreams of its inhabitants, Kiley liked to breathe it in each morning and hoped that her abiding faith in tomorrow would filter away the stink of despondency.
Like most of those who begrudgingly called the Commons home, Kiley’s life was not always very nice. She lived with her father, a man by the name of Illian McKormick, whose loneliness and defeat was a living entity that gnawed away at the foundation of the small house they rented. While he perpetually grieved for the loss of his wife to illness years earlier, Illian’s once promising career in sports had come to a grinding halt in the minor leagues, and those two bitter crosses seemed to be far more than he could bear. A weak-willed man to begin with, he was given to bouts of drinking and depression-induced laziness.
It fell to Kiley to take care of him, and that she did. She kept the house neat and tidy, did all of the shopping, cleaned up the messes that Illian left behind and regularly cooked meals which would often be left uneaten in favor of another drunken binge. She was a drudge in every sense of the word.
Kiley’s efforts and labor were expected, but absolutely unappreciated, by Illian, who ignored his daughter for the most part unless something vexed his temper or was left undone. Then his anger was loud, hard and quick, and his viciously thrown words were often accompanied by accusations of holding him back, hampering him, and keeping him from fulfilling all those broken dreams which he knew he could have achieved if only he hadn’t been saddled with a needy infant who only sapped his strength and resources as she grew older.
For Kiley’s part, she felt there was little more she could do aside from letting him rage and taking the brunt of it. After all, perhaps he was right. Children were burdens. And he did provide for her, even if the money was tight and infrequent, so she owed him that obligation. And she even found some solace in the rules he imposed concerning who she could associate with and what time she had to be home, choosing to believe that those limitations were set with a thought to her safety and wellbeing, rather than out of a need to tightly control at least one small aspect of his life when everything else seemed to be beyond his ability to influence.
True to her nature, Kiley tried admirably to feel love - or even just simple affection - for him. It was her private shame that she could not.
It was a difficult life, but Kiley endured through the knowledge of a wonderful fantastic and magical secret! When Illian faced her once more in anger and threw his fist in her direction, only remembering the Secret could keep her from completely crumbling.
When she was hurt, when things became too much for her to handle on her own, when she was tired and Illian had yelled at her once too often, when she wanted to break down into tears . . . the Secret was her retreat. She remembered that she was not supposed to be here, amidst the heartache and difficultly in the Kingdom of the Commons. No, the life of constant financial burden and drudgery was not really hers.
Kiley knew that sometime in the far distant past, as an infant she had been taken from her true life - perhaps spirited away in the dark of night - and dumped on her father, as he so often bemoaned. Kiley was not really his child, how could a man who hit her and used his voice as a whip be her sire? No no. Somewhere far away in a magical land . . . she had a real father who loved and missed her, and a mother as well. And in that distant realm of beauty and dreams, on the glorious day when she at last returned to it, Kiley would be welcomed with adoration and hailed as the Princess that she truly was.
Yes, a Princess! And her real family had been searching for her tirelessly over the years, determined to find her and return her to the life in the Faraway Land that she was suppose to be living - a life where she was beautiful rather than plain and frumpy, and loved in a way that she wasn’t in Eridanos, surrounded by her true family. They would take care of her rather than forcing her to be the parent. She was sure that she would live in an amazing palace of marble and crystal, surrounded by feelings of goodness and it would be a place where the air was fresh and smelled always of gardens and vibrancy, a place where she would be able to dance the way her soul often wished it could, unfettered by the heaviness of day-to-day toil.
Until the day came when her real family would find her and whisk her away from the oppression of her current hard world, Kiley had three retreats to keep her from breaking, three things that enabled her to maintain her hope and sweet disposition. The first was her love of bugs and spiders. She had no idea where this fascination had come from, but truly she thought creepy crawlies were the most amazing things in the entire world. She adored them all - from the beautiful butterflies to the lowliest beetles - and she could even find a kind word for mosquitoes. Though it was risky thanks to her father’s temper, she sometimes surreptitiously left plates out overnight, simply to attract flies that could be watched and studied. To her, there were few delights greater than coming downstairs in the morning to find a swarm hovering over a tainted dish. If possible, she would let them linger for hours and would whisper to them all about the beautiful gardens in the Faraway Land where they would be free to buzz and explore all day long, if only they were there.
