Activity

Frey

My shoulders feel heavy, a deep ache settled in them. I can’t do anything about it, as always. I just hope this won’t last all day, if I have to do too much now, I’ll get a flare tomorrow, and I’m in the middle of a big assignment. If I get a bad grade on it, I’ll have to work harder elsewhere to catch up, and I don’t have the capacity to work harder than I already do.

I force myself to exhale, slowly. If I worry I’ll make it worse. I just have to take it carefully, step by step. I’m so tired of walking a tightrope with every action, but it’s been like this for years. It’ll be like this for the rest of my life.

I slowly start forward, through the arch into the room beyond. It’s huge and dim, lit only by a too-high chandelier, hanging so far above us I can hardly see it. It’s like it’s watching us, hovering above us, making note of every action.

Indeed, it’s us. There are other people in the room, some of them on the far side, too far for me to easily recognize. They spread around the arched marble room like statues, too orderly and too far away, like they’re the guardians of this room.

One of the dark statues is right next to me, only a few paces away. I look up at it, no, her. I’m close enough to this one that I can see that she’s a girl, not a statue.

She’s noticed me too. She looks me over, her dark eyes raking over me, fixating on my wheelchair, staring it down. I should be used to that by now.

The only thing I can do is return the compliment. She’s about my height, perhaps a little shorter, but because I’m still in my wheelchair I have to look up at her. Her dark hair trails down her back in cornrows, the tips raspberry in the dim light. They’re a comfort, some point of familiarity between us.

It’s a running joke how many of the art students have brightly colored hair, they’re easy to recognize in the crowd of others. The history, classics, and humanities students look like sparrows against cardinals. It gives me some direction of how I should act with her.

She’s still staring down at me, her gaze trailing over the dark green rails of my wheelchair as though I’m merely an attachment to it. I’m not even surprised at this point.

She holds her head as though she’s wearing a crown, her shoulders squared, and her entire posture as poised as though posing as a queen. Her simple black clothes don’t detract from it, they can’t. She’s decidedly pretty, there’s no way I can ignore it.

She finally addresses me.

“Hello. Who are you?” There’s more uncertainty in her voice than I expected.

She seems so unflappable, like nothing could rattle her. That’s intriguing. There must be something that would.

I hate feeling so out of control of the situation, with her looking down at me, asking questions, and making assessments. Time to turn that around.

I rest my elbows on the sides of my wheelchair and smile at her.

“I’m Frey, I thought you were a part of whatever dream this is at first.” I laugh off the comment. Enough that it seems like a joke but not enough to devalue the compliment. If that’s what it is. I’ll leave that open for interpretation, confusion always throws people off.

She frowns, her eyebrows drawing together.

I interrupt her before she can reply to the comment. I need to keep the initiative of the conversation. If I do, I have control, a rare feeling I’ll take wherever I can find it.

“What’s your name?”

I lean forward, looking straight up at her, as though I’ve never been more interested in a question.

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@e-n-leonard

I’m genuinely kinda at a loss of how to write Frey, he feels very counter-intuitive since like ALL of my characters are socially useless but Frey is quite the opposite XD So, I’m just stumbling forward figuring stuff out. Excuse inconsistency ig XD