Calm Calm
We’d moved to a new home, a project house for my Dad. Large but pretty decrepit, would sway with a breeze, windows barely fitting, whistling with the wind. I was in my room, sheets over the walls and windows in an attempt to keep it insulated at all, but a good gust would rattle the room and ripple through the cloth. i’d had enough of it and went downstairs to complain to my mother, she was probably just as unimpressed with this place and might even come with me to leave for somewhere else. She didn’t exactly want to be there either but also didn’t want to leave Dad, plus she bad some things to do before she went anywhere with me. I followed her outside onto the sidewalk, surprisingly there was a farmers market going on, I never would have guessed the neighbourhood was this friendly and active. The good there were fascinating too. Decorative candy elaborately made to look like art. Delicately carved wooden combs and pins for hair, jangling little toys. My mom was chatting with everyone, as she does being a friendly person who is active in any community she moves to. I can fake being friendly, but inside I’m pretty shy and some days it comes out. Today was unfortunately one of those days. Instead of awkwardly standing by her side I wandered off, not out of eyesight of her, just a table or two further. A woman offered me some vegan fruit based “cheese products” I’m always down to try new things but the texture killed me before the flavour did. Hard, chewy, like eating the candied skin of a citrus. But the taste was sour, sweet, vaguely cheesy under the bitter as the hardness melted into a slime consistency. “How is it? good?”
As if the grossed out look on my face wasn’t a clue I gave a sharp shake of my head and saw my mom was moving, following her to hopefully find a place to spit because this was NOT edible.
There was thankfully a bin by the cashier my mom stopped at and I lobbed the remaining “cheese” in my hand and mouth in. “what did you have? “. “Vegan cheese”
mom made a face, but was unsurprised that it wasn’t good. But I do always like to give everything a taste. My brother caught up to us then, carrying a hair pin he’d been gifted. “This looks too expensive” but he gave a shrug stating someone had just given it to him. I put it in my hair for the sake of seeing how it was when I felt the power hit. The pin was so freely given because it was cursed. I want sure to what extent until later when I saw a car accident and one of the men touched me and healed. The second man saw this and changed as if the rules of the world had changed. He attacked me, the original man stepping in the way, using my power to heal HIM he fought to protect me from the man that seemed set in killing me. I fled as they both went down, the first man destroyed beyond hope of healing but the killer’s body slowly fusing together despite the level of damage done. I knew little would stop him except… his mother. She was a queen and in a coma. despite being chased I was able to sneak into her room and knock out her attendant. To cure the coma she had to sleep next to someone who loved her, which was an easy fix since her attendant was secretly in love with her. She gave me her hairpiece, a silver jangly thing, to hopefully keep her son from killing me. I found him in the halls outside his mothers room. He hear the bells in my hair and fell to his knees, at first shocked to hear them before the rage started building in him once more, thinking I’d killed his mother. “calm calm down” i said somehow knowing to pinch him below his ear to keep him docile. I took him to his mother where he sobbed, the rage occasionally threatening overtake him but each time I pinched him and soothed “calm calm” getting it to subside
and then I woke up.