Kiley was no fool. She knew that this preoccupation with bugs made her seem strange to others, particularly her peers at school. But she also felt that anyone who would shun her just for having an interest was not the type of person she needed as a friend. So she always advertised her fascination, so as to be sure that any friends she made would be true ones.
Kiley’s second retreat was her room. Though it was the tiniest in the house, she had decorated it with bugs of all types and there were comfortable cushions for her to sit on when she wanted to write her stories or do her homework. Her father rarely bothered to venture within, so it was her own private sanctuary where things were quiet and gentle, and she did her very best to ensure that any of Illian’s aura of defeat that might be clinging to her was left in the hallway before she entered. As humble as it was, she tended the room with meticulous care.
The very best feature of that room was a door. It was the only door in the entire house leading out to a little balcony, which gave it the impression that it was all hers - a private little area, bathed in the warming and revitalizing rays of the sun.
There she could dream of Faraway Land and the beautiful day when she would return there, she could imagine that she was standing on a balcony of the ethereal palace where she would live, looking out over a beautiful patchwork quilt of agriculture and colorful fields of flowers, dotted here and there by sleepy little hamlets.
The balcony was a small piece of her private kingdom that Kiley could cling to, and since her bedroom was the only way to get to it, no one could intrude on her dream, unless she allowed them to.
And the single person in Kiley’s life who was afforded that supreme privilege was the third retreat, her best friend Ripp Grunt. He lived across the street from Kiley, an unwilling member of another family being slowly eaten away by life in the Commons, and a victim of his own insecurities and confusion. Upon their first meeting, he had not been turned away by Kiley’s incessant talk of bugs and spiders, and so she knew he was a true friend, and really - he was also a very sweet guy once one got past his constant complaints and self-defeating attitude. Kiley wished that he would smile more often. The rare expression made him very attractive; she wanted to show him a mirror every time she saw it. Perhaps if he knew how appealing he was, he would feel better about himself.
Ripp often came over in the afternoon on the weekends, when both he and Kiley could be sure that her father was off playing a losing minor league game in some other town, as Illian could not stand Ripp. He was inexplicably convinced that his daughter was participating in immoral activities with the neighbor boy, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Not only was Ripp a man of honor, but Kiley also knew full well that Ripp was not - could not be - interested in that sort of thing from her . . . even if Ripp himself wasn’t always fully aware of it. Their afternoons on Kiley’s balcony were spent talking, often more in the manner of two teenaged girls rather than a girl and a boy, making jokes with each other and trying to forget how life seemed to be defeating them before they ever really got a chance to live.
Aside from being her best friend and companionship that Kiley really needed, Ripp fulfilled another need for her, one that had been sorely quelled and squashed nearly out of existence from years of tending to her ungrateful father. It was the maternal instinct to care for another. When Ripp was depressed or angry - and he often seemed to be either one or another - then Kiley took it upon herself as a challenge to cheer him up, to spread her unrelenting hope and optimism and try to infect him with it. If she could get him to show that lovely smile, then she knew she had succeeded, at least in some small way, and that made her very happy. For his sake, and for her own. Even if it wasn’t much, she was making a difference in someone’s life, and that meant that her often difficult existence wasn’t nearly as pointless as it might seem.
When Ripp thanked her with a hug, that was when she truly felt connected.
