Day 6: Journal
Iaera (she/her)
A pinky shifted away from the pen in her hand in a practiced motion, gently nudging her glasses up her nose before returning to its starting position. As she leaned back in her chair, a quiet exhale escaped her lips, the tip of her head allowing the silver-blue locks to fall away from her face. How many hours a day was she expected to study? There was so much going on outside this castle, and she was destined to miss it all.
What a backwards existence, where Father kept the two of them holed up in the comfortable safety of home, while Mom and Tessie gallivanted across the worlds fighting dangerous monsters. A summary befitting a novel targeted at teenage girls, though she was beyond certainty that plenty had been inspired by her mother. She'd read several of them herself, in attempts to busy her mind amidst the suffocating amount of free time she faced. Memorizing the ins and outs of every trope, how they were marketed, the parts of her mother's life left conspicuously absent... fiction based in the reality that was the grandeur of Master Aqua.
Her sister was sure to get the same treatment sooner rather than later, no doubt. How would she handle it?
Iaera's musing stirred her out of her thoughts, the loops upon loops of boredom spiraling endlessly in her constantly buzzing mind. Allowing her gaze to fall to the door, she focused on the gentle bustle of the hallway outside. It truly seemed no matter how many people occupied the castle, it was empty. The echo chamber of her room was laden with specialized furniture, disorderly trinkets, and an overwhelming number of pillows and plush toys. Admittedly, she was glad she didn't occupy a larger space, one could only do so much with accessibility without becoming borderline nonsensical in construction. Regrettable that castles are built up instead of out. This entire world was built with an endless movement upward, it seemed, and the benevolent founders hadn't seen fit to add a ramp or two.
Listing into a fresh round of disinterest, she found her ears wandering from the noise outside her door to the far more appealing sounds filtering in from her window: the live symphony that was a Radiant Garden afternoon.
Her fingertips gently lay her pen between the open bindings of her notebook, marking her place, but beyond that, freeing her hands. Hands which moved to lightly caress the metal on either side of her, cool from the precisely 68 degree air, exactly as Uncle Even liked it. She oft considered the gloves Tessie wore to be more of a hassle than they were worth, but the weakness in her hands wasn't aided by cold fingers, she supposed. Perhaps a reassessment was in order...
With motions she imagined more than once would be just as fluid as moving one's own legs, she wheeled to the window, looking down at the vibrant world below. The overlapping voices of other children huddled around the edge of the fountain, ice cream in hand. Laughter and conversations of adults leisurely traversing the stone pathways lining the city, uneven cobble she had envisioned the cracks and valleys of many times. Dreams like the illusions her Father wielded, picturing the bounce and tremor of these wheels on those streets...
Hazarding a glance at the clock, Iaera found herself relinquishing another sigh. Father would be finished with his work soon, perhaps she could see something beyond this room today, at least. At any rate, she was certain to get considerably better stimulation from attempting to assert a word in edgewise with Even than she would staring into her soulless notes and textbook chapters she'd already passed over several times today alone.
She wheeled to the door, letting her gaze fall to the light pouring in from the window once again, the glittering sky of the most beautiful world in existence that lay just outside of her bedroom, from which her sister brought gifts and photographs and stories.
Perhaps one day she'd see it.
For now, all she had was illusion and fantasy.
Artists: @ramatetsu, Baydews, Chibi Dollmaker, Kureihii.
@khoc-week
