[DRP] small steps (Shiloh)

[Melancholies]

bloom

The world might've changed, but Shiloh's head didn't.

There's magic to deal with, and school, and his relationships. They're all things that Shiloh never had to deal with before, because magic was a myth and school was better left <********> and he romanticized the idea of a slow, lonesome death. Life was a endless waltz that spun around and around and around and he was caught in the middle, unable to focus on the present with no thoughts of the future and the weight of the past pushing all the air out of his lungs.

Somewhere along the line he grew. His bitter blood turned sweet and his wounds were the ashen grounds from a forest fire ready for spring again. His body itched with this sensation of growth that woke him in the middle of the night and left him restless and torn. Buds dappled his arms, vines clung around his neck, his spine was a long gnarled trunk and his body petrified into a crystalline sort of wood. Something found a beauty in him and he in turn worshiped a purpose.

When did Monday become Friday? The hour hand ticks silently and his conversations are all on repeat. He's heavy, don't tell him to move, he's rooted and it's natural this way.

His head is swathed in grass and he can hear soft whispers if he listens the right way, like your ear to a conch shell except—the swells mean nothing and they're entertained that you don't understand. His eyes open without ever sleeping and his pillow continues to cradle his skull. This place is a prison and they've locked him up without the key; physical representation of such or not. Sometimes you can be your own warden.

His nails clicked against the bed frame like a baton along the bars before he gnawed them down into something less lethal.

 

[Melancholies]

(unsent)

He meant to change the names in his phone, but it isn't his, even though that's why he wanted to change it in the first place. It belonged to someone who looked like him without actually being him.

"Your Fave" is untouched.

 

[Melancholies]

(unsent)

He can't bring himself to change the background of him and Jamie either.

He spends a while staring at the him with glossy skin and the Jamie with long curly hair.

They're happy, it's nice.

 

[Melancholies]

burn your bridges

When did he even come to know so many people?

It takes more than both his hands to count them, though he supposes that's not so bad. So why does he sit at home alone despite it? Jamie has a job, they found out, and now he wastes the hours scribbling graphite into his sketchbooks. It gets old after so long, surprisingly.

It takes more than two sets of two hands to count the names he knows, he finds out.

And he draws more and more and more. It's calming, even if it gets boring. There's things he can't really put into words that he can at least put into art. He can't help but notice how good the other him was at painting, but it's fine.

They aren't the same.

 

[Melancholies]

sweetness

He's acutely aware of when these moods come on, because he gets insatiable for chocolate, even more so than usual. You can't even compare it to the level of voraciousness he feels right now. It isn't the thing a hershey bar can solve, or a milkshake can soothe over.

It's the whole bag of kisses and it makes him sick, but it's better than feeling sad.

Things get better; it's a proverb, probably. He believes in it now at least.

 

[Melancholies]

rude as ******** style="font-size: 10px">He finds out that he has therapy appointments.

Jamie's parents ask about it and if he's not going to go, but he didn't even know it existed in the first place. He can't say no? He can't face that fallout of disappointment.

"Bye, Jamie." He says before taking off, which is hard enough because he has to make an excuse for the car that he owns but can't drive. Public transit isn't bad though. He likes the rusty smell of the worn out seats and seeing the other dreary dull eyed patrons board. It's liminal. He almost expects to get off in Otherworld, but he doesn't. It's a long building of offices and confused receptionists pointing him towards a life he lived once.

And it hurts when he gets there, and the women is nice and patient but reserved and unsure. They were making a lot of progress, Shiloh was sure, this woman and the other him. He's a fresh slate and they're starting over. No steps forward and twenty steps back. He snaps a lot. He yells. She's all smiles and assuring nods. "It's okay to be angry," She tells him, and he knows this already, but he hasn't realized how badly he needs to hear that over and over and over.

He goes to this place once a week. He comes home exhausted every time.

 

[Melancholies]

cathartic

Sure as s**t, it helps.