Ripp was an important part of Kiley’s wonderful Secret. From her true home in Faraway Land, Kiley dreamed she would be able to use her influence to reach out and help all those who needed to be saved from their broken hopes. She would give the people who languished in the Commons whatever they needed, be it money or rehabilitation or counseling, and Ripp was the one she most wished to give hope and a future to. She would appoint him a position in her Court and bring him to live in the white and glittering palace with her . . . or better yet! - she would give him his own place to live, a special hideaway where he could be with the person he wanted free from frustration, or persecution, or anger. He could become the person that he wanted to be, the person she knew he could be if only he tried. That thought always made Kiley smile. In return for the friendship he had given her while they stagnated together in the Commons, she would be his benevolent goddess.
It was a beautiful Secret, though the intrusion of reality made it a difficult one to remember when times were hard and when the Commons seemed especially harsh. But perhaps it was because she had to actively work her imagination to make it seem tangible that Kiley loved the Secret probably far more than she should have. Her rather illogical reasoning was that if it was easy to escape into the Secret, then it could only be an illusion, and Kiley knew her heart would break if that were so.
She needed the Secret, needed it to be true, because really . . . between her angry father and the unappreciated work she did, between the oppressiveness of the Commons and the people at school who thought she was strange and flighty . . . aside from Ripp, the balcony, and the flies that swarmed the dirty dishes, what else did Kiley have besides the Secret to hold onto?
Though Ripp was definitely Kiley’s best friend, there were others, and one of these was her secret desire.
His name was Christian Bui. Kiley had irrational bolts for him and thought that he was quite simply beautiful. She had no idea why, but then love and chemistry really does not lend itself readily to explanation, does it? Like herself, he was from the Commons, but whenever she gazed at him, it was almost as if she could see a quality to him that was not common in the least. Perhaps he too secretly came from the Faraway Land, perhaps he had even been sent to keep watch over her from afar.
She adored his eyes especially, and how their rich chocolate color seemed to snap and sparkle when he was laughing or smiling. And if that smile happened to be accidentally directed toward her, Kiley felt her insides jump every single time.
Christian was a member of the high school early military program, just like Ripp’s older brother Tank, and so he could often be seen around school wearing his uniform, which Kiley also adored. It looked so handsome on him and showed off his well-toned body very nicely.
Kiley knew that she was not the only girl in school who spewed hearts when Christian and Tank were around. ♥
Even if he had not been sent to watch over her, Kiley knew that Christian would have a part to play once she returned to Faraway Land. Someone so noble as to join the military at such a young age had to be brave and powerful, gallant and honorable, just as a Knight of the Realm should be. When she returned to her true home, he would go with her and stand as her Protector. He would be close to her at all times. And of course, eventually one thing would lead to another. . . ♥ ♥ ♥!
Unfortunately, there was a hitch to her fantasizing. Kiley had known Christian for years and he had never shown any more interest in her than he did other girls who were school friends. Even though she did her best to be the type of girl that Christian would like, Kiley also knew that she would probably never attract his attention in the way that she hoped. In the mundane Commons, she wasn’t beautiful like most of the other girls were, nor as beautiful as she would be in the Faraway Land, and when she sat near him during lunch, he seemed to only tolerate her cheerful chatter. Never once did she ever get the impression that he had any bolts for her at all.
One of Kiley’s other friends was a boy who had just recently moved to the Commons from some place that sounded much nicer, at least in name. He was Dustin Broke, and Ripp had introduced him to Kiley one afternoon during school. Kiley liked him a great deal, as he was friendly and good-humored, and did not seem to mind at all that she adored bugs so much. In fact, later when he found out about the affinity she had for them, he laughingly suggested that she come over to the trailer his family had moved into, since he was sure the place was filled with vermin.
Since she, Ripp and Dustin often walked home from school together, she became friends with him quickly and was grateful for his comfortable big brother-like company, especially when the three of them hung out at the dank little arcade next to the local convenience store. Ripp usually threw himself into video games with the relish of one trying to forget about real life, so trying to max social with him was a bear. It was fun to have Dustin along to joke and laugh with.
She thought he was very handsome (though not as handsome as Sir Christian, of course! ♥ ) and kind, and she enjoyed spending time with him. Just as Ripp used video games as a form of escapism, Kiley did the same through socializing and being close to the people she grew to care about, and if she could get away with it, Kiley liked to stay out with the boys for as long as possible, so that she wouldn’t have to go home and face the discomfort there. When it was time to leave the arcade, Dustin was usually the first to depart their small group, since he lived almost directly across the street. After an evening of fun and talking, it made Kiley sad to see it come to an end, and it returned heaviness to her heart to watch him walk away.
But it was also good to have a best friend to slowly meander home with. Though she adored Dustin and was growing ever fonder of him, Ripp was still her best friend, and she cherished the time they could spend together. Especially when he was in max fun from getting a good game score, or from hanging around with Dustin. Kiley thought Dustin’s friendship was extremely beneficial for Ripp, who didn’t seem to have very many friends. He often acted much happier after seeing Dustin, and that made Kiley smile knowingly, as did Ripp’s eager recounting of the evening’s activities with Dustin, which she endured with loving patience and far more understanding of the situation than Ripp himself had. She wondered sometimes . . . would Dustin be the one that Ripp would want to be with him in Faraway Land? Or would it be that close friend he’d left behind in Strangetown, Johnny?
Kiley felt very accepted in her little group of three, especially because to some extent she knew that they all shared similar circumstances, stuck as they were in a world their parents had thrust upon them through various means. There was Dustin, new to Eridanos, taken from the people and life he had known and demoted to living in a trailer at the very edge of accepted society. There was Ripp, unhappy and unaccepted by not only his own family, but himself as well. And there was Kiley herself, the displaced Princess, trying to bring cheer to them, while trapped in her own dreariness.
For her, these friendships were precious. In many ways, they revitalized her as much as the wonderful Secret, and there was more solidity to them as well. The friendship they shared did not have to be imagined. It was actually there. And it was far closer than that nebulous “someday” of Kiley’s dreams.
One Friday Kiley went over to Ripp’s house in the late afternoon and Ripp’s brother Tank let her in, telling her that Ripp was probably up in his room. She went upstairs and walked in on Ripp and Dustin dancing together. ♥ She couldn’t help thinking how cute it was, nor did she miss the happy expression on Ripp’s face in those couple of unaware seconds before he realized she was there. Dustin said that he was giving Ripp a dance lesson, and asked her to help him, so Kiley unthinkingly jumped right into it with him.
It was exhilarating, because Kiley loved to dance, but often felt too heavy and loaded down to actually do it, and it was especially nice to dance with Dustin, who appeared to be very accomplished at it. His moves were just well-practiced and almost fluid, and his eyes on her were warm and filled with fond pleasure as he enjoyed the activity. But Kiley’s eagerness to dance turned out to be a mistake. She noticed that Ripp didn’t seem to enjoy the lesson nearly as much now that she had joined it. Given what Kiley had surmised about Ripp’s inclinations, that wasn’t too surprising. Not wanting him to feel bad, she decided to suggest that they end the lesson and talk instead.
Dustin told her that he wanted to go out to the Loft, which was a teen club in the Middle Kingdom, and that was why he was trying to teach Ripp to dance. He pushed to go that next evening, but stubborn Ripp - who was acting rather sullen - ramblingly offered a bunch of excuses on why he couldn’t, not being able to dance being only the first in a long string. Dustin, apparently eager to get out and do something, readily asked Kiley if she wanted to go instead. Though she would have liked to (she had never been to a club before), she saw the tense frown on Ripp’s face in her peripheral vision, and that - along with the rather frightening prospect of having to ask her father’s permission for such an outing - prompted her to decline as well.