It isn't a lot of progress and he doesn't want to say it's snapped him out of his funk (because he hasn't and he's pretty sure it's just something he has to... live with, really), but he can get out of bed a little easier and eating is gentle on his stomach again. She asks about his family and he talks fervently about his brother. He talks about Jamie because he considers him family now too, and Jamie's parents and his turtle.

The therapist lady—she's very enthusiastic about the turtle—so he assumes that was a recent change.

And then she brings up the medications and how she thinks he hasn't been taking them, and well—she's right—but only because Shiloh has no real idea what the ******** she's talking about.

He'll wing it for now.

 

[Melancholies]

(unsent)

He changes the background to an updated picture. It's him and Jamie and the turtle, eyebags and short hair and "lord give me the lettuce" all in one.

Her name was Junior, evidently. It suits her.

 

[Melancholies]

falter

Not for long, though.

It happens at 3AM on a Wednesday. He winds up crying in the bathtub in the dark because he let the stress get to him. It's mostly his revelation with school, but his relationship to magic too. There's books in the library on how to be a "Brother and a Friend". No one writes books on how to be a brother and a friend and a son and a boyfriend and a student and a noble and a principal. He feels stupid for caving like this, crying like this, being an idiot about this.

It's like he can hear Beel's laughter in the darkness of the bathroom and he curls tighter into his flannel pajamas.

One step forward, two steps back, one step forward again. He goes back to bed eventually.

 

[Melancholies]

flourish

He's only human and he feels like he's been born of the earth and tended by the sun.

It's raining outside, but not storming. It's a gentle lull of a drizzle—the kind that sounds like a lullaby if you let its teeth sink into you. He sits on the porch under the gloam, letting watercress crawl all over him as the rain sinks into his skin.

He feels alive. If you love it let it grow—that's how it goes right?

Oh, let it go?

Well.

Whatever. He isn't going anywhere.

 

[Melancholies]

(unsent)

He makes the lock screen unique compared to the home screen, even if the content is exactly the same.

 

[Melancholies]

swaddled

Sometimes when Shiloh wakes up, he literally cannot get up.

His plants listen to him for the most part, but sometimes they have a mind entirely on their own, and he comes back into consciousness attached to the bed, tethered together by vines and thorns and branches. Sometimes it's a nuisance. Other times it makes him laugh.

Today it makes him smile in a silly sort of way. He goes back to sleep not as an escape, but because he wants to savor the warmth for another hour.

 

[Melancholies]

aspirations

So the big question is: why Sociology?

He reads through his old texts, scrolls through IM logs, peeks through his drawings, spends hours listening to his audio tapes, but there's no answers. Sociology on its own is incredibly broad, so he can't figure it out for the life of him why he would have picked it. There was a small thought in the back of his head of pursing a career in teaching—not like, teaching teaching like core studies—but things like art. It seemed important.

He poises it to his therapist one visit in a roundabout way. "Do you think I should go through with it?"

"Sociology?"

"Yeah."

And she hmm's softly for a second, "Well, you seemed very set on social work."

That narrows it, "But do you think I'd be a good fit?"

She thinks again, taps her chin even though Shiloh's sure she already has her answer, "I think so. You're passionate. You're empathetic." These are not words Shiloh would have chosen to describe himself, "It's like you always said; 'Think of those kids'," She smiled, "'Who would know them any better?'"

Suddenly it all makes sense.

 

[Melancholies]

dawn

He's eating toast when he realizes it.

He's in charge of his own destiny, his own fate, and he's the only one that can change the outcome. The jelly nearly slides off onto the plate as he gawks there mid-bite.

Life might throw curveballs—god knows that's all it liked to do—but at the end of the day, he made what he wanted out of it. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade right? They made a whole new world for god's sake, and even though he wasn't sure if it was for the better... well, he has the option to change it. It sets him apart from the others. He feels like personified concentrated will.

The sigil has the tree and the knot, but he's the key. He's potential brought forward with a set of lungs and a set of legs and two fists that won't go down without a fight. He's Caesar. He's watching this bloodbath of a fight between him and life and all his insecurities are sprawled on the floor.

Thumbs down, b***h.