Sometime while they were chatting, the door to the bedroom opened and Tank stepped in with Christian following him. Though Ripp didn’t seem very pleased by the intrusion (even though he shared that bedroom with Tank and it was pretty rude of him to resent Tank coming in), Kiley was delighted. Certainly she liked Tank - in spite of some of the mean things Ripp said about him, she had always found him to be very polite and nice, even if he was a little rough and sometimes came off as unapproachable - but naturally her main interest was in Christian. The two had apparently just gotten off from training, and had arrived home right before Kiley showed up. She hadn’t even known her handsome Knight of the Realm was there! ♥ ♥
“Hey guys, what’s up?” Tank asked, pleasantly enough.
“We’re making plans to go out to the Loft,” Dustin told him, even though they had actually abandoned that conversational topic quite some time ago. Obviously he was not going to give up on the idea very easily, and he seemed pretty eager to pitch it to a fresh audience. “Have a seat,” he invited.
Kiley heard Ripp grumble under his breath from his spot on the bed, but she understandably couldn’t give much thought to that, because Christian moved around to sit beside her! Beside her! The thought that he might want to be close to her added credence to her theory that he was in the Commons to watch out for her. After all, there was plenty of room on the bed; he could have sat next to Ripp. It would have been more convenient. She did her best to pretend she was still interested in the conversation, but it certainly wasn’t easy when she could feel those chemistry bolts sparking in her chest.
Just watching the way Christian’s body moved as he sat down brought light to her heart. ♥ And listening to Dustin doing his utmost to keep on the subject of going clubbing was very difficult. In addition to Christian’s proximity, Kiley was also partially conscious of Ripp’s silence, though she couldn’t tell whether it was the idea of going clubbing or his older brother’s presence in the room that was darkening his mood. Why was he so opposed to the idea of going out anyway?
To her surprise (and probably to Ripp’s consternation), both Tank and Christian expressed interest in going to the Loft with Dustin, and Tank proposed making it a group outing. For the remote chance of being able to go out with Christian, even in a group with others, and especially for the possibility of getting to dance with him (♥ ♥!), Kiley started to think that maybe the risk of asking her father would be worth it.
Dustin was all for it. “Great! Why don’t we do this tomorrow night, then? And Ripp, stop being so damn stiff. You got no excuse if your brother is going too.”
“But - - “ Ripp began.
“Yeah, Ripp,” Tank agreed in his usual quiet and calm voice, which Kiley suspected would deepen into tones quite rich once he had his transition (she wondered if he would be interested in joining them in Faraway Land, and helping to keep the peace as a Knight like Christian. Tank seemed like the honorable warrior type). Ripp likely would have protested, he certainly looked like he wanted to, but Tank turned his attention back to Dustin and continued before his brother could get another word in edgewise. “The only problem is that Christian and I are pulling a late duty tomorrow, so we wouldn’t be able to go.”
Kiley playfully had to admonish Dustin for his reaction to that, which took the form of several colorful verbal terms that a Princess shouldn’t be exposed to. Vague plans were made for the following weekend instead.
It was unfortunate that - because of her father’s strictness - Kiley had to leave earlier than either Dustin or Christian. She knew that the comfortableness she felt while surrounded by the walls of the Grunt home would evaporate the moment she set foot outside the door, to be faced with the chilled visage of her own house across the street. They all headed downstairs so that the boys could practice darts after her departure, and she did disobediently linger around a little longer than she should have in order to watch Christian, when he bragged he could make a bulls-eye just for her entertainment. ♥ The direct attention from him made her feel tingly all over and was absolutely worth the chance that her father would be watching the clock.
Christian’s spectacular miss was the cause for a brief good-natured giggle session shared between herself and Ripp, who seemed more relaxed now that the subject of clubbing had been apparently dropped for the night, and Tank was in the kitchen getting some snacks out of the fridge. Sometimes Kiley really had to marvel at how quick that boy’s moods could change.
It wasn’t fair that she had to leave, but Kiley did not want her father to storm across the street and disturb General Grunt again. Though she was loathe to step through the door back into heaviness, Christian’s parting farewell, called after her in haste, but at least sounding sincere, was welcome and warming. Was he just being friendly, or could she dare to hope that he was finally noticing her? Ohhh, a Princess could dream, couldn’t she? ♥
In the Commons, there was hideous community park and pool that - thanks to the disgusting state of the water, the trash strewn about, rusty swings, splintery picnic table and the unsavory characters hanging about - was actually more dangerous than enjoyable. But Kiley liked to swing, so she took the risk. Plus, on weekend afternoons, she often met with Dustin and Ripp there before heading over to waste the day at the arcade.
On Sunday, two days after the evening hang-out with the Grunt brothers, Dustin and Christian, Kiley escaped her stifling house and went over the chill out on the swings. It was a nice opportunity for her to daydream, and when she went to the community park, she often liked to think about how beautiful the parks in Faraway Land would be. Fragrant gardens would host fine statuary lining the shaded pathways. Crystalline waterfalls would spill down into koi ponds with little footbridges spanning out over the mirrored pools. And there would be butterflies, more than could possibly be counted, as well as hosts of other insects and spiders.
She hadn’t made any plans to meet either Ripp or Dustin there that day, but she wasn’t terribly surprised when Ripp showed up anyway. The park might have been unpleasant, but poor kids tended to overlook such things when there were very few places that they could go to seek distraction.
What did surprise her, however, was the direction from which Ripp approached the park. There was little to the south apart from used-up abandoned farm fields and some scabby woods with small muddy rivers hidden away here and there.
“Hey you,” she smiled fondly as he walked up and claimed the swing beside hers. “Where are you coming from?”
“Nowhere,” he replied with an unconcerned shrug. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing.”
Ah, the circular conversation of bored teenagers! “What are you doing?” “Nothing. What are you doing?” “Nothing. What do you want to do?” “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” Kiley didn’t want to fall into that tedious pattern, and she knew from experience that Ripp would make no effort to break from it, so it was up to her. And luckily, there was something she wanted to ask him anyway.
“So, what do you got against going to the Loft, boy-o?” she began, reaching over with her foot to poke playfully at his leg. “You didn’t seem to like the idea. Don’t you think it will be fun?”
“Oh, I dunno . . . “he drawled, shifting to avoid her poke. “All that dancing and shit, it just don’t seem like my kinda thing, I guess.”
“You can’t say that if you’ve never tried it, Ripp,” was her sensible reply.
“I suppose . . . “he elongated the word as he said it, offering an apt illustration of his reluctance toward the entire idea. Kiley decided she would have to give his lack of enthusiasm some serious thought. Whether Ripp entirely realized it or not, she knew he had bolts for Dustin, so wouldn’t he look forward to the chance to go out with him and have some fun, just as she was excited about going out with Christian? He’d certainly looked as if he’d been enjoying “not-his-thing” dancing with Dustin when she’d inadvertently walked in on them and interrupted, shouldn’t he be eager for more of that kind of interaction?
“Hey, there’s Dustin!” Ripp exclaimed suddenly, breaking the progress of Kiley’s thoughts with a new found chipper tone in his voice.
Sure enough, Kiley turned to find Dustin approaching. He lived close by and it was possible he had seen them at the park from a window in his trailer. He gave them both a big grin that seemed to wash the trashiness from the city’s dismal little attempt at a public gathering place.
“Hey guys! I got some news!”
Eager to find out what he was so excited about, both Ripp and Kiley quickly abandoned their swings and joined him at the picnic table, as always being careful of the rough planks of wood. “So, what’s up?” Kiley asked him curiously, liking the shine in his eyes, which made him even more handsome than he already was.
He was apparently impatient to tell them, since he didn’t mess around and try to get them to guess, nor did he offer any introductory words that might have softened the blow a bit to the enamored boy sitting beside Kiley.
“I got a girlfriend!”
Continued HERE with 54 pictures.